Reducing Our Electrical Usage, Update #1

I wrote a week or so ago about trying to cut electrical usage in our new house, and I just wanted to give a quick update. I still haven’t gotten around to insulating the garage door, but the fixes that I’ve made in the bonus room (mainly just insulating and weatherstripping the attic access door) combined with putting up blinds over the garage windows to keep it from heating up when it gets hit by the morning sun have allowed us to get the upstairs temperature under control.

In fact, we’ve been able to bump the thermostat up by six degrees. The other thing that I’ve been working on has been switching over to compact fluorescent lightbulbs. I went out and bought contractor packs of the 60W equivalent bulbs at Home Depot, and have been working my way through the 74 bulbs distributed throughout the house (plus 16 more 65W spotlight bulbs in our recessed lights). The advantage here is twofold. First, these bulbs use less energy, which is a direct help to our electric bill. Second, they throw off far less heat, which helps maintain the upstairs/downstairs temperature balance, which results in the indirect benefit of letting us keep the AC set higher.

Update: I totally forgot to mention one of the biggest factors in our temperature control… I went through the house and adjusted the vents to keep the living room (where the thermostate resides) comparatively warmer, and to push more cool air upstairs. To be more specific about the temperature swing, the AC was running at 70° when we moved in, and the bonus room was basically a sweat box. We’ve now creeped up to 76° and the house is pretty comfortable throughout.

Update #2: I’m not sure what’s up with me today, but I also forgot to mention that our changes have been so effective that I went up into the bonus room to check on the boys the other day and it was really hot. I couldn’t figure out why, until our six year old spilled the beans. He had gotten cold and closed the air vent. That’s when we decided to bump the thermostat up from 74° to 76°.