Go Green in Your Home

Liquid Soap vs Bar Soap

Go Green In Your Home — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 22:04:48 +0000

I don’t have a homemade face cleaner, body wash, or shampoo that works well, saves money, and saves environment. If anyone has some to share please let me know what works! I do switch back and forth between liquid and bars, even though bars are better for the environment and stretches your money farther.

Bar Soap

I’m certain that the bar soaps are better for the environment as they have less packaging. The packaging they do use is usually a wax paper, paper, and/or thin cardboard instead of plastic. I do use shampoo bars, body bars, and facial bar soap often, but not 100% of the time. If you have multiple people in your home using the bars, especially children/teens, I’d recommend each person have their own dedicated bar.

Liquid Soap

What I do for liquid shampoo and body wash is I buy one with has a pump container, and I buy a large bulk bottle and refill the same pump bottle. This will save a little money by buying bulk soap, and will save the environment by cutting down on packaging.

Instead of buying 2-3 bottles of body wash a month and throwing away or recycling the containers, you can buy 1 with a pump, and 1 large refill bottle that will last a few months and just keep refilling. This will save at least a few bottles from ending up in your trash or recycling bin.

My son every now and then likes to try a different liquid body soap or shampoo. Not all are available in bulk, so I just try to buy the largest size available so there is less packaging.

Hand Soap

When it comes to hand soap, I mostly use liquid hand soap instead of bar soap. I have a couple pump bottles I switch back and forth (a generic pump bottle and a penguin pump bottle) that stay on my counter and I buy the liquid hand soap in bulk and refill the container. This is probably the easiest savings buying bulk and probably saves the most containers. Most hand pump soaps are fairly small if you don’t buy bulk. 1 large hand soap container can easily save 5-6 bottles from being trashed or recycled.

Rechargeable Batteries vs Disposable Save Money

Go Green In Your Home — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 23:47:55 +0000

Calculate How Much Money You Can Save with Rechargeable Batteries

Now for those of you that would like to enter different numbers and specifications for different batteries you can do so with the calculator below and it will calculate the same calculations I’ve done above for my battery usage and choice of batteries. You may save more money if you use more batteries at a time than I do. If you’re interested in learning about this comparison scroll down passed the battery calculator.

Which Battery is Cheaper for You?

If you’re reading this go green article on which batteries are more cost effective, rechargeable batteries or disposable batteries, then I’m guessing you are wanting to save money! Saving money is easy to do if you follow the go green tips on GoGreenInYourHome.com!

Which Battery is Cheaper?

There have been many people wondering which batteries are cheaper to use, disposable batteries or rechargeable batteries. Well if you are the type of person that just wants the short answer and leave, the answer is rechargeable batteries are cheaper to use! If you are the type of person that wants to see the research, proof, and specifications, continue reading to see why rechargeable batteries will save you money and how much money rechargeable batteries will save you.

Which Battery is Better for the Environment?

If you are wanting to know which batteries are better for the environment, the quick and easy answer is NiMH rechargeable batteries. When your rechargeable batteries finally don’t hold a charge anymore, they get disposed of and there is only 24 of them (in my examples below) versus 4,430 alkaline batteries getting disposed of! Yes, 24 NiMH batteries are equal to 4,430 alkaline batteries. Keep reading to get the explanations of why NiMH rechargeable batteries are better.

Battery Research Information Summary

First of all I have tested and researched information for this go green article using some of the more cost effective AA alkaline disposable batteries and some cost effective AA Ni-MH (nickel–metal hydride) rechargeable batteries. I also will be using the lower end of the charge cycles for the Ni-MH rechargable batteries, so I don’t have anyone saying “You will never recharge Ni-MH batteries that many times”. I have not tested the charge cycles on Ni-MH rechargeable batteries, I had to research this information online as I do not have time to do that many charge cycles on my NiMH rechargeable batteries. I found that rechargeable NiMH batteries can be charged anywhere from 200 – 800 times! I have personally charged mine at least 50 times so far and they are still working perfectly fine. I don’t know if they’ll make it to the 800 times though.

Your Own Battery Calculations

Also for anyone that would like to enter their own numbers to see which type of batteries are cheaper, I have a calculator at the top of this article that you can use to calculate which batteries are cheaper for you. You can enter your own battery prices, charge cycles, cost of charger, amount of batteries used at a time, etc. and all the math calculations will be done for you!

Battery Research Details

Now for all the details, research, specifications to show why AA NiMH rechargeable batteries are cheaper or more cost effective than buying AA alkaline batteries.

	AA NiMH Rechargeable Batteries	AA Alkaline Disposable Batteries
Cost of Batteries:	$18.99 for 8 ($2.37375 each)	$12.49 for 48 ($0.2602083333 each)
Capacity:	2,400 mAh	2,600 mAh
Charge Cycles:	200-800	1
Charger Cost:	$14.99	$0.00
Charging Cost (Electricity):	$0.0013121875/battery/charge cycle	$0.00
Number of AA needed at once:	24	24

Battery Calculations Explained

Now that we have all our information needed in the table above, let’s do some calculations to show why NiMH rechargeable batteries are more cost effective than alkaline disposable batteries.

Cost of Rechargeable Batteries

We need to figure out how much it costs to get all the rechargeable batteries needed. I need 24 AA batteries in my home to be used at once. This is putting a battery in all my devices that need batteries. If you want some extras to have as backups so you don’t have to wait for the dead batteries to finish charging before you can use that electrical device again, then add a few extras here for your calculations. I do not use rechargeable batteries in any of my son’s toys that may disappear as I don’t want to waste my rechargeable batteries. I usually use the cheapest disposable batteries I can find for those toys as they most likely will only get 1 use anyways. So, I need 24 rechargeable batteries which costs $56.97.

Cost of Charger

I also need to add in the cost of the charger which is $14.99 for a charger that can recharge 4 AA or 4 AAA batteries at a time.

Cost to Charge Rechargeable Batteries

Next we need to factor in the cost of electricity to charge each of these NiMH rechargeable batteries. We need to take the cost to charge each battery * the amount of charges we can do on 24 Ni-MH rechargeable batteries. So first the cost of charging each battery cell for each cycle = 9.5 watts * 4.25 hours / 1,000 kW * $0.13 per kWh / 4 cells * 4,800 charge cycles which calculates to $6.2985 to charge these 24 NiMH batteries 4,800 times!

Total Costs of Rechargeable Batteries

Our total costs for buying the AA NiMH batteries ($56.97), buying a battery charger ($14.99), electricity for charging the NiMH batteries 4,800 times ($6.2985), is $78.2585!

Battery Capacities

We also need to know how much battery capacity we have with these NiMH batteries, so we know how many alkaline batteries we need to be equal to them. To calculate this we will take the capacity of each NiMH battery (2,400mAh) and multiply it by the amount of charge cycles we can get from the total charge cycles (24 batteries * 200 charge cycles) which will be 2,400 mAh * 4,800 charge cycles = 11,520,000 total mAh.

Amount of Disposable Batteries Needed to Equal Rechargeable Batteries

Now we know how much the NiMH batteries cost and their total capacity over their lifetime, we need to find out how many alkaline batteries we need and how much the disposable batteries will cost. To get this we need to divide the capacity of each alkaline battery by the total capacity of the NiMH batteries. 11,520,000 mAh / 2,600 mAh of each disposable battery, which means we need 4,430.769231 disposable batteries to equal the same total capacity of the 24 NiMH rechargeable batteries. I know we can’t really have part of a battery, but I’m going to use this number anyway for exact calculation.

