Love Letters
For the past few months, I've been getting what I refer to as love letters because otherwise I would get annoyed!
Swear to goodness gracious, they arrived each month like clockwork. Addressed to me, they were precise in their content. They told me what I did/didn't do correctly and and they were getting on my nerves. However, I must admit that when I read the details of things I could do to encourage a long lasting relationship with the sender, I had given them some credence. Needless to say, they became a topic of discussion between the Pres and I.
The originator compared me to others with similar statistics. (The Pres was not bothered by them in the least as he is very secure in our relationship...silly boy...LOL!)
The love letters came from my local power company (fooled you, didn't I?) in an effort to EnergizeCT. And yes, they compared our energy usage to that of other homes with similar square footage as well as disclosed many helpful hints on how to save energy which included to name a few:
Ensure your household is equipped with energy saving appliances.
Install LED light bulbs
Reduce hot water temp
Utilize a programmable thermostat
Needless to say each and every time I got one of these in the mail, I was again compared to "others in my neighborhood" insisting that we could do better to save energy.
However, when I checked our water temp it was set at 120 degrees.
Our house is less than three years old, has a geothermal HVAC system, is very well insulated, has new Energy Star appliances and only CFL bulbs were installed with our new fixtures! I was totally in a quandary.
What else could we do?
Having several questions surrounding LEDs, I once again did some digging and came across Furnace Compare's Light Bulb Comparison Chart which really was an eye opener and helped me convince the Pres to switch our bulbs.
Well, after bugging reminding the Pres that we should switch our CFL bulbs to LEDs, we headed to Home Depot. Eleven light bulbs and $110.00 later we returned home with a very unhappy Pres for phase one of bulb replacement!
But...
What do I do with all the old CFLs that are still good?
Do I donate them to charity? Would you?
OR
Do I use the CFLs until they kick the bucket then purchase LEDs?
Trust me. I am all about saving energy and saving money on my electric bill but I still had a few questions after our jaunt to buy bulbs, so I called the toll free number.
First of all what I found out is:
There is an income restriction on the free Energy audit but people in higher brackets can still get it done for $99.00.
The local power company comes in replaces bulbs, installs weatherstripping around windows and doors, checks for other leaks in your home.
Energy audits are typically not performed on homes less than 10 yrs old.
Taking it one step further because that's how I am, I asked to be transferred to the local power company. It still made no sense to me why I was getting such low ratings and I wanted to ensure our information they had on file was correct.
It wasn't!
Now I had gotten somewhere. Updating our information in their system, Brian, the customer service rep, assured me that our usage was well below that of comparable homes, making me very happy.
Oh, one more thing. I can now toss out all the old LOVE LETTERS.
Sharing some energy saving tips with you and those at
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