Cutting the Cost of Household Bills?

schlumpf_louise asks: "I'm in the UK, and I'm about to move out of university accommodation and live in a house, for the first time. When we move, we will have to pay for water, electricity and gas. We'll still be students renting from a landlord, so we can't make any major physical changes to the property. The house has gas central heating and a gas cooker. Four computers will be running pretty much all the time, in addition to the usual general household appliances. What tips do any of you have for (legally) saving on bills? Are there any technologies that are worth buying for long term savings? What should we not do, or not use?" What other saving tips, and frugal suggestions might you have for a house full of college students?

Comments

Your computers double as space heaters

[guspasho]

Only obvious things come to mind. In case they aren't so obvious to you: Use the computers for heat in the winter, try to pipe the heat away in the summer. Wear a sweater. Shower with your girlfriend. Wear your clothes multiple days to save on laundry loads. But of course all these habits you probably picked up in college anyway.

Re:Do your computers always need to be on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do your computers always need to be on?

You must be new here.

Re:Do your computers always need to be on?

[Anonymous Coward]

What you should all do is work out when your computers actually need to be running.

Leaking appliances is certainly something to consider. Unfortunately you're stuck with countless bad decisions by your landlord, including inefficient appliances, lousy insulation, poor choices in heating/cooling systems, etc. For those that aren't subjected to a landlord's provisions and can call their own shots, I'd suggest a few options we've learned:

• Check with your electric utility for peak-demand control options: Ours has a wireless (440 MHz type frequency) way to shut off our water heater and other electrical appliances briefly during peak demand when it is experienced, saving them lots of money. By using this plan, we get a $0.06/kw hour rate vs $0.09.
  
• Insulate like heck. Wish I would have learned this trick earlier on. Yes, there's a cost/benefit ratio, but I've yet to meet a rational insulating project that didn't pay back within 1-2 years (or earlier).
  
• Vent heat: Got an attic? How well do you get rid of heat? Our last house actually had all the heat bottled up in the attic because the previous owner/bozo thought sealing all the vents was a good thing. Active fans based on attic temp are good things in extreme cases and are cheap to buy and install.
  
• Blue-flame heaters. Live in a home older than 30-40 yrs? You probably have enough air exchange to use a blue flame heater, which is 100% efficient. Screw the old furnace or even the new 93% unit, blue flame is 100% efficient and uses no electricity! We got one after a week-long ice storm and discovered it lowered our total natural gas bill by 40%.
  
• Get rid of incandescents! They generate waste heat like hell and are expensive to run. Go flourescent as much as you can. We switched out our outdoor lights too (including former mercury bulb yard lights) with this and have seen a noticable drop in electric rates.
  
• Design for low cost: Things that must be left on must be cheap: That's my rule. Rather than keep all my systems running, I have a low draw laptop that's hooked up to a flat-screen (tested to make sure it doesn't suck power when off). I like to leave a few lights on when we're not here - they're all converted to flourescent. Anything that has to be left on must be cheap.
  

Just went through this myself

[Anonymous Cowdog]

Here's what we did:

* Cancel movie rental subscription (Netflix)
* Get movies and some books from the library
* Cancel old unused website costing a monthly fee
* Scour credit card statements, found another forgotton hosting account, cancelled it
* Called auto insurance company and raised deductible for collision to $1000
* Bought a stovetop espresso maker so we don't need to buy good coffee by the cup now
* Continued living with our old outdated computer monitor
* No cable, no gaming accounts
* No alchohol, no drugs, no lottery tickets
* Pay things on time and avoid late fees
* Remember if taxes take 50%, you have to earn $2 for each $1 you spend.
* Stop buying stuff.
* Get cheaper broadband plan
* Cancel unused text messaging on wife's cell phone ($5/mo)
* Cancel unused roaming plan ($5/mo)
* Cancel unused Canada roaming addon ($3/mo)
* Cancel unused "nights start at 7PM" addon on cell plan ($5/mo)
* Ask nicely and get $10/mo unlimited cell data plan, including modem use (Sprint, Treo 650) instead of faster Cingular $40/mo+ plan
* Refrain from getting car. Get exercise instead.

Lots of little amounts, and some big ones. They add up.

