We like to help find ways for people to cut their power bills. We do this by helping customers find the best electricity and natural gas providers in their area. But that isn’t enough, which is why we offer practical advice on our blog that can be put into practice in homes and businesses to cut the amount of energy used in the first place. If you use less energy, then you pay less as well. It makes sense. But there are some practices that many people believe help to cut energy usage, which actually don’t. In fact, some commonly believed energy saving myths actually end up increasing costs in the long run. Here’s a run down on a few helpful hints that may actually be hurting you.
Myth #1: Closing heating vents in unused parts of a home reduces heating costs
This one is a problem for a few reasons. You may think that closing the heating registers in the living room when you’re in bed means that an automatic heater won’t run as much. However, heat doesn’t just spread through air circulation. It is also transferred by conduction–when something touches something else. Heat spreads from warmer objects to cooler ones. In this case, the warm air in your bedroom in turn warms the walls of your room. This heat is in turn transferred through the walls to other areas of the house. And the greater the difference between hot areas of your home and cooler areas, the faster that heat transfers between the two. One way or another, you’re going to heat the entirety of your house, unless you’ve done an unusually good job of insulating the internal walls of your home.
Secondly, when you block some of your heating vents, you create back pressure in the ductwork of your heating system, which in turn places pressure on your heater. If you blocked off half of the exhaust pipe in your car, your engine would have to work harder to push the exhaust through the hole that remained. This is the case with your heater as well. You’re making it work harder to pump air through the ductwork, which consumes a lot of energy, and can ultimately cause your heater to break down earlier than it would otherwise. Also, the increased air pressure in the ductwork encourages pressure to escape through leaks and holes, or creates leaks where there weren’t any before.
This is a myth that doesn’t save much energy, and may cost you dearly in the long run, in the form of a bill for a new furnace.
Myth #2: Turning the air conditioner to a lower temperature, or a heater to a higher temperature, will make your home get warmer or cooler faster.
It’s not uncommon for homeowners to set the heater to 32 degrees in order to get it to 22 faster. This rationale for this likely comes from turning the oven burner on high in order to get it to a medium temperature faster. But your heater or air conditioner doesn’t work in the same way that a gas oven burner does. When you crank up an oven burner, you increase the amount of gas being forced into the burner, which increases the amount of gas that is combusted, which means the burner gets hotter, faster (kind of like how a fireplace will heat your living room much faster than a lit match).
On the other hand, modern furnaces and air conditioners have two settings: on and off. It’s the amount of time that it runs that determines the temperature of your home. When you crank your temperature control system to an absurdly high or low setting, the only thing that will change is how long it will run for, if you forget to turn it back to a normal setting when the temperature reaches the desired point. So at best, if you’re attentive and always remember to reset the thermostat, you’re not using any more electricity or gas than you would otherwise. At worst, if you forget to reset it, you burn a lot of energy and money as it runs on (and on and on).
Myth #3: If something electronic isn’t turned on, then it isn’t using energy
Modern electronics don’t ever really turn off. Your TV has to be drawing power in order to sense if you hit the power button on your remote. Your computer’s display is always using power to pay attention to whether your PC has been turned on or taken out of standby mode. Your DVR is actually a little computer that actually stays on when you turn it off, so that it doesn’t have to go through a lengthy booting and connection process each time you turn it on. Your coffeemaker is always watchful, eagerly waiting for you to push a button. Even your phone charger is always burning a little energy in order to detect if its been connected to your phone.
This standby mode used by every gadget under your roof consumes a lot of electricity. Some estimates indicate that of all the power used by home electronics, three-quarters of it is consumed by devices that are turned off. If you don’t need something to be on at a moment’s notice, unplug it from the wall outlet, or plug it into a power strip that can be turned off (power strips use a switch that, when turned off, physically disconnects the electrical circuit between your devices and the wall outlet).
