Seriously now, it seems like a monday trend so far. This weekend Patrick and I recieved the electricity bill for the month of july. Now a little history, thinking that we conserved energy, we were eager to open up our first electricity bill last month. Expecting to open it up and see a piece of paper with a big smiley face on it saying “hey because you guys are so cool, how about we take care of this one for you”, we were laughing and giving eachother a thumbs up and smiling like a scene from a queer early 90’s sitcom (were we?, i’ll leave it up to you to decide).
Lets see, where is the….. oh, my, god …. 180 bucks?!
Yup, thats right, 180 dollars which equated to about 960kWh used in one month. Now, for those of you who arent aware with average kWh usage…lets just say the average family uses about 600-700kWh a month. Thats right, appearantly we are running a small concentration camp here at the Hartford 21 (my gf is jewish, so that comment is allowed). Now, we split bills so thats about 90 dollars each, which when you look at it from that perspective, isn’t a lot of money compared to the other bills…but still…what the hell are we doing
Lets limit the usage of the dryer and the dishwasher
So for the month of July we decided to be more cautious, assuming that it was our frequent use of the dryer and dishwasher that was ranking up money. I mean hey, its not like we were doing laundry and dishes everyday, but who knows. So off we go through another month of trying to save some money.
Now the funny thing is, we really dont pay much here at the H21. Our water bill is only about 5-10 dollars a month, mainly because hot water is covered. We dont pay for AC technically, because its a force air system which means that the coolant runs through the pipes behind the walls in our apartment, however, the fans that force the cold air into the rooms utilize electricity. But hey, I put my math genious to use and found that these fans are 1 amp fans that run at 115V….so, using cute little Ohm’s law we can assume W=VA (some people call it the w. virginia rule…wierdos), meaning we are using 115w with the fan on….congrats you’re an engineer. Now 115w … ok ok so thats like having a few lights on….
So this weekend we were graced with the new bill. Pat wasn’t around so I decided to satisfy myself with the joy of opening the fun loving envelope.
Son of a bitch, are you kidding me?!
One-hundred and eighty-five dollars ($185 for the blind-deaf-mutes…..wait a minute…)!??! I was ready to boot open the door to the electric room here and check to see if our meter was connected to the local bars…because honestly, 978kWh this month? Ok so time to re-evaluate….we relaxed on the dishwasher….on teh dryer….so what, are we going to have to eat sparingly, take showers together, and sleep in the same bed (what, im sure that saves some electricity)?
Wait a minute…….there are 4 AC units in the apartment…hrmm…..the 2 in the living room are on setting 3 24hours a day…..so wait….thats 115w x 2 … 230w …. plus the one in my room that is usually blasting on 2 or 3….so lets just add another 115w for good judgement….and another 115w for pats room…..so thats 460w running 24/7….meaning thats about 12kWh per day just from the AC…holy crap….weeeee are stupid.
Needless to say, we found our source of massive electricity usage. So, we have shut off both AC units in the living room…and left our room AC’s on setting 1 last nite. It’s actually very comfy in the apartment….hopefully it stays this way, and hopefully we wont have to live in darkness, naked, and hungry to save some money (my guess is as good as yours as to how nakedness would help).
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