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Consumer Reports has a new publication entitled Complete Guide to Reducing Energy Costs. To promote the book, they’ve made twenty tips available for free online:
- Wash clothes in cold water. Most of the cost in running a washer is in heating the water.
- Hang clothes on a line.
- Don’t overdry your laundry. Remove clothes from the dryer while they’re still a little damp.
- Let the dishwasher do the work. Don’t pre-rinse dishes. (This shocks me. I always pre-rinse dishes.)
- Put your PC to sleep.
- Turn down the heat in winter. Turn down the air conditioning in summer. Especially when you’re asleep or away from home. (See also.)
- Don’t use a conventional fireplace.
- Lower the shades and raise the windows instead of using appliances to regulate temperatures.
- Use fans instead of an air conditioner.
- If you use an air conditioner, keep it well maintained.
- Lower the thermostat on your water heater.
- Think twice before turning on the oven (especially in summer). A microwave is more energy-efficient.
- Use the right pan for the right burner.
- Read the label on new appliances — seek energy-efficient models.
- Learn to use a crock-pot.
- Clean the coils on your fridge.
- Drive steadily, and a bit slower. Rapid acceleration and sudden braking use more fuel. So do higher speeds.
- Roof racks reduce fuel-efficiency.
- Stick with regular unless your vehicle’s manufacturer recommends premium.
- Don’t let your car idle or “warm up”. “With most gasoline engines, it’s more efficient to turn off the engine than to idle longer than 30 seconds.”
You can read this list, with fuller explanations, at the Consumer Reports site. You may also be interested in my previous article on how to reduce electricity costs.
A common theme among these tips is that heating things and cooling things uses a lot of energy. A recent Consumer Reports article emphasized this point: you use the most energy when you attempt to alter temperatures. Toasters, ranges, refrigerators, air conditioners, etc. are all energy hogs because they heat things and cool things.
Consumer Reports is a terrific magazine for cost-conscious shoppers, full of recommendations on products, techniques, and services to save you money. I want to share more of this information, but the organization is aggressively militant about protecting perceived infringement. I don’t dare share tips or “best buys” because I’m not in a financial position to defend myself against a lawsuit.
(I am not alone. Several other bloggers have had bad experiences with the Consumers Union legal department. You’d think that if they really wanted to help consumers, they’d encourage the spread of information. This doesn’t seem to be a priority for them.)
[Consumer Reports: 20 free ways to save energy]
This article is about Frugality, House and Home Wednesday, 27th September 2006 (by J.D. Roth)
September 27th, 2006 at 6:17 am
[...] 20 Free Ways to Save Energy - Some familiar tips and some new ones. I highly recommend adding the blog to your feeds. [...]
September 27th, 2006 at 7:09 am
A few of those drove me to comment:
“Let the dishwasher do the work. Donâ??t pre-rinse dishes. (This shocks me. I always pre-rinse dishes.)”
The trick here is in the long explanation: “Don’t bother prerinsing dishes with the idea that your dishwasher will work less hard.” Yeah, sure, but I prerinse dishes with the idea that otherwise they will end up with baked-on food. I don’t have to worry about my dishwasher working hard. I’m positive it doesn’t. Ever.
“Drive steadily, and a bit slower. Rapid acceleration and sudden braking use more fuel. So do higher speeds.”
I wish I remembered exactly where I read this, but one thing I’ve found useful while driving is to think about acceleration as if I were on a bicycle. If I need to speed up in the next 10 seconds, but the first 5 are up a steep hill and the second 5 are down a steep hill, I wait for the crest of the hill to accelerate and let gravity work with the engine instead of against.
“Donâ??t let your car idle or â??warm upâ?. â??With most gasoline engines, itâ??s more efficient to turn off the engine than to idle longer than 30 seconds.â?
I’m always suspicious of this recommendation because it doesn’t account for wear and tear on the components of the starting system. Maybe it still does end up better, or it does if you’re not doing a lot of stop-and-go idling, but I need to know it was accounted for and it never seems to be.
(Also, you can always tell in what part of the continent the person that writes that recommendation lives; for half the year up here in Canada, you let the car warm up to get the *heater* working, so you can defrost the windows enough to drive!
