How to Save Money on Your Energy Bill
Is it just me, or have energy prices just been going up and up lately?
Unfortunately, this results in significant increases in our home energy bills.
Fortunately, there are a lot of relatively inexpensive (sometimes free) changes you can make around the home that will save you money.
I've put together a list of twelve tips that cover heating and cooling, lighting, appliances, and home electronics.
These areas all tend to be notorious energy hogs.
Let's get started.
Heating and Cooling Tips:
1.
If you haven't already, switch to a natural gas water heater (electric water heaters use twice as much energy).
2. Whenever possible, cool your home naturally.
For example, you can plant shade trees around your house (especially on the east and west sides).
Their protection keeps the sun from beating on your roof and siding during the summer, which can naturally keep your home 4 degrees cooler.
(Trees also help insulate your house against cold winds in the winter.)
3.
Seal your house to protect against heat loss in cold weather.
Seal the ductwork, close the fireplace damper when it's not in use, and install a timer on the bathroom exhaust fan.
Money-saving Lighting Tips:
1. Use dimmers on all your bulbs, and only keep lights as bright as needed for your work.
Instead of turning on big watt-sucking overhead lights, use task lighting when appropriate.
2. Use timers and motion- or heat-sensing lights outdoors.
3.
Make the most of the natural light from outside.
Consider skylights and well-placed mirrors, which can reflect more light into a room, thus reducing energy costs.
Home Electronics Energy-saving Tips:
1. Unless you really need ten clocks glowing greenly at you day and night, unplug TVs, DVD players, stereos, etc. when not in use (you can plug them into a power strip with an on/off switch to make this easy).
60-80% of the electricity used by these devices is sucked down when they're idle.
2.
Unplug chargers when you aren't actively charging your cell phone, iPod, battery charger, etc.
Why?
Because as long as the plugs are inserted into an outlet, they're drawing electricity.
3. Unplug or turn off your computer when it's not in use.
And in case you forget, set the system to lapse into sleep mode after a certain amount of idle time (sleep mode draws 60-80% less energy than full-power mode).
Tips for Saving Energy with Appliances
1. If your refrigerator was made before 1993, replace it.
It could be sucking down $140 a year in electricity as opposed to newer models, which require significantly less.
Today's Energy Star-rated refrigerators only use about $20 of energy a year.
2. Do all your laundry on the same day, and dry the loads back-to-back.
This makes use of residual dryer heat.
3. If you have a top-loading washing machine, replace it with a front-loading model.
These generally use 50% less energy and 1/3 less water.
That's all the advice for this article.
Apply these simple energy-saving tips, and you'll soon be looking at smaller bills.
.
SECURESPEED, LLC Partners with Astaro Security Linux
(ContentDesk) August 29, 2004 -- SECURESPEED, LLC, Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina's full service Enterprise Storage, Disaster Recovery and Data Privacy solutions provider, announces its partnership with Astaro Security Linux.
"Astaro is a great organization, delivering excellent support and very high quality products with the feature set that IT Security Professionals and organizations require for advanced perimeter security and deep network protection," says Christopher Hurley, VP of Technical Services for SECURESPEED."Our customers are happy with the Astaro powered security appliances that we've deployed and we are glad to provide them with a cost effective solution."Astaro Security Linux offers firewall, intrusion protection, virus protection, spam protection, IPSEC VPN gateway, and URL filtering capabilities. A unified management platform makes it easy to deploy, administer, and update a complete network security solution with surprisingly little costAbout SECURESPEED, LLC:SECURESPEED,...
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A Guide to Vacuum Cleaner Repair
In most areas, there is a person nearby who can fix your broken vacuum cleaner.
Whether they specialize in vacuum cleaner repairs only or if they do repairs on a wide variety of motor driven home appliances, they should be able to easily fix your broken machine.
If you have one of the less pricey models, you might want to consider buying a new one before having someone repair it for you. The hourly fee for labor and the costs of parts may not warrant the repair price, unless of course you simply have to have the vacuum cleaner that you've grown accustomed to for a long time. An honest repair service will tell you that upon examination, which is usually free unless the problem is not easily diagnosed on the surface.
In most situations, when you find a repair shop and bring in your broken vacuum cleaner, they'll ask you a few simple questions.
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A Guide to Vacuum Cleaner Repair
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A Review of Samsung Laser Toners
Samsung laser toner is just as popular as its Hewlett-Packard and Brother counterparts. Samsung is a group of products and services that began in Korea in 1938. Today Samsung operate five different business areas: Telecommunications, Digital and Home Appliances, Digital Media, LCD, and Semiconductors. They started their Electronics section in 1969. Today they are one of the top 100 brands in the world, and their printers and cartridges continue to gain a loyal following.
You can buy Samsung laser toner from their official website.
There you will find a complete list of all their products. Enter "laser toner cartridge" in the website's search field and start comparing prices. You are guaranteed to get a quality from this site. Their website offers full specifications, so that you can find the right cartridge for your printer.
Another option is to go to the PCWorld website.
Look for "printers" in the drop-down menu.
They have a database...
A Review of Samsung Laser Toners
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If you really think about it, it's the small appliance parts that make your everyday life so much easier. You wake up in the morning and you use an oven toaster ? those are small appliance parts working right there.
In the late afternoon in the office, you pour yourself some coffee from the coffeemaker ? those are small appliance parts working again.
Indeed, most of our day is spent depending on small appliance wonders, and it's only right that we learn to use them safely and that we prolong their useful lives by taking care of them. Below are some useful tips.
Follow safety instructions.
Never forget to read the manufacturer's handbook, because it contains pertinent information about the care and use of your small appliance and its parts. Be extra careful with small kitchen appliances ? not all of them can get wet. Never plunge small kitchen appliances in dishwasher water, for example, unless the handbook tells you that it's safe. Negligence...
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Home generators are available in two types: portable and stationery or standby generators. In times of power shortages or disruption of power, small portable home generators can be used to run some selected appliances such as lights, refrigerators, furnaces and sump pump. Generators come in varying size and capacities ranging from 1 kilowatt to 100 kilowatt. Home generators run on diesel, gasoline, propane or natural gas.
The least expensive is the portable gasoline powered engine.
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Diamond Alternatives ? There Are Some Great Options
There is little doubt that diamonds are one of the most elegant of the precious stones, and that diamond jewelry is simply a joy to wear. Unfortunately, though many of us are unable to afford the diamond jewelry we would so dearly love, as the great beauty and value of the stone are translated into the price that you have to pay to own one. Enter diamond alternatives. Traditionally, it was seen as a great compromise, a disappointment, to be forced by financial considerations into choosing from...
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