I thought today I would touch on some cool air conditioning tips. This may be a controversial opinion, and you may not agree with me, but I try to use common sense with my energy usage and what I practice. Air conditioning or heating has the biggest impact on your energy usage to the tune of about 70% of your total electric bill, so finding ways to decrease your usage in your air conditioning will dramatically impact your energy comsumption.

One thing that I have found effective for me is using a programmable thermostat. I am a single person and have a full time job that I am gone approximately 10 hours each day, from 6am to 4pm. Now what I have done is turn my programmable thermostat up to 85 degrees to come on at 5am, and come back on around 3pm. Now this means that my air conditioner is not running or running very little for 10 hours. Now the argument will be my air conditioner will have to run for a long time to cool back down to my comfortable setting, which is 78 degrees. On average it will only run for about an hour, at the most. Now most days in the summer your air conditioner will run for about 30 minutes each hour, this means in a 10 hour period your air conditioner will approximately run 5 hours of total run time. I am saving approximately 4 hours of air conditoner running time a day. Do you think I am saving any money on my energy usage? You do the math with 20 days a month of work time, times the total daily savings of 80 hours during a month. This is just one very simple way to control your own energy usage. This is a very inexpensive item to invest in and you will easily get a return on your investment very quickly. Now this won’t fit everyones situation but I think you get the picture.

Air conditioning is just that, it conditions the air, meaning it removes the humidity in the air therefore conditioning the air. Most of your newer air conditioning units will remove a lot more humidity from the air. If you take the humidity out of the air you will more comfortable.

I hope this will get you thinking in the right mindset when it comes to your own home energy usage. If getting your own programmable thermostat is not in your budget you may want to change your temperature setting to help cut down on your energy usage. I run my air conditioner at 78 degrees and this is a very comfortable setting when you get used to it. If you want to save on your home energy you have to sacrifice a little in order to have a true savings.

They say that when you are blogging you should write about things you know,  or are passionate about. Well I have a fair amount of knowledge (by default because of my job) when it comes to saving money on your energy bills. This is my first real post on this blog so here it goes….

One of the biggest misconceptions I will discuss today is Ceiling Fans. This is a very good item to have in your home when it comes to squeezing your energy dollars but it can be a nemesis also. I don’t know how many people I have spoken with about their energy usage in trying to evaluate the reasons why there bill is so high and the culprit has been, believe it or not the ceiling fans. Ceiling fans can save you money on your energy usage but if they are not used properly they can add up to be a very big energy user. Now you probably think I am crazy for saying this but I am going to give you some really good stats here. Each ceiling fan in your home if you run it 24/7, which most people do, (I am guilty of this) will cost you anywhere between $6-$8 each a month. So if you have several of these and run them all the time it can add up very quickly. The smart way to use them is just like a light switch, turn it off when your not in the room to enjoy it. If you are not in that room to enjoy it, turn it off  to maximize savings on your home energy usage.

Now some of the positive advantages when using your ceiling fans properly. Ceiling fans can help with the total comfort in your home. Ceiling fans can produce a 2 degree wind chill factor, meaning if you have your air conditioning set at 78 degrees it will give the feeling and comfort level of your home being  set at 76 degrees. This allows you to turn your air conditioning unit to a higher tempature to help on your total home energy usage, furthermore squeezing those energy dollars more.

I hope you can use these home energy savings tips to your advantage and remember to turn off those ceiling fans when you are not in that particular room. You should see some savings on your home energy usage.