I am convinced that some folk in my family want to spend more money. For example, we have a laundry/mudroom that is the main entrance to the house. Folk come in, flip on the switch, move through the room and flip off the switch on the way out…maybe. If they are doing wash, they flip on the switch, load up the washer and then…leave the room without turning off the light. They are thinking, I suppose, that they will be back in the hour or so it takes the washer to wash the clothes. Lucky washer gets to wash clothes with the light on. That light has two 65 watt incandescent bulbs in it.
Let’s think about that for a second: two 65 watt bulbs consume 130 watts or .13kWh in an hour. At my electric rate that is $0.018 per hour. To do a load of wash at our house includes costs for: the power for the washer (electric bill), the depreciation on the washer (future replacement), the water for the washer (water bill), the detergent (consumerism), the water treatment for the water discharged to the sanitary system (sewer bill) and the two light bulbs (electric bill).
How could I save money without changing my family’s behavior? I could change the light bulbs to compact fluorescents; how much would that save? I can equal 65 watt illumination with 15 watt CFL bulbs. Purchasing and installing two 15watt CFL’s costs about $4.00. At my electricity rates, operating those two bulbs for one hour would cost $0.0042 which translates to an operating savings of $0.0138 per hour or a 77% decrease. Theoretically CFL’s last for 10,000 hours which is 9,250 more hours than incandescent so replacement costs will drop too – bonus!
What if I decided to switch to LED’s instead? At $45 a bulb I think I’ll wait. Just for kicks, what if LED’s were $4 each. I could equal 65 watt illumination with 5 watt bulbs. At my electricity rates, operating those two bulbs for one hour would cost $0.0007 per hour which translates to an operating savings of $.0173 (-96%) for the hour that the washer is running with no one in the room. Theoretically LED’s last for 100,000 hours which is 99,250 more hours than incandescent and 90,000 more hours than CFL’s so replacement costs will drop even further – super bonus!
What if I installed an occupancy sensor that shuts the lights off when no one is in the room? Cost to purchase the unit: $32.00, time lag set for 30 seconds. Given this: switching to CFL’s, installing the sensor unit and setting the sensor to turn off the lights 30 seconds after someone leaves the room results in an estimated savings potential of $.00417 per hour.
How much more money could I save in the laundry room? The only other electrical appliances in the room are the washer, the dryer and the iron. (Everyone in my family knows that the iron is more like a bookend and never gets used except to do napkins at Thanksgiving).
The washer is 15 years old. It is not Energy Star rated but does have an Energy Consumption estimate of 938 kWh per year or 107watts per hour and has theoretical operating costs per year of $78.00 or $0.1875 per hour. Switching to a high efficiency washer has implications for electric, water and sewer costs. Let’s say that I replace the older Maytag appliance with a moderately priced high efficiency washer say the Maytag Centennial High Efficiency Top Load unit. An Energy Star unit, the estimated operating costs for the new washer are $14 per year or $0.0016 which is a direct savings of $0.03365 per hour or a 82% decrease in energy costs.
Set on large, the old washer uses 36 gallons of water per load. The new washer is designed to sense needed water. Maytag estimates a 70% water savings from this WaterSense model so usage can be estimated to be 11 gallons per load. Annualized to match the energy savings, this equates to 10,400 gallons of water saved. At my current utility rates that translates to a savings of $106.07 per year for fresh potable water to wash clothes and $115.35 per year for sewage treatment services.
What about the dryer? Like the washer, the dryer is 15 years old. It uses natural gas and works fine but can I save even more? It doesn’t seem so in the moderately priced range. The Maytag Centennial Dryer has the same specs as my current dryer except for the Sensordry option that shuts the machine off when the clothes are dry. It looks like the biggest bang for the buck comes from getting a very efficient washer that wrings most of the water out of the clothes before they get to the dryer. I think I’ll keep the dryer for now but I could hang the clothes out to dry on the line.
The current dryer uses 720 watts of electricity and 21.56 cubic feet of gas per hour; at my current rates that equates to $0.1001 of electricity and $0.22043 of gas. Hanging the clothes to dry would save a total of $0.3212 per hour.
Let’s see where we are. If I change the bulbs to CFL, use an occupancy sensor to control the lights, get a new washer and hang our clothes out to dry, I can save $0.14 per hour in electricity, $0.22 per hour in gas, $0.25 per hour in water and $0.28 per hour in sewage treatment for a total savings of $0.89 an hour!
The Dept of Energy estimates that American’s do 8 loads of wash a week with each load taking about an hour. Given that, my family’s total utility savings would equate to $370 a year just in the laundry room!!
There were expenditures that included a new washer, lightbulbs and the occupancy sensor. The total investment for these items is $485. $485 expense divided by $370 savings equates to a payback of 1.3 years with the savings continuing long after. That is a project worth doing.