LED Flashlight

[Graymalkin]

1. Think about replacing your entertainment appliances with a communal computer. A relatively low power PC hooked up to a decent LCD can play just about any sort of media type you can think of. It is also quite a bit more efficient than a bunch of individual devices in "sleep" mode sucking down 10Wh+. Turn off the sound system for such a computer when it isn't in use and place the system itself in sleep mode or hibernate or what have you when not in use.
2. Convince your house mates that switching to LCDs in going to save everyone even though they're relatively expensive up front. A 19" CRT sucking down 100W will cost a fortune compared to the operational cost of a good LCD. The less power used means the less heat generated which leads to lower home cooling costs in hotter months.
3. Turn the thermostat up in the summer and down in the winter. In the summer wear shorts and short sleeve shirts, sweaters and thicker pants in the winter. Grab some cheap solar shades to go on the outsides of south facing windows, they keep a good 70% of solar radiation from entering the window and require next to maintenance. Do what you can to seal up the windows in the winter time to keep cold air out and warm air in. There's lots of thermal seals for windows available that don't require permenant changes to the structure of the windows thus being renter friendly.
4. Get a Watt meter. It's a little device you plug in between an appliance and the wall that can tell you the device's electrical load. Plug everything into one of these to figure out what is sucking down the most power when on and/or off. Grab some power strips or switch adapters for outlets to keep these power sinks from hiking up your electrical bill. You'd be surprised about how much power is used by appliances that look "off". Kitchens and living rooms are huge power sinks.
5. Replace incandescent bulbs with CF ones. CF bulbs costs a bit more than incandescents but last quite a bit longer and use a fraction of the power to produce the same amount of light. You don't save up front with CFBs, you save months down the road when the power savings and long life have paid for the bulb several times over. CFBs are also getting cheaper so price is even less of an issue than it was just a few years ago. Make sure people in the house get into the habit of turning off lights in unoccupied rooms.
6. Look into replacing a digital alarm clock with your cell phone. My cell wakes me up in the morning and has a clock that is always set. It works properly after an overnight power outtage.
7. Cook for everyone at once and pick up some heat trapping storage bags (the sort used for camping and picnics) to keep food warm for latecomers. Try not to cook too much or else you're going to need to store that extra food for later...
8. Get a small refrigerator and shop for only one or two days worth of meals. A smaller fridge is going to save on your electrical bill. Shopping on a smaller scale is a little less convenient than bulk shopping but can be done by a single person on the way home from work/school more easily than bulk shopping. It also means you tend to have fresher food and don't buy things you forget about that then go bad wasting the money.
9. Agree on a beer everyone enjoys and buy kegs or mini kegs rather than cases with bottles. Kegs are cheaper than cases and can be reused.
10. Recycle. I don't know about the UK but overhere in the Estats Unidos you can get a few bucks from every few pounds of aluminum and glass you recycle. This is nice after BYOB parties as you get a bunch of free change just by cleaning up and heading to a recycling center.
11. Carpool and/or ride a bike. If you're not too far from work or school ride a bike. You save on gas and have better parking options. A good bike will make for a comfortable ride and you'll stay in shape even drinking a college portion of beer.
12. Team up with your neighbors about high speed internet access. Split the bill between the households and share the bandw

remember the first law

[rcpitt]

You can change energy from one form to another but can't create or destroy it.

If you MUST have 4 computers running - they will eat something like 500-800+ watts - so you need to use or get rid of that amount of energy. (note that CRTs use similar amounts - use LCDs!)

Most refrigerators use something less than 500-800 watts to cool their interiors - but many (most) use motors to compress coolant and dump the heat out to cooling coils on the back (heating the surrounding room). Why not instead use a 'fridge that uses an absorption cycle (like the ones you find in a camper that use either electricity or gas to provide heat but don't use a motor) and run it off the heat of the computers?

Note that you'll have to provide some dump for the heat - so you'll probably want to put the computers (and some part of the fridge) near an outside wall so you can dump heat outside (choose the side away from the sun) - use long monitor cables etc. to bring the video/keyboard/mouse connections to where you want them.

In Summer - open the windows near the computers to let the heat out

In Winter - put a fan there and blow the excess heat into the rest of the house.

Of course you might want to run some copper tubing from the water supply near these heat sources to pre-heat the water prior to running it into the normal water heater too. You can also plumb them into solar panels on the roof in Summer (and even in Winter in some areas) to preheat water. A little bit of electronics might be necessary to ensure you don't overheat the water - I've almost burned my hand off the panels I have on the roof for my pool :)

Lots of ways of (re)using the energy you take into the house before letting it out - and taking advantage of the energy that is freely available from the sun when it shines.

Re:remember the first law

[Inda]

"In Summer - open the windows near the computers to let the heat out"

1. He's from the UK. We don't really get a summer here.
2. Open the windows as apposed to what? Turning on the air conditioning? He's from the UK. We don't have air conditioning in our homes.

"[take] advantage of the energy that is freely available from the sun when it shines"

HE'S FROM THE UK!!!

God bless The Queen!