Good Book

This is a good book to read for money management. Its okay for men to read too.

Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny by Suze Orman

light bulbs

We watched a demo of a regular light bulb and a florescent bulb hooked up to electric meters. The regular bulb's meter was racing around while the florescent was hardly moving. Today we bought new florescent bulbs for the bathroom lights.

Kill A Watt meter

coworker brought this into work today:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/7657/

we are going around testing everything. the electric tea kettle is drawing about 1100 watts and 10 amps. the coffee pot is at about 700 watts and 7 amps. the interesting thing is that the coffee pot is at 1 watt just while it is plugged in but in the off mode. so i calculated how much this is going to cost over a 1 year period:

i hope i'm doing my math right here: it will take 1000 hours for the coffee pot to draw 1 kWh. a kWh costs me about 8.65 cents. so therefore, it costs me about 75 cents per year just to keep the coffee maker plugged in.

we are still testing things but here are some other results:
dell monitor in standby - 0 watts
dell monitor on - 28 watts
dell optiplex 745 computer - 70 watts
dell optiplex 745 computer turned off - 0 watts
dell optiplex 745 in hibernate mode - 0 watts

here is some good reading to help you with understanding kWh:
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html

SmartStrip

dad,
maybe this would make life easier for you, instead having to turn power strip off every night. it just knows when your peripherals are off, and it shuts down power.

http://www.smarthomeusa.com/ShopByManufacturer/Bits-Ltd./Item/LCG3/

useful websites

www.scorecard.org - very cool site, tells you about the toxins in your community
http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/index.htm
www.greenseal.org - find products with green certification
www.greenworkscleaners.com
www.seafoodwatch.org
www.treesaregood.com
www.freecycle.org/free_samples

I went to a meeting on being Green

Here are some new ideas
Keep your thermostat set at 65 or below in winter and 75 or above in summer. We keep our at 62 in the winter and 80 in the summer.
Use concentrate cleaners
mop damp not wet
refrigerators that are older than 20years are not efficient
check with your power company for good deals on energy efficient water heaters and a/c or heat pumps.
also check for energy audit at your electric company website
use lemon juice along with vinegar and water for a cleaner. the lemon juice cuts the vinegar small and disinfects

LED Light Bulbs

Now that compact floescents have been discovered to be unsafe look into LED light bulbs.http://www.betterlifegoods.com/