Do you have an old fridge? The latest Energy Star models use almost half the energy than a model from the 90s.  When it comes to an efficient fridge, the best advice is to make sure you have a newer model. If you can’t upgrade right now, the tips below will help you get the most from your model.

Even if you have a newer model, the tips below will ensure it is running at maximum efficiency.

Difficulty: Very Easy  (15 minutes)

Tools needed:
- Brush and vacuum

Action Steps:

1. Keep the door shut.

This first step is obvious. Every minute you stand in front of the door deciding what to snack on, you’re letting precious cooled air out and replacing it with warm air that your unit must work hard to cool again.

2. Clean your condenser coils and air intakes once a year.

The coils you are looking for are either behind or below your fridge. I have a Whirlpool side-by-side model purchased in 2001 and the coils are below. I’ll confess, I haven’t cleaned the coils since the day we installed it.

You can see the results in the picture below:

Here’s how they look after a 5-minute clean:

The compressor now cools more efficiently and runs less frequently. I know it was a coincidence, but as soon as I cleaned the coils the compressor stopped running, as if breathing a sigh of relief.

3. Check the doors for a good seal.

Magnetic door seals can weaken over time and will lose their grip on the edge of the fridge. You can easily test the seal by closing a sheet of paper in the door at several points along each seal. If you can pull the paper out easily, then the seal is too weak. You may need to adjust the doors or install a new seal.

4. Set the temperature control dials correctly.

How frozen do you need your food? Cooling beyond the minimum needed temperature provides no benefit and wastes energy. Ideally, you should keep your refrigerator between 37° and 40° F. Keep the freezer between 0° and 5° F. You can check the temperature by placing a thermometer in a glass of water in the fridge for 24 hours. To check your freezer, place the thermometer between 2 bags of frozen vegetables for the same amount of time.

5. Give your fridge room to breathe.

A decrease of 5° in ambient temperature can cut energy consumption by as much as 20 percent. This means you need to provide an escape route for the warm air that builds up around the fridge during operation. Make sure you have at least 2 inches of airspace between the sides and back of the fridge and the walls.

6. Shield your fridge from direct sunlight.

For the same reason as above, you should position the fridge or arrange window treatments so that it is not exposed to direct sunlight. If you have the choice, position it as far away as practical from the dishwasher, oven or heating vents in your kitchen.

7. Keep your fridge full.

Once the contents of your refrigerator are cooled, they will help hold the temperature down.

Whether your fridge is new or old, these simple tips will keep it cooling at peak efficiency.

Previous articles in this series:

Introduction - 30 Days to a more organized and efficient home
Day 1 - Know Your Home
Day 2 - Replace Your Lights with CFL Bulbs
Day 3 - Improve the Energy Efficiency of Your Computer
Day 4 - Optimize Your HVAC

If you like this post, please subscribe to the RSS feed.

Overview

You may not be able to cool your home by leaving the refrigerator door open, but it wouldn’t consume as much energy. In a typical home, the air conditioning unit will consume more electricity than anything else. To give you an idea of what an energy hog the typical AC unit is, take a look at the comparison chart below.

Here are some tips to help you tame this energy beast during warmer months.

Difficulty: Easy  (1 hour)

Tools needed:
- Programmable thermostat ($50-100 at SmartHome.com)

Action Steps

1. Install a programmable thermostat
   The ability to schedule thermostat settings throughout the day  can cut your heating and cooling costs by up to one-third. Installation is easy because they connect to the existing wiring. They can adjust temperatures up to six times per day with different profiles for weekends and weekdays.
   
