My much anticipated gas bill just arrived and let me tell you Bob, I am over the moon. By making just 3 small changes I was able to reduce our bill over 40%!! Holy Cow Man. I had no idea I was going to be able to reduce our bill that much by making just 3 simple changes.
Turning off the pilot light to our gas fireplace.
Did you know if you have a gas fireplace, turning the pilot light off when it’s not in use can save an average of $7 – $10 a month? Yes Sirree Bob it sure can!
Turning down the heat on our water heater.
And turning down the water heater? Instead of constantly having 140 degree water at our fingertips, I turned it down to 120 degrees. True, it feels awesome to stand under the hot water on a cold day, but again, heating water is expensive. {Plus we also saved money on our water bill last month as well!}
Turing down our thermostat.
You really only need to heat the house to comfort when you are home. And since Lucy and I are the only one home most days, I decided to put on my coat and lower the thermostat to 62 during the day and then up it again to 65 about an hour before the HH comes home.
I still can’t believe I was able to save us over 40% off our gas bill. It’s nuts. Why didn’t I think to do it sooner?
What are YOUR favorite ways to reduce your heating bill during the winter months?
~Mavis
Erin says
I love it! I thought our house was alone in keeping the thermostat at 62 – so nice to see another one!
PattyB says
Also, try unplugging your appliances that are not in use…especially when you leave for a vacation.
Tina B says
That’s a great idea also from the standpoint of safety, in case something goes wrong electrically and a fire could be caused by a malfunction. It is a nice bonus that it would also save money on electricity.
Maxine says
Try a home energy audit – not the ones done by the local utility, those will give you a free lightbulb and are relatively worthless. Before you can get solar panels here you are required to have one. They found that my heating/cooling air flow ‘pipes’ (not the right word I’m sure) were disconnected so I’d been heating/cooling the attic. They also sealed air leaks I didn’t know I had and added blown in insulation. They did a blower door test and brought their infra-red camera and ended up making a much bigger impact than I thought possible. The solar panels for our 100% electric house rock too. We’ve had them over 5 years and they’ve taken our electric bill to about $300 a YEAR (not a typo, not month but a year). We only really pay during the winter, but we pay a $7-8 connection fee the rest of the year and bank our solar savings until we start using more than we produce in the winter. I live near DC if that helps you geographically. Not sure of incentives anymore but it’s really catching on here as I am always on the lookout for more installations. 🙂 Good for you Mavis. Saving the planet and your wallet! Our overnight is set to 55′ and 62-64′ when we’re home. The AC doesn’t come on unless it’s over 90′ and REALLY humid so we can sleep. We’re better acclimated to play outside this way and suffer very few colds.
Madam Chow says
Who did you get your solar panels from?
We keep our house at 58 F, and our bedroom at 53 F!
Raymond Dean White says
Megan,
Good for you but turning down the temp on your hot water may mean your dishwasher soap won’t dissolve, or ata least not fully dissolve. Check your package for directions. Many such soaps require 140 degree hot water to dissolve. Of course if you don’t use a dishwasher and do yours by hand it won’t be a problem.
Denise says
I have understood that although there are some dishwashers that hook up to and rely on hot water, many dishwashers heat their water to the necessary temps. 🙂
Practical Parsimony says
Even with a broken water heater, the dishwasher uses extremely hot water because it heats its own water.
diane @smartmoneysimplelife says
Wow! That’s a HUGE difference. There’s only one tip I can implement (hot water) but I’ll definitely be trying it out.
The thing that really bugs me about my gas bill is it seems the supply charge is the part that keeps increasing rather than the usage. Not too many ways around that… 🙁
Butterflyweed says
Mine was a lot lower this month too, but I think it had more to do with a really warm February rather than any efforts to conserve.
Kim says
One way to save a great deal of money is to put in an instantaneous hot water heater. When ours had to be replaced instead of putting in another 40 gallon tank we went with a Bosch instant hot water heater. It only heats water when you need it. I pay on the budget plan the same amount year round and found my bill dropped by over $40 per month, a Whopping $480 per year just by replacing the hot water tank. We have been running ours now for 8 years and only had to replace a valve once due to very hard water in our area. Between turning down the heat and replacing the hot water tank I cut our budget plan from $87 per month year round to $42 which is a huge savings!
I have also been slowly changing my light bulbs from the curly ones to LED and my electric bill has been going down about $6 per month per room I have changed over. I thought the curly bulbs saved money but the LEDs are much better! Putting computers and TVs on plug units you can shut off has saved almost another $13 per month.
Getting water barrels has cut my water bill from $75 per month to under $30. All this money saved is going straight into my retirement fund which I was not able to get going until recently. Hopefully with all this work, I may be able to retire someday.
Debbie says
we turn the thermostat down to 55 and then go to Maui!
Heather says
We have a natural gas tankless water heater. They also come in propane and electric I believe. I was a bit put off in the initial investment but I would never have a tank water heater again! Not only does it save money by only heating the water as we are using it, but it works based on a flow valve so we have hot water even when the power is out. Another huge bonus is that I never ever run out of hot water for showers/baths. The only downside I’ve experienced is I cannot use hot water in the laundry AND take a shower at the same time, but that would be resolved by “size” tankless water heater that is purchased, and we rarely do that anyways.
Lisa Millar says
That is a significant change in $$ !!!
40% is amazing!
We don’t have gas but I have been working on reducing bills over the past couple of years… Was lovely to see the solar panels halving our electricity costs. They are fairly new so just getting the hang of how they are performing.
During the time we are having those ‘pioneer showers’ due to low water in the tanks, we notice of course the hot water section of our bill 30-40 dollars less than normal. (can I continue that through winter???)
We have a wood heater and get our wood fairly cheaply off local friends. I would love to run the hot water through the wood fire, but I have been experimenting with heating a big pot of water on the heater during the evening then doing one dishes wash-up per day…. (no dishwasher or kids so this is possible for us)
Doing most of my cooking during sunny days to use the solar power and slowly changing all the lights in the house to LED.
The line of lights above the kitchen counter was a significant change… 4 bulbs at 50W each, changed to the good (and expensive) energy efficient ones at 5 W each! Straight away there is 200W of lighting down to 20W!!
Little by little…