Total Cost of Disposable Batteries

Now for the grand total, we need to see how much money these 4,430.769231 alkaline disposable batteries will cost. So we will multiply the number of batteries needed by the cost of each battery; $0.2602083333 * 4,430.769231 = $1,152.923077

Price Comparison of Batteries

As you can see the total cost of NiMH rechargeable batteries is $78.2585 for 11,520,000 mAh worth of battery power is a lot cheaper than the total cost of alkaline disposable batteries which is $1,152.923077 for the same amount of mAh.

Calculation Totals

	NiMH Rechargeable Batteries	Alkaline Disposable Batteries
Amount of Batteries Used:	24	4,430.769231
Total Capacity:	11,520,000 mAh	11,520,000 mAh
Total Costs:	$78.2585	$1,152.923077

Homemade Eco Friendly Dishwasher Detergent

Go Green In Your Home — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 05:42:51 +0000

So you want to make your own dishwasher detergent! This is a very good product to make. It will save you money, save the environment, and save your health! Just think of all those harsh chemicals being blasted onto your dishes, silverware, and glasses! You put your food on them, eat from them, and drink from them! Then you wash all those harsh chemicals down your drain!

Continue reading and you will learn how to create your own dishwasher detergent with supplies you probably already have at home. This will get your dishes pretty clean and will not leave any residue on your dishes.

Ingredients:

1 quart jar or any other sealed container (for storing cleaner)
1 cup baking soda
1 cup Borax soap
1/2 cup granular dishwasher salt (softens hard water and helps prevent film on dishes)
Vinegar (used on rinse cycle to remove clean off soap and prevent film on dishes)

Directions:

Mix the baking soda, Borax soap, and dishwasher salt together
Pour into a sealed container or jar
Use 1 tablespoon soap mix in pre-wash soap compartment and 1 tablespoon in wash compartment.
Use 2 tablespoons or 1/8 cup vinegar in rinse aid compartment.
Turn off any type of heated dry feature on your dishwasher (to save money)
Start dishwasher

FAQ:

Can I use regular salt?
Yes, but I don’t recommend it. Table salts can contain other ingredients that may streak your dishes and make your water harder instead of softer. You can test and try it out. If you get streaked dishes, it’s most likely because of using table salt, sea salt, or some other impure salt instead of dishwasher salt.

My dishwasher has a built in water softener that I fill up with salt, do I still add salt to this eco friendly dishwasher soap?
No, if your dishwasher already has a built in water softener, there is no need to soften the water more. If you add salt to the recipe still, you won’t hurt anything, just wasting dishwasher salt. If your dishwasher’s built in water softener isn’t working the greatest, you may still want to add the dishwasher salt to the mix.

This mixture amount while using the recommended amounts each load should give you roughly 20 loads. If you have any questions, comments, and/or suggestions for this eco friendly dishwasher recipe or any other eco friendly cleaner please comment below.

Homemade All Purpose Eco Friendly Cleaner

Go Green In Your Home — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 03:14:55 +0000

There are many harmful chemicals in your name brand everyday all purpose cleaners. Very few are all natural. If you’re looking to make your own all purpose cleaner that will save you money as it’s cheap to make and keep you, your family, and your environment safe from harmful chemicals continue reading to learn how to make your own homemade eco friendly all purpose cleaner.

You probably already have the ingredients in your home to make this cheap homemade all purpose natural cleaner! All you will need is water and baking soda for this eco friendly cleaner recipe!

Homemade Eco-friendly All Purpose Cleaner Recipe

Natural Ingredients:

1/2 gallon water
1/2 cup baking soda

Directions:

Mix the water and baking soda together in a container. I like to use 1/2 gallon containers.
Close lid tight and shake ingredients for this natural all purpose cleaner together.
Label container “Natural All Purpose Cleaner” and if you like you can write the ingredients as well.
Pour this natural all purpose cleaner on a cleaning rag or sponge and wipe surface clean.

You can add more baking soda if you need a slightly stronger natural all purpose cleaner. This natural all purpose cleaner is great for your kitchen and bathroom as it cleans and deodorizes! Use it on your kitchen and bathroom counter tops, refrigerator (will not harm any of your food), microwave oven, trash cans, sink, and your stove top! This all purpose eco friendly cleaner leaves to scents or fumes, only clean freshness!

Remember to check out our other eco-friendly cleaning product recipes that are non-toxic to make more homemade cleaning products and go green in your home!

Homemade Eco-Friendly Powdered Laundry Soap

Go Green In Your Home — Fri, 30 May 2014 01:49:10 +0000

Your average everyday name brand laundry detergents usually contain all kinds of chemicals you don’t want on your clothes, draining into your earth, or getting on your skin. These normal laundry detergents are also very expensive!

You can make your own eco-friendly green laundry soap that works very effectively cleaning your clothes and doesn’t contain a bunch of extra chemicals that can be harmful to you, your clothes, and environment.

Their are many different green laundry soap recipes you can make at home. You can modify each homemade laundry soap recipe as well to suit your own needs. Some of you may want to add some kind of oil to scent your homemade laundry soap.

For this homemade environmentally friendly laundry soap cleaner you will need the following recipe:

Ingredients:

2 cups Borax
2 cups washing soda
1 bar of Castile soap (this needs to be grated)
1 cup baking soda

Directions:

Combine all 4 ingredients, mix well
Store in a closed jar container
Use only 1/4 cup of this eco-friendly powdered laundry soap for each load of laundry.

Some people choose just to mix the Borax and washing soda, others prefer to use Borax, washing soda, and baking soda. You can try modifying this recipe to your liking.

You can find all these ingredients to make this eco-friendly laundry soap in your local stores or even on amazon.com. Always shop around for your ingredients to get the best price. Remember PRICE / WEIGHT-IN-OUNCES = PRICE PER OUNCE I always break every purchase down using this formula to make sure I get the best price on my ingredients to make environmental friendly laundry soap.

Check out Go Green In Your Home‘s other homemade eco-friendly cleaner recipes for more homemade environmental friendly green cleaners that you can make in your own home and go green saving the environment and your money!

Save on Heating with Indoor Dryer Vent

Go Green In Your Home — Sun, 12 Jan 2014 23:50:04 +0000

I’m always trying to find ways to save money. I always use a humidifier in the winter time in my home because then you can lower your thermostat for your heat a couple degrees and it still feels warmer. This also helps get rid of static electricity by having moisture in the air. This will also help with dry stuffy noses!

So using a humidifier in the cold months and lowering your heating thermostat a few more degrees will save you money on your heating bill whether it’s gas or electric and still keep you comfortable.

I was thinking what is something in my home that is wasting heat and moisture? I thought my clothes dryer. My clothes dryer creates a lot of heat and a lot of moisture and just routes all that good heat and good moisture I want to keep in my home outside! I started thinking of making a lint trap for inside my home and plugging off the original dryer vent that goes outside. After designing this in my head I thought I’d look around online and see if there are any products out there already that can accomplish this same task. I found many of these indoor dryer vents on Amazon.

I haven’t been able to calculate exactly how much money this saves yet, but I do know my furnace turns on less when I’m doing laundry. My humidifier turns on less as well. Eventually I want to route this heat and moisture from my clothes dryer into my furnace heating ducts so it goes throughout the entire house just as the furnace would normally do, but I haven’t gotten to this just yet.

Just a few things to watch for, this will create a great amount of moisture wherever your dryer is located. You will want to watch out for too much moisture and mold starting anywhere. If you do see signs of this you may want to only do this every other load of laundry. Have one load blow heat and moisture indoors, and the next load blow heat and moisture outdoors, and continue that to see if that solves your problems.

