Friends, Family & Carers Forum

[outlander]

Hi everyone im wondering what top tips there are to help reduce water and power bills

[JoJo99]

@outlander the only tips I have is to have not too many appliances, learn to minimise on electrical goods. I only have a fridge/small freezer on top sort. This drives me mad because I can't bulk buy but freezers are expensive to run. I dont have dishwasher, I only have one light on in the room I am using, no others in house. Dont open fridge door heaps. I only wash clothes once a week. Short showers are a biggie, dripping taps costs heaps. I do have to run aircon because I am in the north of Australia, so I have to put away heaps for this but try to use less on everything else. Hope this helps some 🙂

[Smc]

Our bills are very low, but so much of what we do has been "habit" for so long that it's hard to pin down pointers. 

Efficient appliances are a biggie, but best to update them when they're due for replacement anyway. So we replaced regular electric hot water service with solar+ electric boost (no mains gas here) and have a front loader washing machine instead of the top loader we used to have. 

We've also got a small fridge and freezers. We paid out extra $$ when we needed to replace and bought a high efficiency Engel freezer- the sort usually used for camping trips, where power is very strictly limited. It's 80l and costs twice as much as a full sized freezer... but we expect that it pays for itself long term. The fridge is a bar fridge, and it's like playing Tetris sometimes trying to fit everything in, but most of the time it's adequate. We have a very big pantry, and keep a lot of our fresh fruit and vegs in there. Greens need refrigeration, and some fruits, but root vegs, onions, spuds, capsicums and others will keep fine at roop temp except in summertime.

Not for everyone, but we don't have a TV or associated entertainment system. We watch some TV series online via a laptop with good external speakers plugged in, and also use it for DVDs. Music via laptops or a small old-ish stereo system with a CD player going through the auxillary input.

Rooms with low light requirements can be lit with LED lights. We've got one in the toilet. Hubby has plans to set them up in other rooms too. 

Winter heating is kept minimal and we put on extra jumpers, socks etc. Hats are great on cold days because you lose a lot of warmth through the head. I would recommend blocking draugths but we've got an old weatherboard house that needs major work. We'd have to shrinkwrap it to stop the cold getting in, so for the present we put up with it.

Curtains way back whenever the sun's shining in through, and closed as soon as it's getting dark to trap warmth in the house.

[outlander]

 @Smc@JoJo99ok so far the changes ive made to the house hold are:

• making sure light are off during the day, and only using the light that are needed at night
• through the day while the kids are family are out and as much as possible i ahve all appliances such as tv, dvd player, radio and all electronics that can be off are off
• i also dont use my phone or computer  or my wifi modem while they are on charge. i make sure they are all charged before use and when in need of charging i turn them all off except phone- ill leave it on but wont use it unless neccessary s that they charge properly and isnt sucking unneccesarry power

does anyone else have any suggestions?

@Shaz51@Anony18@soul@Determined@Former-Member @Former-Member