The little things add up

It's Blog Action Day, and we've decided to participate, along with a lot of other blogs over at Houseblogs. We've been doing lots of little things over the last few years, to reduce our energy consumption, and all the small things, seem to be adding up. Our last electricity bill said we used 50% less electricity than last year. We've replaces all our bulbs with compact fluorescents, we unplug our wall warts (a/c adapters), we put our television and electronics on a powerbar that we turn off at night and we generally try to turn off lights when we leave the room. The reduced the amount we pay monthly on our gas bill by $10 per month, since we've been using less gas too. We have a high efficiency furnace, that replaced our 1950's oil beast. We insulated the basement, and tightened up and insulated the knee walls up stairs, and filling a lot of cracks. Our heating costs are less than half what they were when we moved in.

We've also taken advantage of the energuide program. With the rebates on our furnace, the high efficiency model ended up being cheaper than a mid efficiency. I think we would have thought long term, and went with the high efficiency anyways. Good thing we did it when we did though, since the current government cut funding for the program.

We have a lot more to do, but the small and big things are adding up. Adding more insulation in the attic is probably the best thing we could do. We're going to be replacing our windows, as soon as we can afford it. I know that's not the best bang for the buck, but it's something we want to do anyway, since the 1970's replacements don't suit the house. We'd like to do a solar roof someday, but with the amount of sun we get, and current cost, it's not worth it yet. Hopefully our roof will last until we can afford a solar roof.