Some of the indoor dryer vents I found on Amazon need you to block off your dryer vent going outdoors and connect this device indoor only. Some other indoor dryer vents have a built in flap, where you can turn the knob to either have the heat and moisture blow indoors, or flip it the other way to blow the heat and moisture outdoors. If you do decide to use one that is strictly an indoor lint trap make sure you completely block off your original dryer vent that goes outdoors or you will feel cold air coming in from outside. If you purchase a dryer vent that has the flap on it so you can direct the heat and moisture indoors or outdoors I would suggest setting the flap to outdoors and make sure no cold air is coming inside. If you do feel cold air coming back into your house you may want to buy a more efficient dryer vent housing for outside your house that closes completely if the dryer is not running. You don’t want cold air coming back into your home. If using your current outdoors dryer vent and you pull clothes out of your dryer and they feel really cold, most likely you will want to purchase a more efficient outdoor dryer vent even if you don’t purchase one of these indoor lint traps.

WARNING: Do not use an indoor lint trap if you are using a gas dryer. I’m not 100% sure, but I think this may bring unwanted fumes and poisonous gases into your home. I’m using an electric dryer with my indoor lint trap. I have not used or researched anything on gas dryers as far as fumes and gases. Also remember to clean out your dryer’s internal lint trap and your indoor dryer vent lint trap after every load.

Homemade Eco-Friendly Window Cleaner

Go Green In Your Home — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 14:47:48 +0000

There are many types of window cleaners on the market today, some eco-friendly, some with harsh chemicals in them. If you are wanting to go green you can go out and buy some eco-friendly window cleaner at your local stores or you can buy them online at amazon.com.

You might find your eco friendly window cleaner on sale somewhere and save money, but I find a lot of these eco friendly window cleaners to be a bit expensive. So I’m going to give you a recipe to make your own eco friendly window cleaner that you can make at home with 2 readily available ingredients! All you need is vinegar and water!

Homemade Eco-Friendly Window Cleaner Recipe

2 cups cold water
1/2 cup vinegar

mix the vinegar and cold water together and you’re done! Make sure you use cold water to keep streaks to a minimum. Hot water will contain more minerals in it that can cause streaks.

Note: You can mix in more vinegar if you need more cleaning power, or more water if you need less.

You can use this eco-friendly window cleaner on any glass surface, mirrors, windows, glass top tables, and more! This mixture will leave your glass surfaces clean and streak free! That’s right, no smudges using this homemade window cleaner!

This eco friendly window cleaning recipe is also very cheap to make so you don’t have to spend a lot of money to go green cleaning your glass surfaces! You can also buy vinegar online from amazon.com to save some more money! If you want to get rid of those hundreds of newspapers laying around your home you can also use the newspapers as a rag when cleaning your glass surfaces. You can still recycle the used newspapers even after using them to clean your glass surfaces.

I hope this homemade eco friendly glass cleaning recipe helps you save some money and the environment! If you want to read about more eco friendly cleaning recipes check out our Eco Friendly Cleaning Products section!

Cover Leaking Windows with Plastic

Go Green In Your Home — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 21:04:32 +0000

A lot of old windows in your home, apartment, duplex, etc. may be old and leaking. This can allow hot air in your home to escape as well as let cold air in. You can solve this by installing new windows, re-caulk your windows, or cover your windows in plastic.

Methods to Stop Windows from Leaking

Install New Windows

Installing new windows is expensive, but well worth it, as they will stop all the leaks all year round if installed properly. But again installing new windows can be a bit pricey so if you don’t have the money you may want to try a cheaper method of stopping leaking windows.

Re-caulk Old Leaking Windows

Re-caulking windows is cheap and easy to do, but will not stop all the leaks. Re-caulking your windows will only stop leaks around the window’s frame and between window’s glass and it’s frame. Re-caulking your windows will not stop leaks between the glass frame and the window frame or between the glass that slides and the other glass as those have different seals to keep them moving free so you can open your window. Plus re-caulking the between the glass and the glass’s frame could look a little tacky if not done right as this will put caulk on your window’s glass.

Covering Windows with Plastic

Covering your windows in plastic however will be a temporary fix just for the winter season. Covering you windows with plastic will block all air leaks in the window. Sometimes covering your windows in plastic can be a little pain when the plastic is not wanting to go where you want it, but is still very easy to do.

You can buy window kits that come with all the materials needed to cover your windows with plastic. These window kits are pretty nice except some of the double sided tape they come with is kind of cheap and do not have a very strong hold.

I would recommend purchasing 3M window kits or Duck window kits as the tape in these window kits are a lot stronger than some of the other brands of window kits, but you can buy any window kit you like.

How Much Money will I Save Covering Windows with Plastic

This is very hard to answer as every home will have different amount of leaks, different temperatures they have the thermostat set at, different temperatures of the air outside, and efficiency of the furnace. But you will save money on gas or save money on electric as your furnace will not have to work as hard to heat the cool air the windows let in or to replace the hot air that leaked out, as well as not have to run as often. I don’t like not placing a dollar amount and math on these go green tips, but there is really no way for me to calculate an average amount of money saved by covering your windows with plastic.

How to Install Plastic Window Covers

Installing the window kit on your leaking windows is very easy to do. The kits come with easy to follow directions, but here are the steps on how to install plastic on your windows.

Things you will need:

Measuring Tape
Hair Dryer or Heat Gun
Scissors
Razor Blade or Utility Knife (optional)

Installation Steps:

Measure the window to see how big to cut your plastic. Measure the window frame, wall, or window sill, depending on which one will be the easiest for you. I recommend putting the plastic on the wall if you don’t have any obstacles in the way like an extended window still.
Use the scissors to cut the plastic to the width and height of the window, I usually add a 3-4 inches to each measurement just in case I cut crooked as I don’t use a straight edge or framing square, I don’t need my cuts to be that accurate.
Now hold the plastic up to the window to make sure it fits properly.
Clean the surface with alcohol that you plan on putting the double sided tape on. Some window kits come with alcohol wipes.
Add tape to the window frame or if you don’t have any obstacles in the way you can add the tape to your wall or window sill to cover the entire window. Use the scissors again to cut the double sided tape. Make sure you press the tape down hard running your finger over the tape.
Peal the other side of the tape off to expose the second sticky side. This can be tricky getting the strip off without pulling the tape off completely. So just peal with caution.
Now stretch out the plastic starting at the top and align the plastic with the tape on top first. Push the plastic to the tape. You may want to have someone help you at this point to make sure you don’t get the plastic bunched up.
Now stretch out the sides and press them to the tape, don’t pull too hard when stretching as it may pull the plastic from the tape.
Now stretch out the bottom of the plastic covering and press it to the tape.
Go over the plastic again pressing it hard against the tape. Don’t worry of you have extra plastic hanging over or if there is a bit of bunching up in the center, we will fix this.
Now time to shrink the plastic window cover using a hair dryer or a heat gun. This plastic is low temperature heat shrink, it does not need a lot of heat to shrink it. If you use a heat gun be very careful not to melt the plastic as heat guns can produce a lot of heat. If you are using a hair dryer use the lowest heat setting first to see if it works. If not use a higher heat setting. Start heat shrinking the outside edges first. like to heat up the tape area first to try and make it stickier. Then I work my way inward then just look around for any crinkles. Do not shrink the plastic too much. The more you shrink the plastic the more stress it puts on the tape. I don’t shrink mine until they are perfect because I tend to have the plastic pull from the tape if I do this.
Use the razor blade or utility knife to cut excess plastic from the edges.
Done! You may now clean up your scraps and throw them

Calculator to Calculate Kwh

Go Green In Your Home — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 03:46:32 +0000

If you are wanting to calculate your home’s kWh usage you can use this kWh calculator below to calculate kWh. This calculator uses the same kWh formula found on Formula for kWh Calculator. You may also be interested in a kWh meter to monitor certain electrical devices in your home or even your entire home. You can use a whole home kWh meter to see if your electric company is billing you for the correct amount of kWh usage.

