Electricity Use Habits That Will Drive Up Your Bills

With all of our modern conveniences, electricity use can quickly get out of hand. Unfortunately, too many of us have become complacent and don’t really pay enough attention to possible mistakes we’re making that are driving up our monthly bills. To help you out, we’ve outlined a few common ways that this may be happening:

• Allowing cool air to escape — If your home is well insulated, you can often shut off your A/C once you’re comfortable and the temperature will be maintained. But opening any windows or doors will negate this effect.
• Relying too much on energy efficiency — You had a great plan when you bought that Energy Star-backed A/C equipment. Unfortunately, that alone won’t do much to lower your energy bills. You also need to ensure that it’s been properly sized and installed, preferably by a professional HVAC technician.
• Turning the thermostat up or down too much — There is a common misconception that if you want to heat or cool your home at a faster rate, you should crank your thermostat much lower or higher than you actually need. All this does is increase the likelihood that you’ll miss the desired temperature, which can result in a waste of energy.
• Not unplugging an appliance — Most appliances, such as your TV or stereo, switches to “standby mode” when they’re turned off, which means they’re still using a small amount of power. Energy is also being constantly used by microwaves and ovens that maintain a digital display, such as a clock. Unplugging these devices is the only way to completely cut off their energy usage.

These represent only a few issues when it comes to electricity use. If you hope to reduce your monthly energy bills, it is vitally important that you rein in some of your usage. The more you do to control this, the more money you’ll save each month.

For more expert advice on your home’s electricity use, or if you have other home comfort questions, please contact the friendly professionals at Rinaldi’s Air Conditioning. We’ve been serving the HVAC needs of Orlando and Central Florida since 1969.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Orlando, Florida and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about electricity use and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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