LED Light Bulbs Reduce Electric Bill
Our home isn’t very large, but it is what I call a ‘quasi-2-story’, with the master bedroom, bath and walk-in closet upstairs over the garage. When you have more than one level in a home, regulating temperatures can become a nightmare and the electric bill will always be high. There are a few ways that can help in the reduction of the bill, and it takes just a bit of patience and diligence.
The first step that we had to take was examining all of the window and door openings. The house was originally built as cheaply as they could, so there were a lot of cracks and openings where heat and air conditioning could leak out. We spent weekends caulking, sealing and patching so that by the time we were finished, the home was pretty much air tight.
The next step that we took was to change out all of the ‘curtains’ for shades and blinds. This assists in maintaining the temperature, especially during the summer where bright sunlight through an open window will increase the heat level.
Since we are on a budget, we accomplished each project over a number of weeks and then waited for three months to see if any of the savings would appear on the electric bill. While there was some savings, we were a bit disappointed that our investment of time and money was not showing a greater return.
Our final step was to slowly make the change from standard light bulbs to LED light bulbs. The expense is higher, but the longevity of LED bulbs is much better. We started replacing those bulbs that we used the most, which were downstairs and gradually replaced all of the bulbs in the house. This included outdoor bulbs as well as indoor. We also instituted the practice of turning off outdoor lights when not needed, especially at night.
Within the next two month time period we saw a significant reduction in our electric bill. Since we gauged the savings of every change that we made, the difference could only be credited to switching out standard light bulbs for LED bulbs. The combination of all of these alterations was well-worth the time and investment.