How Many Watts Do I Need to Generate

Go Green In Your Home — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 04:08:23 +0000

I’ve had a lot of people asking me the following questions:

How big of a generator do I need?
How many watts does my generator need to be?
How many solar panels do I need?
How many watts does the wind turbine need to put out to power my home?

So I made this calculator for all of you people going green and wanting to generate your own green power. You can use this calculator to calculate how many watts you need to generate to power your home. Keep in mind that this will calculate the amount of watts you need to generate for a grid tie system or an off grid system with a battery bank. If you are not using either one of these systems then you will just need a generator that can generate the same amount of watts or greater watts than your peak wattage pull at any given instance.

Please note that if your electric company supports grid tie systems and you create less power than you use, you will be charged for only the electric you used of the electric company’s. If you generate more electricity than you use the extra electricity goes to the electric company and they pay you for your unused power.

Watts Generator Calculator Usage

To use this calculator you will need to know 3 things for the formula to work, your yearly kWh usage, the inverter’s efficiency rating, and the amount of hours per day you will be generating electricity.

Yearly kWh Usage: You can find your yearly kWh usage by looking at your electric bill. Your electric bill will either have last 12 months kWh usage listed or each month’s kWh usage listed individually. If your electric bill lists yearly kWh usage enter that number. If your electric bill lists the last 12 months individually, add all 12 month’s kWh usage together and enter the number. If neither is listed you can call your electric company and ask the power company for your kWh usage.

Inverter’s Efficiency Rating: This will be listed in the inverter’s specifications sheet. You can even look this information up online on the manufacturer’s website or even on other websites that sell the inverter. I think the average inverter efficiency is around 96%. Remember do not enter the % symbol in the box below, just the number itself.

Hours Generating Electricity: This will be the average number of hours per day your generator, wind turbine, or solar panels will be generating electricity each day. If you are using a wind generator I’m sure you can look up the average wind speeds for different hours of the day for your geographical area on the internet. For those of you using solar panels to generate your electricity you will want to enter the number of hours each day you have direct sunlight. You can look up solar insolation map on the internet and find a map of your area. Remember to look up the solar insolation maps for each month and take an average. Add all the months together then divide the sum by 12 to get the average hours of sunlight for the year.

Please enter only numbers in the boxes below (no symbols). Thanks.

I hope this wattage calculator has helped you figure out what size generator, wind turbine, or solar panels you need to get for your green electricity! If you’re not sure which alternative electricity system you want to use, you can check out Solar Power vs. Wind Power Pros and Cons.

Solar Power vs. Wind Power Pros and Cons

Go Green In Your Home — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 04:57:25 +0000

After doing some research on renewable energy systems or alternative energy systems as many will call them, I wanted to get the information out there as far as the advantages and disadvantages of the 2 main renewable energy systems, wind turbine generators and photovoltaic solar panels.

Both solar panel and wind generator systems are similar as far as how they are setup. You can have the wind generator grid tied or off grid, same as solar panels. Both the solar panel (photovoltaic panel) and wind generator will need a battery bank if you are using an off grid system. Both of these renewable energy systems will produce clean energy and help the environment as well as save you money in your home!

Advantages and Disadvantages of Wind Generator Systems and Solar Panel Systems

Now onto some of the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative energy system. None of this information is from my own personal experience as I do not have the financial funds to support the research. So the information about these renewable energy systems have came from researching the internet, talking to people that have these alternative energy systems, and of course some calculations of my own (prices, efficiency, etc.).

Wind Turbine Generator System Pros and Cons

The main advantage of wind generator is that they can produce electricity day or night as long as there is wind. Wind generators need less space on your land to produce sufficient electricity. Wind generators are able to produce more electric for the same price. If you spend $1,000.00 on wind generator you can produce 1kW – 2kW, with solar panels you may only produce around .5kW – .75kW with the same $1,000.00. Wind generators have moving parts, so there is always wear and tear on these moving parts. Bearings can go bad, propeller blades can be struck by objects, and heat may be generated. Your wind generator will be installed on a tower or pole of some sort to gain height where there is more wind, allowing lighting to possibly strike your wind generator. As wind hits the propeller blades there will be noise created, think of a fan and how they sound, or even taking a rope and swinging it fast in circles. You will get some of this noise from your wind generator. The propellers of the wind generator can also produce shadows flickering. Birds can get killed from flying into your wind generator’s propellers. There are vertical wind generators which will prevent this. So the quick break down of the wind generator system:

Pros of Wind Turbine Generator Systems

Produce electricity day or night
Less space taken up by the wind generator system
Produce more electricity
Cost less

Cons of Wind Turbine Generator Systems

More maintenance
Moving parts wear out
Lighting strikes
Propeller noise
Shadows flickering
Hazard to birds

Photovoltaic Solar Panel System Pros and Cons

Solar panel systems are pretty much maintenance free, after installation only thing I’d recommend is cleaning them. Just like windows in your home, they will collect dirt and dust which will block sunlight from entering the solar cells. You can add more solar panels to an existing solar system easily to produce more electricity. Solar panels need direct sunlight to produce electricity, so during shady hours or night time, you produce little or no power. Solar panels are a little more costly. You can not stack solar panels so each panel will have to be side by side taking up more space or land. Baseballs, rocks, etc. can chip, crack, or break solar panels.

Pros of Photovoltaic Solar Panel System

Almost maintenance free
Add more panels easily

Cons of Photovoltaic Solar Panel Systems

Need cleaned
Generate electricity only in good sunlight
Expensive
Takes up more space or land
Break, chip, or crack from baseballs, rocks, etc.

Which Renewable System is Best for Me

Now that you know the advantages and disadvantages of wind generators and solar panel systems you can decide which system is best for you. If live closer to the equator or have lots of open room with lots of sunlight, solar panels will probably work best for you. If you have lots of birds in your area, solar panel system may be best in your home. If you don’t mind the noise or shadows flickering and don’t mind having to replace a few parts every now and then wind generators are probably your best option. There are also a few links I will find and post from NASA, that shows wind and sun for different areas. So you can see what is more abundant in your area, sun or wind. As for myself, I want to have a system with both solar panels and wind generator, so I can get the best of both. After doing so I will also report back here to give my own feedback of which is better.

I hope this information on solar panel systems and wind generator systems has helped you decide which alternative energy system is best for you. After you know which alternative electrical system you are going to use, you can read How Many Watts Do I Need to Generate to calculate how many watts you need. If you have any questions or comments, please ask below. Have a great day and remember to come back for more information on how to go green and save money!

Turn Off Your Furnace in the Summer Time Save Gas

Go Green In Your Home — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 20:51:47 +0000

In the warm months of summer you don’t use your furnace to heat your home. So why not shut it off? You may not think about it, but your furnace still consumes natural gas, propane, which ever you use, during the summer, even though you are not using your furnace at all. Your furnace will also consume electricity while not in use as well. There are some electronic valves and sensors that consume electric 24/7 on your furnace even when it is not being used!