   
2. Set thermostats higher in summer and lower in winter
   In hot weather, each degree that you raise the thermostat setting for air conditioning saves about 2 percent on your cooling bill. Try to acclimate yourself to a setting of 78° F or higher.  In cooler weather, set the thermostat at 68° F or lower for a comparable reduction in your heating expenses. This simple change can have a huge impact on your utility bills.
3. Don’t pay to heat or cool an empty room
   Are you paying to heat or cool that guest room that’s never used? By shutting the registers you can save as much as 10%. You shouldn’t close off rooms if you have electric baseboard heating. Also, if you use a heat pump, it may cause it to run inefficiently, so check your owner manual.
4. Don’t pay to heat or cool an empty house
   There’s no point in heating or cooling an empty home while your away for the weekend or on vacation. In warm weather, set your thermostat to 85° F or turn it off completely while you are away. Likewise,  set the thermostat to 65° F or lower in cool weather. Depending on the programmable thermostat model you have, you may be able to schedule your home to be the perfect temperature just as you pull in.
5. Use a fan (spinning in the right direction)
   Overhead fans with variable speeds and reversible rotation optimize heating and cooling, especially in rooms with high ceilings. In summer months, use the fan to lift the cool air to the ceiling from the floor.  Reversing the fan in winter months helps circulate the warm air trapped at the ceiling.
6. Open inside doors to maximize air circulation
   Unless you have more than one thermostat, leave doors between rooms open to assist air circulation. If you have multiple thermostats,  you’ll need to close the door that joins the two areas.
7. At least once per month, check the filter
   A dirty filter can increase energy consumption by 5-15%.
8. Check for blocked registers
   For maximum heating and cooling efficiency, don’t trap costly heated or cooled air behind a couch, drapes or other obstructions. Rearrange furniture as needed to promote air circulation.
9. Clean dusty registers
   Dust on the registers can cut system efficiency by as much as 10%. The same goes for dusto on baseboard heaters and radiators. Vacuum these parts of your system regularly using a brush nozzle.
10. Have your ducts inspected
    Damaged ducts and loose joints can account for up to 40% of a homes energy loss. You can do this yourself with the furnace blower running. Just feel for leaks and fix with repair tape available at any home improvement store.
11. Keep sources of heat away from your thermostat
    Any heat source near the thermostat can waste energy by fooling it into thinking the home is hotter than it really is and running the AC unnecessarily.
    
    
12. Shield your room from the sun
    During summer months, be sure to keep your blinds or drapes closed to reduce the workload of the air conditioning system.
13. Shield your air conditioner from the sun
    An AC unit protected by shade uses as much as 10% less energy than it would unprotected in the sun.
14. Use CFL bulbs
    As mentioned on Day 2, incandescent bulbs waste 90% of the energy they consume producing heat. Get rid of these little heat lamps and replace them with CFL bulbs. It will reduce your energy consumption and the load on your AC unit.

Previous articles in this series:

Introduction - 30 Days to a more organized and efficient home
Day 1 - Know Your Home
Day 2 - Replace Your Lights with CFL Bulbs
Day 3 - Improve the Energy Efficiency of Your Computer

If you like this post and would like to make sure you get each daily project, subscribe to the RSS feed.

Overview

On average, your PC consumes somewhere between 200 and 400 watts, depending on its configuration and use. A high-performance gaming PC with a powerful graphics card, multiple hard drives, optical drives, a flash memory reader, and a large LCD monitor might consume as much as 750 watts. That’s more than your refrigerator consumes! If you leave the PC running nonstop, you could be paying an extra $50 on your monthly electrical bill.

Fortunately, there are several fantastic resources online to help minimize your PC power consumption. Below, we highlight some of the best tips and tools to reduce your utility bill with an energy-efficient PC.

Difficulty: Easy  (1 hour)

Tools needed:
- Kill-A-Watt energy usage monitor ($15 at Amazon.com)
- Energy Saving Smart Strip ($33 at Amazon.com)

Resources:

Edison- Free utility for the PC to optimize power settings
Local Cooling - Similar to Edison, helps estimate your power consumption savings
Green Print - Free utility that reduces the ink, paper and power costs when printing

Action Steps

1. Measure your current power consumption

Using the Kill-A-Watt usage monitor, you can measure the exact amount of power consumption for your PC (as well as any other electronic device or small appliance). This will feel like a game at first- you’ll measure the power consumption of everything that plugs into the wall and identify the power hogs. Once you know where to focus your attention, it is easy to optimize energy usage.

We’ll start with your PC. If you have a laptop, you’ll notice that they consume much less power by comparison.  The following articles will make sure you see a big drop in power consumption by your PC. The savings will easily pay for this device. (more…)

Overview

Yes, you need to replace your incandescent bulbs with Compact Flourescent Lamp (CFL) bulbs. Incandescent light bulbs convert 90%  of the energy they consume to wasted heat.

CFLs last more than 10 times longer and require 75% less power than incandescent light bulbs to produce the same amount of light. And because CFLs produce light at temperatures below 100 degrees F, they have less impact on your cooling costs during summer months.

If you’re like me, you like to see the details. Just use the calculator below to get a sense of the savings possible.

There’s a reason why this is one of our first projects. Depending on how aggressive you are in replacing your inefficient bulbs with CFLs, you may notice a reduction in your utility bills the very first month.

In this project, you’ll replace your inefficient bulbs and start saving today.