September 27th, 2006 at 7:23 am
I second the “get the heater working” thing. Living in Michigan’s upper peninsula, I HAVE to let my car warm up. If the heater isn’t going, the windows frost up as fast as I can scrape them some mornings.
September 27th, 2006 at 8:53 am
“12. Think twice before turning on the oven (especially in summer). A microwave is more energy-efficient.”
Forget about the microwave… use a BBQ (especially in summer).
September 27th, 2006 at 10:38 am
How much money is all this extra work and effort worth? Isn’t our time better spent not just being good stewards, but learning to grow our money instead of pinch pennies to death?
September 27th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
#7 Don’t use a conventional fireplace.
This doesn’t make sense to me. My parents have a wood-burning stove in their house which they burn firewood from fallen trees from around the area. My dad would always offer to haul away the wood for free (besides splitting it is good excersice.) In the Winter, you can get a fire going and lower the thermostat, thereby saving money.
September 27th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
prlinkbiz,
What do you see here that is so much of an effort? You put the clothes in the washer whether it runs on cold or not. You hang those same clothes back up whether you’ve run the dryer or not.
Sure, you might have to change your clothes if you’ve reset your thermostat, but putting on/taking off a sweater just doesn’t strike me as some big burden.
September 27th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
“Several other bloggers have had bad experiences with the Consumers Union legal department. You’d think that if they really wanted to help consumers, they’d encourage the spread of information.”
Consumers Union doesn’t sell advertising, and they don’t accept free review units from product manufacturers. They buy all their review products in stores, anonymously, and they spend a lot of money doing original research and testing. I can understand why they don’t want their subscription system circumvented, because it’s their only source of revenue.
Fortunately, most public libraries subscribe to Consumer Reports. My library even provides full text articles online for card-holders, through their subscription to the Proquest database.
September 27th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
#4 … or you can handwash the dishes yourself.
(You’ll be saving electrical energy, but burning your own)
September 28th, 2006 at 6:59 am
[...] The Get Rick Slowly blog has posted 20 Free Ways to Save Energy. After seeing my last few electric bills, these are tips I need. [...]
September 28th, 2006 at 8:17 am
It’s the constant thinking about how to pinch a penny that I find takes too much time and enjoyment out of my day to day living. When I am bootstrapping to buy an investment, I cut way back- but for the most part, I live my life comfortably, and spend my energies thinking about how to create more income. I am just wired different than most here! lol
October 1st, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Russell Heimlich: I think you’re spot on with the wood-burning stove. Those are a great way to heat, or at least partially heat, your home on the cheap (usually the fuel is free!).
The original post referenced “Conventional Fireplaces”, though, which I think is referring to the traditional fireplace + chimney big enough for Santa Claus to slide down setup. These are inefficient in winter time because they are basically a large hole in your house letting in cold air (Unless you actively have a fire going, creating a positive air pressure).
Most wood burning stoves that I have seen have much smaller ventings for exhaust, as well as being more of a “closed” system, so that they don’t let the cold air in to your home very easily, to begin with.
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:39 am
I do nearly all of these and they don’t take any extra personal energy or thinking. I’m actually disappointed I didn’t learn anything new from this post.
Regarding hanging clothes on the line: line dried clothing isn’t soft. Is there anyway to regain the tumbled-in-the-drier feeling?
October 19th, 2006 at 7:27 am
I’m the editor of the Complete Guide to Reducing Energy Costs and I just want to clarify the point about not using a conventional fireplace. Yes, we are talking about an open fireplace. Beyond being a big hole in the house, when you get a fire blazing, that fire needs air and the air it uses is the air inside your house which you have paid to warm with your heating system. A woodstove is an entirely different matter–I use one myself. A good airtight woodstove is designed to slowly burn wood while efficiently radiating heat.
July 21st, 2008 at 5:43 am
I once heard that the efficiency of a wood-burning fireplace depends on your location. In a bitter-cold region like midwest winters, it’s not cost effective to use a fireplace. In regions like Seattle, which get cold but not as cold as parts of the midwest, fireplaces are a nice way to cozy up on a cold day without too much energy loss.
I’ve recently begun experimenting with not rinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, and I’m surprised at how clean they get! I really didn’t need to be rinsing as much as I had been.