Why Does My Furnace Consume Gas When Not In Use

Your pilot light is still burning gas. Your pilot light is a small flame that stays lit 24/7. This little flame is used to ignite the furnace’s burners which heat your home.

Now there are some furnaces on the market that use an electronic igniter instead of a gas pilot light. If your furnace uses an electronic igniter then this article may not save you much money.

Why Does My Furnace Consume Electricity When Not in Use

There are electronic valves that turn on and off your gas to your main burners and also to your pilot light. There is also a thermocouple that senses heat from pilot light. If your pilot light goes out, the thermocouple tells the electronics to shut off the gas to the pilot light so you are not filling the air with natural gas or propane. Each of these electronics are consuming electricity 24/7.

How Much Gas Does My Pilot Light Use

Your pilot light on your furnace or fireplace is a flame a little larger than what a candle would put out, but your pilot light is hotter. Your pilot light on your furnace or fireplace will consume 600 – 900 BTUs! Some would try to argue saying there is no way a pilot light consumes 600 – 900 BTUs, but it does.

How Much Money Does a Pilot Light Cost

This will depend on how much your pilot light consumes and how much you actually pay for your natural gas. This is usually printed on your gas bill. But on average 600 – 900 BTUs would cost you around $0.08 – $0.11/day. Which would be $2.44 – $3.35/month, or $29.22 – $40.18/year!

How Much Money Will I Save Turning Off Gas to Furnace

This depends on where you live. Here I could probably turn off the gas and electric to my furnace 6 months of the year. So I would save $14.61 – $20.09/year just by turning off the gas to my furnace during the summer months.

How Much Money Will I Save Turning Off Electric to Furnace

First if you are using central air conditioning system, you can not turn off your electric to your furnace as the air blower on the furnace is used to blow cold air through your home. For those of you that do not have central air, you can turn off your gas and electric to your furnace to save even more money! I’m not 100% sure on how much electricity is consumed by just the electronic valves, sensors, etc. in my furnace as I haven’t measured it yet, but with my electrical knowledge in circuits and such, I would have to guess around 10watts are being used for these devices 24/7. So shutting of the electricity to your furnace would save you an additional $4.39/year!

So saving gas and saving electricity by turning off your gas and electric to your furnace will save you a total of $44.57/year!

Save Money Vacuuming with Eureka Envirovac

Go Green In Your Home — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:01:02 +0000

Everyone vacuums their home, some more than others. This helps keep your home cleaner. Vacuuming your carpets also helps your carpet last longer! The thing most of you don’t think about is while you’re vacuuming, you are using electricity! Most vacuum cleaners will consume 12 amps of electricity! That is 1,440 watts of electricity being used while you are vacuuming your floors!

How Much Does Vacuuming Floors Cost

Well most vacuums on the market today consume 12 – 14 amps, the average home will have a 12 amp vacuum. So 12 amps x 120 volt = 1,440 watts. Average person will vacuum their home around 2 times a week. The average person will probably run their vacuum cleaner for about an hour each time they vacuum their floors. So that’s 2 hours a week spent vacuuming. So there are 52 weeks in a year, so 52 weeks x 2 hours = 104 hours per year vacuuming. So 104 hours x 1,440 watts = 149,760 watt hours. Most electric companies will charge you per kWh so to convert 149,760 watt hours to kWh we need to divide by 1,000. 149,760 watt hours / 1,000 watts = 149.76 kWh per year. What does that convert to in money? Average cost per kWh is $0.10, so 149.76 kWh x $0.10 per kWh = $14.98/year.

NOTE: The more often you vacuum, the longer you take to vacuum, the more money it will cost to run your vacuum cleaner.

How Can I Save Money Vacuuming

You can buy an environmental friendly vacuum cleaner like the Eureka Envirovac! This vacuum is awesome! The Eureka Envirovac is easy to tear apart for repairs, easy to clean, easy to empty, does a great job vacuuming hard floors, carpets, and cars! I personally own a Eureka Envirovac and love it. It is a very powerful vacuum but only consumes 8 amps! This vacuum has just as much or more suction than a lot of the 12 and 14 amp vacuums on the market! I highly recommend buying a Eureka Envirovac to save money, save the environment, and keep your home and car cleaner!

How Much Money Will I Save

You will not save a great amount of money, but you will save a little money each year, as well as keep your house cleaner! This vacuum will cost you $7.49/year in electricity! Which saves you $7.49/year! Again, if you vacuum more often than 2 times a week you will save more money. If you vacuum for more than an hour each time, you will save even more money!

If your current vacuum cleaner is working fine I wouldn’t recommend purchasing a Eureka Envirovac as the savings are not that great, but if your vacuum cleaner is not working great or broken, I would highly recommend purchasing a Eureka Envirovac today!

Remember to read more ways to save electricity in your home and other ways to go green in your home on gogreeninyourhome.com!

Save Money Doing Laundry Washing Clothes

Go Green In Your Home — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:09:13 +0000

You can save money easily while washing your clothes by washing your loads of laundry in cold water or sometimes warm water, but never hot water. Many people think washing clothes in hot water will get them cleaner, sorry, but you are wrong. Learn to save money on electricity if you are using a electric water heater or save on gas if you are using a gas water heater. Continue reading to find out why washing clothes in hot water is a waste of money.

Why Not Wash in Hot Water

Washing your clothes in hot water is really a waste of electric or gas depending on what your water heater uses. The reason washing your laundry in hot water is a waste because most people have their water heater set at 120°F – 140°F. When your washer is set to hot water it only allows hot water to enter the washer, no cold water is added. Therefore your clothes are being washed in 120°F – 140°F hot water when dirt, grime, body odors, sweat, etc. are all best dislodged at 100°F! So that extra gas or electric used to make the water 20°F – 40°F hotter is wasted for no reason at all!

How Can I Make My Washer Use 100°F Water For Warm Water

You rarely need to use warm water to wash your clothes in, but for those loads of laundry that do require warm water you will want to make sure your clothes washer is only using 100°F warm water. Most clothes washers will open both cold water and hot water valves 100% to get it’s warm water. So it will mix 50% cold and 50% hot water to make it’s warm water. Most of you will have around 50°F cold water and 140°F hot water mixing. Your cold water will also depend on the temperature outside and inside your home. The best way to adjust the temperature of your warm water is by adjusting the valves manually yourself. While doing a load of laundry use a thermometer after the water is completely filled and starts swishing around so you know it is mixed well. Take your water temperature during that load and see what it is. If your water temperature is above 100°F, reach behind your washer and turn down the hot water valve. If the water is below 100°F turn down the cold water valve. After you have done this, check the temperature again during your next load of laundry. Keep repeating this process until your washer’s warm water achieves 100°F. Also note, you may have to make this adjustment in the summer and in the winter as your cold water’s temperature will change slightly.

How Much Money Will I Save Washing Clothes in 100°F Water

It cost’s about $0.30/load of laundry washed in 140°F hot water. Which the average family will do 312 loads of laundry a year, so $93.60/year is spent to do laundry using hot water. NOTE: $93.60/year is just spent on heating the water, not including the cost of electricity to power the washer itself. If you use 100°F warm water to wash your clothes it cost about $0.16/load of laundry. So 312 loads a year in warm water will cost $49.92/year to heat your water. So if you wash your clothes in warm water instead of hot water you will save $43.68/year!

How Much Money Will I Save Washing Clothes in Cold Water

Being that cold water is not heated at all you will save $93.60/year by washing your clothes in cold water instead of hot water!

