After various months of high electricity bills, my parents decided to get to the bottom of what was causing them to lose so much energy in their house.
One of the first things they did was swap out all their incandescent light bulbs for more efficient LED light bulbs. They are supposed to draw a fraction of the energy and last way longer than their incandescent light bulbs. Then, they decided to take colder showers to try and use less hot water. They were thinking that the hot water furnace had something to do with the outrageous energy expenses. But, despite their initial efforts, they couldn’t decrease their electricity costs as much as they had hoped. So, they carried on. Next, they put all of their appliances and electronics on power surge strips so they could turn them off when they weren’t being used. Randomly one afternoon, my dad started to wonder if some of their energy expenses were coming from their cooling system instead. It’s summer here, and their system is running intermittently throughout the afternoon, every single afternoon. They decided to raise the temperature on their control unit a bit each morning, plus attempted to acclimate to a warmer indoor environment. To their luck, their cooling system seemed to be the central culprit in their high electricity bills. The only problem was that the alternative was unbearable. After four weeks of attempting to make it through miserably hot evenings and afternoons, they gave in and began using their cooling system normally again. They’re going to see if there’s some conceivable way to make their Heating as well as Air Conditioning plan run more efficiently while it runs. Perhaps it’s just a problem with how their air ducts were designed.