Difficulty: Easy (about 1 hour)

Tools Needed: None

Resources Needed: Assortment of CFL Bulbs ($1-$4 each) (more…)

Overview

Our Daily Home Improvement Projects are designed to increase the organization, efficiency, safety and appeal of your home. But how will you track and measure the success of your projects over time? Just like an effective diet plan, the “before picture” is key. It’s a great reminder of where you started and provides tangible evidence of your progress.

We’re not talking about a literal picture (although you’ll want to take some before and after pictures of your best projects to share). We are talking about an assessment of your home’s organization, energy efficiency, safety, and problem areas. For example, knowing your energy consumption patterns and how much you typically pay for utilities during your peak months can help you set realistic goals.

Take a few minutes to get to know your home.  The following steps will help you gather the info you need.

Difficulty: Easy (about 1 hour)

Tools Needed: None

Resources Needed:

- Quicken, MS Money or Mint if you want to analyze your utility expenses the easy way.
- Otherwise you’ll need records of utility bill amounts for the past year.
- Home and major appliance warranties
- Dates of recent major home repairs or renovations (more…)

It’s time to take action.

Starting today, Optimized Home will feature daily home improvement projects and tips that will increase the organization, energy efficiency, safety and appeal of your home. Each project will include an overview, a difficulty rating, materials needed (if any) and specific steps. Many projects will also include bonus tips to save money and time.

Simple Home Improvement Projects

Some projects will be easy, taking only minutes per day. None of the projects require expensive tools, and a few require no tools at all (like our first project). But all of the projects are designed to help you get the most out of your home.

Whether you are looking to save money on your utility bills, or just looking for home improvements to increase the value of your home, the concept is simple. Do one small thing today, then another tomorrow. The savings will add up and you’ll experience a great sense of accomplishment as you improve your home with each completed project.

These projects will help you:

- Organize your Kitchen, Home Office, Basement, Bathroom, or Kid’s Room
- Declutter your garage
- Increase storage areas in your home
- Save energy and money with simple projects to improve efficiency
- Improve the safety of your home
- Get the most out of your HDTV setup
- Improve the market value of your home
- Setup a worry-free home maintenance calendar
- Save money on home repairs with effective quick-fixes
- Save time on home renovations using techniques from the pros

We’d like you to participate.

We’re always looking for good ideas and we’d love to showcase some of your projects. Send your ideas or photos to ideas@optimizedhome.com if you’d like to be featured.

And of course, be sure to subscribe to our Daily Home Improvements feed.

Introducing small changes to your daily routine can have a significant impact on the energy efficiency of your home. Not only will you reduce your carbon footprint, you’ll also reduce your utility bills.

To help you, here are some of the best habits that you can form to gain great energy saving benefits.

Your Shower

You may not realize how this affects your energy bills, but it does. Unless you are taking very long showers, they are much more effective and use a fraction of the hot water that a bath does.

To make it an even better option, consider using an oxygenated shower head, which makes a trickle of water seem like a powerful jet. It also uses 70% less water than a traditional shower head. These are inexpensive (although they do cost more than a standard shower head) but will reduce the amount of water that comes through and is wasted. You simply will use less water and reap the benefits of lower consumption.

Because you do not need to use as much hot water, you are reducing the work load of your hot water heater and saving energy in the process. You should  consider replacing standard water heaters with energy-efficient tankless water heaters. You may qualify for rebates from your local gas utility. The tankless water heater will often pay for itself within the first few years. (more…)

At OptimizedHome, our goal is to provide you with tips, tools and inspiration to create an organized and efficient home. It’s not always easy to stay organized, so we recommend you put a few simple systems in place to stay on top of important tasks and projects. Here are a few of our favorite tools to help you stay organized.

1. Write it down. This is probably the single most important tool to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. Keep a notebook to capture your thoughts, to-do list items, and reminders.  Of course, any notepad will do, but I recommend a Moleskine notebook. They are an absolute pleasure to write in and they stay closed when not in use thanks to an elastic strap that is also perfect for holding a pen. (more…)

With the holiday travel season quickly approaching, here is a list of the best free tools available to plan and execute the perfect vacation or business trip.

Know Where to Go

IgoUgo.com
IgoUgo is a site where travelers share reviews and photos from trips around the world. Check for “Things to Do” at your destination and read the top-rated travel journals for ideas. You can earn frequent flier miles by submitting reviews and photos from your trip. (more…)

A friend of mine recently decided to work from home for an entire week as an experiment. This was a big challenge for him because of his senior leadership role at a Fortune 20 company (they haven’t exactly embraced the concept of telecommuting). He pulled it off and figures he saved about $200 that week. Further, he avoided roughly 12 hours of commute time in the car, looking for parking, and walking to the office. (more…)