How Can I Save Even More Money Washing Clothes

If you want to save more money you could even use a Wonderwash hand crank clothes washer, which uses no electricity or gas at all! You can’t do a whole lot of laundry per load, but if you wash a portion of your clothes in it you will save even more money! If you are a single person or even just you and 1 other person, you could use the Wonderwash to wash all of your laundry. If you have children you can give them some small chores like doing the laundry using the Wonderwash! The clothes will come out of the Wonderwash very wet, so you will want to use a clothes spinner or clothes wringer to get the extra water out before hanging on a clothesline or clothes drying rack to dry or put in your electric clothes dryer or gas clothes dryer.

You can also read my go green tip: Save Money Doing Laundry Drying Clothes to learn how to save even more money while drying your clothes!

Save Money Doing Laundry Drying Clothes

Go Green In Your Home — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:17:27 +0000

Everyone has to do laundry. Everyone can save money while doing their laundry. This go green tip will teach you how to save money while drying your clothes. The average family will spend $156/year drying clothes in their homes, around $390 if you go to a laundry mat! Continue reading this go green article to learn how can you save this money and help save the environment by using less electricity or use less gas!

How Much Does it Cost to Dry a Load of Clothes

Drying clothes cost around $0.50/load of laundry done in an electric dryer or around $0.45/load of laundry to dry in a gas clothes dryer. The gas dryer costs around $0.04/load for electricity and $0.41/load for the gas. The average family will do around 6 loads of laundry a week, which is 312 loads of laundry a year! So if you are using an electric clothes dryer you will spend around $156/year just by drying your clothes. If you are using a gas clothes dryer, you will spend around $140.40/year to dry your clothes!

How Can I Dry Clothes Without Using a Clothes Dryer

Yes, you can dry your laundry without having a clothes dryer, or even if you have a clothes dryer you can use these methods to save money. Simple, you can hang your clothes on a clothesline to dry. You can hang your clothes on a clothes drying rack, indoor clothesline, outdoor clothesline, etc. Just hang your clothes somewhere dry, and your clothes will dry. Hanging clothes to dry will save you around $156/year. Plus, if you don’t already have a clothes dryer, you will save more money by not buying a clothes dryer!

If you want to hang your clothes indoors, you can simply get a clothesline and run it across your basement. I’d recommend using a clothes drying rack and a clothesline. I like clothes drying racks slightly more because they are not in the way. You can place clothes drying racks off to the side somewhere and you don’t have to duck every time you walk around in your basement! You will still want to use a clothes line for some of your larger loads or even larger laundry, like sheets, blankets, etc.

Hanging your clothes on an outdoors clothes line will usually dry your clothes faster as the heat from the sun will dry them. Some people worry about clothes fading as they are in the sun. I really haven’t had a problem with that, but I don’t leave my clothes out all day. I usually only set them out to get them partially dry, then bring them indoors to finish drying.

Another way to dry your clothes even faster is to use a clothes spinner or a clothes wringer first before hanging them to dry or if you are still wanting to use an electric clothes dryer, spinning or wringing your clothes out first will save you money, but not as mush as just hang drying your clothes.

A clothes spin dryer is kind of like the last cycle on your washer, it spins clothes really fast using centrifugal force to force the water out of the clothes. A clothes spinner will get clothes dryer than the spin cycle on your washer. The clothes wringer squeezes the water out of the clothes.

I think the clothes wringer is more efficient than the clothes spinner. The clothes spinner is a little faster, and also uses less effort from you. A clothes wringer still requires you to feed each article of clothing into the wringer, even if you get an electric clothes wringer, you will still have to feed the clothes into the clothes wringer, but you won’t have to hand crank the clothes through the wringer. I recommend thinking of it like this, if you get a hand crank clothes wringer, you get to do laundry, save money, and get a slight exercise all at the same time!

You may also wat to read my go green tip: Save Money Doing Laundry Washing Clothes

Appliances Still Use Power When Turned Off

Go Green In Your Home — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:18:49 +0000

A lot of people think when they turn off an electrical appliance that it doesn’t use any power. Time to think again, most electrical devices in your home still use electricity while turned off! Crazy! Some appliances never actually turn off, they are still consuming power in a standby power mode. Some electrical appliances in your home aren’t in a standby power mode, but still consume power because the way their power supplies are built. This is called many things, vampire energy, phantom energy, electricity leak, or leaking electricity. Continue reading this go green tip to learn how you can save electricity and save money!

What Electrical Appliances Still Use Electricity When Turned Off

Any electrical device that has an external power supply connected to it will still use electricity while powered off. Such as cellphone chargers, computer speakers, any of those electrical devices with a cubed power supply on it. Also any electrical appliances that have a clock, LED, light, or LCD panel on it will also still use electricity while turned off. Such as microwaves, coffee makers, TVs, VCR’s, DVD players, etc. Also any devices that have a standby or sleep power modes will still consume electricity. Most TV’s and set top cable boxes never actually turn off, they just go into a standby mode. Computer monitors and computers are the same. Most computers will still keep power to the motherboard for different functions such as ethernet cards/network cards, modems, USB hubs, etc.

How Much Energy is Consumed by Appliances While Turned Off

The electricity consumed by electrical appliances while they are turned off depends on the electrical appliance. The range of electricity used by these electricity leaking appliances are anywhere from 1 watt to 50 watts of electricity! Now 1 watt doesn’t sound like a lot, which it isn’t, but when you have 20+ electrical appliances in your home using just 1 watt of power, that’s 20 watts being used!

A single cellphone charger will consume 1 watt while plugged into the wall, even without a phone plugged into it! The same cellphone charger will also consume 4.5 watts of electricity with a cellphone plugged into it that is already fully charged! The same cellphone charger will consume 8 watts of power while charging a cellphone.

A stand-alone DVR set top box will consume 48.5 watts of power while turned off. A digital cable DVR set top box will consume 43.5 watts of electricity while turned off, while a digital cable box without DVR will consume 33 watts of electricity. A satellite set top box with or without DVR will consume 33.5 watts of power while turned off.

Almost everyone has a TV in their home, so how much electricity do TVs consume while turned off? Rear projection TV will consume 48.5 watts of electricity while it is turned off! A standard CRT TV will consume 13 watts while turned off.

Most of you will have a mini stereo system, one of those with speakers, CD player, AM/FM radio, etc all built into one unit. They will consume 24.5 watts of power while turned off! I’m sure most of you have one of these in your bedroom, living room, or kids bedroom.

A home theatre audio receiver that most of you will have hooked up to your TV in your living room will consume 19.5 watts of electricity while it is turned off.

So with just the few things I’ve mentioned here, that’s a total of $127.69/year just for electrical devices turned off for 16 hours every day. Most of you probably have more than 1 of each of those items in your home that are turned off, but still plugged in consuming power.

How Much Money Do These Appliances Consume While Turned Off

So now I’m going to calculate an average family of 4, and see how much electricity is leaking in their home, and how much it costs them. Well the parents are leaking 2369.74 kWh a year of electricity, which costs $236.97/year! Each of the children leak around 920.43 kWh of power each year, which costs $92.04 each child! So we have a total of $421.05/year being wasted because of electricity leaking on your electrical devices in your home!

How Can I Save Money by Stopping Electricity Leaking Appliances

There are 3 ways you can save money and save electricity by stopping these electrical appliances from leaking electricity. I will provide all 3 methods of stopping electrical devices from leaking electricity so you can save electricity. Some methods work better than others, but are not as convenient.

The cheapest and most effective is just by unplugging electrical appliances when you are not using them, which can become a major pain.This method works great as there will be no electrical usage at all since the electrical appliance is completely unplugged and can not use any electricity at all. As this method is the cheapest as you don’t have to buy anything new.

