Have you ever wanted to save money on your heating and cooling bills without sacrificing your precious comfort? What to do?? I, too, was in the same boat as you, until last weekend when I installed a programmable thermostat.
“What’s the big deal about a programmable thermostat, anyhoo?”, I hear you ask. Well, I’ll let the good ol’ U.S. Department o’ Energy tell you:
[During winter], by turning your thermostat back 10°–15° for 8 hours, you can save about 5%–15% a year on your heating bill—a savings of as much as 1% for each degree if the setback period is eight hours long.
Gadzooks. If your average power bill is $70 a month during the 4 coldest months of the year, a programmable thermostat can save you between $14 and $42 during those 4 months! Not to mention the painless energy savings.
But it doesn’t only conserve energy and save money during the winter, oh no. During those hot months, you can set the temperature higher while you’re gone, and have it cool down more when you’re actually at your house. Voíla, even more energy and monetary savings!
Read instructions carefully when installing a programmable thermostat
Me and some friends tried to install my thermostat on one of the coldest days of the year. We wired everything up perfectly, but the heat wouldn’t come on. A day later, my friendly neighborhood electrician fixed the problem by reading the manual and figuring out that you had to tell the programmable thermostat that we had a heat pump. Dang, that one night without heat was a cold night
indeed, but I learnt a valuable lesson about reading instructions.
Dang!! Back in college, me and some of my friends talked a lot about creating perpetual motion machines, and came up with all kinds of different designs. Eventually we decided it was impossible, and abandoned the idea.
But apparently some people did not give up, and recently the famous Alex Chiu announced that he had built a working perpetual motion machine. The only caveat is that it will not work on Earth — it needs the zero-gravity of outer space.
Still, this should revolutionize everything. Not since his immortality device has such an invention been unveiled to the world. Free, limitless energy should dramatically lower pollution and energy costs, and get rid of the need for gasoline and coal.
I’ll keep this short and sweet… you can get a FREE Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb this week. How, you might ask?
I might answer, the GE Energy-saving light bulbs are on sale at Target for $1. Use this $1 off coupon and ka-chow, you can be saving electricity with your new free CFL bulb.
No money down, no excuses. Just do it and start saving energy and money today.
You may have heard about these new-fangled CFL bulbs. They last up to ten times longer than incandescent light bulbs, use only about 25% the energy (so they cost one-fourth the amount of money to run), and they produce 90% less heat (waste) than an incandescent bulb, so you get more light per watt!
But I digress. When these CFL bulbs eventually die, you can’t just throw them away, since they have some mercury in them. You have to take them to special CFL bulb collection places. I had to do this recently, and found these easy places to safely get rid o’ CFLs.
* Call your garbage service and ask them
* IKEA
* Home Depot
* If all those fail, check out Earth911, they should be able to help.
Good luck recycling them CFLs. Truly, you are on the path to being an eco-hero.
Fill out the short form (use “EARNRWG” as the promo code)
Immediately sprint to your mailbox and wait for several weeks
Have fun with that free light bulb. Not only will you be saving money by getting a free CFL, but you’ll also be saving money by using a more efficient light bulb. Remember, even though it saves a lot of energy, it’s not all good. If it breaks, I do not recommend sniffing the fumes that come out. Instead, follow these here guidelines on how to clean up a broken CFL bulb.
Last spring, two of my friends went to work building a bicycle generator. They slaved away on it for literally a couple days, but eventually it was ready to be tested. Me and Tiff stopped by for this special occasion; Thanh and Billy had hooked up the bike generator to a lamp. All we needed was a volunteer to ride the electrical monstrosity. After a moment of trepidation, I bravely stepped forward to offer my bike pedaling services, and as night fell in the thriving metropolis of Raleigh, I began pedaling…
Amazingly, it did not explode in a deadly shower of sparks. It worked. We had invented… ELECTRICITY. As that realization hit us, Captain Planet flew into the room, and everybody high-fived. It was awesome.Update:WRAL is going to put this on the news. The bad news is that we have to put the bike generator back together, as it’s been through some mess since last May.
Roads and parking lots. They are everywhere in today’s busy, dog-eat-dog, modern world. They sit there all day, selfishly absorbing the sun’s rays, then squandering all that heat at night by simply releasing it into the night air. Welp, a Dutch company named Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV is now working on ways to take that solar energy and use it to heat homes and offices.
Ooms has already implemented this technology in several places around the Netherlands; solar energy collected from nearby roads and parking lots helps heat an industrial park of 160,000 square feet in Hoorn, a 70-unit apartment building in Avenhorn, and an air force base hangar.
This is a great idea; even on cloudy days, this system of getting heat from roads is effective. Let’s hope that America can build off of this Dutch technology and start using our numerous roads and parking lots to heat our buildings. Just think about how much of our land in cities is taken up by roads and parking lots. Imagine if we were using that captured solar energy to heat our buildings. We could cut our power usage in a huge way, while not sacrificing anything in the way of personal comfort.
A good article about getting energy from asphalt can be found right about here. Thanks to my pop for letting me know about this.
Dang!! Back in college, me and some of my friends talked a lot about creating perpetual motion machines, and came up with all kinds of different designs. Eventually we decided it was impossible, and abandoned the idea.
I’ll keep this short and sweet… you can get a FREE Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb this week. How, you might ask?
You may have heard about these new-fangled CFL bulbs. They 
Last spring, two of my friends went to work building a bicycle generator. They slaved away on it for literally a couple days, but eventually it was ready to be tested. Me and Tiff stopped by for this special occasion; Thanh and Billy had hooked up the bike generator to a lamp. All we needed was a volunteer to ride the electrical monstrosity. After a moment of trepidation, I bravely stepped forward to offer my bike pedaling services, and as night fell in the thriving metropolis of Raleigh, I began pedaling…
Roads and parking lots. They are everywhere in today’s busy, dog-eat-dog, modern world. They sit there all day, selfishly absorbing the sun’s rays, then squandering all that heat at night by simply releasing it into the night air. Welp, a Dutch company named