The next cheapest and least effective method is buying a standard surge protector and plugging your devices into surge protectors, when not in use, turn off the power switch which will cut off power to all the devices plugged into the power strip. Standard power strips and surge protectors are priced well and will pay for themselves if you turn them off and stop your electrical appliances from using electricity while turned off. The reason this method is not as effective as you would think, is that each surge protector will still consume electricity, so even though all your electrical appliances are not, the surge protector will still consume around 6 watts of electricity. So it is still a great method to use and cheap as well.

The next cheapest method and second most effective is using a smart power strip or smart surge protector. The smart surge protectors will cut off power automatically to only the devices that are turned off, while still powering the devices that are turned on and in use! These smart surge protectors cost about the same or slightly more than regular surge protectors, but use less electricity and you don’t have to turn off the power button when you’re done with your devices, just simply turn that appliance off! The smart surge protectors will still consume electricity when not in use, but not as much as normal surge protectors. The smart surge protectors will consume around 1 watt while in use, and less than 0.25 watts while turned off!

How Much Energy Does My Computer Monitor Use

Go Green In Your Home — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:17:53 +0000

Some of you out there are curious to how much it cost to use a CRT monitor vs. a LCD monitor or Liquid Crystal Display computer monitor. Well your short answer is that a LCD monitor will use less electricity than the CRT monitor saving you money.

LCD Advantages

Some of the advantages of using an LCD computer monitor is that you will use a lot less electricity, so you will save money on your electric bill. Also since a Liquid Crystal Display monitor uses less electricity and you need an Uninterruptible Power Supply, you will not have to buy a large capacity UPS. If you do buy a larger capacity UPS, it will last longer using an LCD monitor vs. CRT monitor.

LCD monitors generate less heat. So in the summer time when you run your air conditioning, the A/C will have to work a little harder and longer to cool your home down if you are using a CRT monitor. So by using an LCD monitor on your computer you will save money because your A/C system will not have to run as hard and as long.

Liquid Crystal Display monitors are also easier on your eyes. When using a computer with a CRT monitor for long periods of time your eyes will start to strain and maybe even give you headaches! Using a LCD monitor will not do this to you!

LCD monitors are also smaller in size and weight. Almost anyone can carry an LCD monitor if rearranging rooms in your home. If you are moving a CRT monitor it will require a little bit of strength to move. CRT monitors are also a lot larger in size which makes it difficult to wrap your arms around. You will save room on your computer desk by using an LCD monitor, so you will have more work space or more room to place photos of your family or other things.

CRT Electricity Cost

I’m using a 17″ Flat CRT monitor for this calculation. Which is a great monitor but loves to consume electricity! This 17″ Flat CRT monitor will consume 150 watts! I also have a 14″ CRT monitor that will consume 65 watts! Most of you will have your computer running around 8 hours every day, some will be more, some will be less.

Monitor Size	Electricity Consumed/Year	Cost/Year
17″ Flat CRT	438.3 kWh	$43.83
14″ CRT	189.93 kWh	$18.99

LCD Electricity Cost

My 17″ LCD monitor will consume 28 watts! There are some LCD monitors that are larger that will still consume around the same amount and consume less power! LG has a 22″ LCD monitor that only uses 22 watts!

Monitor Size	Electricity Consumed/Year	Cost/Year
17″ LCD	81.82 kWh	$8.18
22″ LG LCD	64.28 kWh	$6.43

So now you can see that LCD monitors save you lots of money! There are more and more energy efficient LCD monitors being designed and built every day. As for LG’s 22″ LCD only using 22 watts of power, that’s just the start, I’m sure there are other LCD monitors out there that are more energy efficient than the LG 22″ LCD.

How Much Money Will an LCD Computer Monitor Save Me

Monitor Size/Type	Electricity Consumed/Year	Cost/Year
17″ Flat CRT	438.3 kWh	$43.83
17″ LCD	81.82 kWh	$8.18
Savings	356.48 kWh	$35.65

As you can see switching from a 17″ CRT computer monitor to a 17″ LCD computer monitor will save you $35.65 every year! So go green by buying an energy efficient LCD computer monitor for your home! For more go green tips on saving electricity continue reading through Go Green in Your Home!

LED Christmas Decoration Lights Save Money

Go Green In Your Home — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:14:45 +0000

If you have read my article about using CFL bulbs to save electricity you already know incandescent light bulbs are not energy efficient. Most of you that want to go green that are already using CFL bulbs will probably waste some of that money you saved over the year during the holidays. Why? Most of you will use your regular Christmas decoration lights which are circuits of incandescent lights. That’s right each one of those little lights on a Christmas tree, Christmas wreath, or any other Christmas decorations you have are most likely using incandescent lights.

How Much Electricity Do Christmas Lights Use

Christmas lights that are using incandescent lights use a lot of electricity. Depending on the brand, quality, etc. a string of 100 incandescent Christmas lights will use around 45 watts of power! Most of you have around 500 lights just on your Christmas tree. So that’s 225 watts of power being used by Christmas lights! Most people will probably have their Christmas tree on for about 9 hours per day, and probably from Thanksgiving until a little after New Years, so your Christmas tree will be on for around 40 days.

So let’s calculate how much electricity your Christmas tree is using:

40 days x 9 hours per day = 360 hours of use
360 hours x 225 watts / 1,000 = 81 kWh
81 kWh x $0.10 per kWh = $8.10

So now after calculating your Christmas tree’s electricity usage we found that it costs $8.10 just to power your Christmas tree for those 40 days if you only have 500 lights on your Christmas tree. Most of you will also have more incandescent Christmas lights decorating other things as well wreaths, stair hand rails, windows, icicle lights hanging from your gutters, etc.

How Can I Save Money on Christmas Lighting

You can save money on Christmas lighting by using LED ( Light-Emitting Diode ) Christmas lights instead of your standard incandescent lights. There are also many other advantages to using LED Christmas lights instead of incandescent Christmas lights. Go Green in Your Home suggests replacing all of your standard incandescent Christmas lights with LED Christmas lights to save money, save electricity, and save the environment!

What are the Advantages of LED Christmas Lights

LED Christmas lights have many advantages over your standard incandescent Christmas lights. The 2 major advantages of LED Christmas lights is that they use a lot less electricity than incandescent Christmas lights. The technology used in light-emitting diodes is based on a semiconductor diode. When the diode is forward biased, or powered on, electrons recombine with holes to release photons. This is called electroluminescence. The next major advantage is that the light-emitting diodes last a long time. So you won’t have to replace light bulbs every Christmas and check the strings to make sure they work. LED lights are very durable and will last anywhere from 25,000 – 100,000 hours! A lot of the light-emitting diodes produced in the 1970’s are still in use today! Some of the other advantages of LED lights are that they are smaller in size, very fast light (instantly turn on), do not give off a lot of heat, and overall more energy efficient!

How Much Does Electricity Cost for LED Christmas Lights

Light-emitting diodes will cost you a lot less than standard incandescent Christmas lights, but how much will LED Christmas lighting save you? Well lets calculate the electricity usage of a Christmas tree using LED lighting instead of incandescent.

200 LED lights use 12 watts of power. So we will use 500 lights as we did when calculating the incandescent Christmas lights. So 500 LED lights will use 30 watts of power. We will also use the same amount of time and days used in the incandescent calculation.

40 days x 9 hours = 360 hours of use
360 hours x 30 watts / 1,000 = 10.8 kWh
10.8 kWh x $0.10 per kWh = $1.08

As you can see $1.08 for lighting a 500 LED Christmas tree is a lot more efficient than the incandescent Christmas lighting. So buy LED Christmas lights for your Christmas tree, Christmas wreaths, and all your other Christmas lighting needs so you can start saving money, and not have to replace all those light bulbs every year!

Electric Blanket Cut Heating Costs

Go Green In Your Home — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:17:12 +0000

In this go green tip, I will teach you how to save money on your heating bill by using electric blankets! Go Green in Your Home will also explain how you save this money during the winter months!

How Much Heat is Wasted

When you are sleeping your furnace is heating your entire home when your bed only needs to be warm! So all that extra heat is wasted for those 8 hours of sleep time. You are also wasting heat while you are away from your home for 8 hours at work or school and you leave your heat turned on. So in total there is 16 hours of heat being wasted in your home!

How Will I Save Money Using an Electric Blanket

Using an electric blanket at night will allow you to turn your furnace’s thermostat down to 55°F instead of your normal 70°F. This 15°F temperature drop during the 8 hours you are sleeping will save you money. How will you stay warm in 55°F temperatures? Easy, use an electric blanket, a 90watt electric blanket on for 8 hours a day will only cost you $2.20/mo. for each electric blanket in your home, yet will drop your gas bill or electric bill which ever you use for heating your home dramatically.

How do I Save Money on Heating While I’m at Work

Easy, turn your heat down to 55°F for the 8 hours you are at work or school as well. There is no point heating your home when no one is in it to benefit from the warmth. Now if you have pets or someone still in your home, them maybe don’t turn your thermostat down to 55°F, but you can still turn it down at least a few degrees. For every degree you turn down your heat you will save around 2% – 3% on your heating bill.

How Much Money Will I Save on Heating My Home

If you follow these steps and turn down your thermostat to 55°F for the 8 hours your sleep and the 8 hours you are at work or school, you will save around 22.06% on your heating bill!

So if your monthly heating bill is usually $140/mo. your new heating bill following these gas saving tips will be only $109.12/mo. which saves you around $30.89/mo. on your heating bill! Well subtract the $2.20/mo. that you would be paying for each electric blanket running. So you are saving $28.69 every month during the winter on your heating bill!

Programmable Thermostats

For those of you that forget to turn down the heat thermostat to 55°F while you are at work, school, and sleeping, you can buy a programmable thermostat! Basically you can program the thermostat to automatically turn the temperature down to 55°F for the 8 hours you are sleeping, and also for the 8 hours you are at work or school! This way you can have your heat kick back on and heat your home to 70°F before you get home, or before you actually get out of bed!

Electric Blanket Tips and Recommendations

When buying an electric blanket, make sure you get a decent one. You don’t have to buy anything very expensive, but make sure it has a temperature control and also an auto shutoff. This way when you get up in the morning it will automatically shut off in case you forget about it, so you are not wasting electricity to heat your bed when no one is in it. There are also programmable electric blankets, and also auto temperature controlling electric heating blankets. These blankets are a little more expensive, but they auto adapt to your body heat, you get too warm in the middle of the night it will automatically turn itself down or off. If you get out of bed to go to the bathroom and come back, it will sense that your body temperature has dropped and heat you back up! But, any electric heating blanket or mattress heating pad will work great to help you save money on your heating bill.

If you do buy an electric blanket be sure to also buy a decent quilt or comforter to put over top of it so the comforter or quilt will help keep the heat under the covers so the electric heating blanket doesn’t have to run all night to keep you warm.

So if you are saving $28.69/mo. for heating bills, and around my area I am heating my home for about 8 month of the year, so $229.52/year I save! But if your normal heating bill is more than $140/mo. originally, you will save even more money than me!

I hope you use these money saving tips to lower your heating bill. Using an electric blanket to heat your bed is more efficient and also usually a little more comfortable.Your entire bed is nice and warm, even when you first get in it. I hate getting into a cold bed and having to rub my body to create heat by friction to get warm enough to fall asleep. With an electric blanket you will be nice and warm in no time at all. So now you can sleep great knowing you are saving money while you sleep!

Water Conservation Tips While Showering

Go Green In Your Home — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:09:27 +0000

You can conserve water while you are showering just by following 2 simple tips. The first tip is buying an energy efficient shower head, and the other tip cost you nothing, just by turning off the water while you are not rinsing your body or hair.

Gallons of Water Used in the Shower

First lets see how much water does an average shower use? The average use of water in a shower depends on 2 things, how long the shower is, and what kind of water flow your shower head is rated at. Well first off I’m going to go by the average non water conserving shower head rating which is usually 5GPM – 8GPM! If you have read my How to Save Water Brushing Teeth information you know some of the numbers that you will be seeing just with a 4GPM, just think your shower is probably 8GPM rating and usually takes longer to shower, than to brush your teeth! So we will go with a 8GPM shower head as our non water conserving shower head.

Next, we need to figure out how long the shower will be. On average an adult will take a 10 minute shower if they are not in a hurry and 5 minute shower if they are in a hurry. The average teen will take a 15-20 minute shower if they are not in a hurry and a 10 minute shower if they are in a hurry! Most homes will have at least one teen showering, so I’m going to use the 15 minute shower as the average shower time for the rest of this water conservation information.

So how many gallons of water does an average 15 minute show use? A typical 15 minute shower will use 120 gallons! Now 75% of those 120 gallons is hot water, which is being paid to heat either by electric of gas! So 90 gallons from that 15 minute show is heated!

How Much Does an Average Shower Cost

Well if we are showering and using 120 gallons of water for each shower that’s around $0.36/shower just for the water, now you also have to pay to heat 90 gallons of that water! But I’m not going to do that much research just yet. Let’s bring this to a yearly rate. Each person that showers once a day will use 43,830 gallons of water a year! Which costs $131.49/year for every person!

How Do I Conserve Water While Showering

You can buy a new energy efficient or water efficient shower head, so instead of pumping out 8 gallons every minute you can get a low water consumption shower head that will use as little as 0.5 gallons every minute! You can also turn off your showers water until you need to rinse. Your showering procedure should be get in shower, turn on water, get wet/rinse off, turn water off, wash body, wash hair, turn on water, rinse, turn off water, put conditioner in your hair, turn water on, rinse hair, turn off water, and get out of shower! Using this method you will use a lot less water.

How Much Money Can I Save Showering

If you buy a 1.5GPM water saving shower head, and also turn off the water when you are not using it like I explained in the paragraph above you will save quite a bit of money. You will save money on your water bill, and also in your water heating bill whether it be electric or gas! Remember 75% of the water used diring a shower is hot water!

If you follow these tips you will save $129.85/year per person from switching from a 8GPM shower head running the entire shower time to a 1.5GPM low water efficient shower head only running during rinsing! Now I did not factor in the cost per gallon of hot water, as I have not calculated and tested to see how much it costs to heat 1 gallon of water. If I ever do calculate and test this I will add it to this information.

Here is a chart comparing the water usage of taking a shower using a non water conserving shower head vs. a shower using a low water usage shower head and turning off the water when not in use!

Persons	Shower w/1.5GPM Shower Head + Turn Off Water	Shower w/8GPM Shower Head Water Running	Savings (Money – Gal of Water)
1	$1.65 – 547.875 Gal	$131.49 – 43,830 Gal	$129.84 – 43,282.125 Gal
2	$3.30 – 1,095.75 Gal	$262.98 – 87,660 Gal	$259.68 – 86,564.25 Gal
3	$4.95 – 1,643.625 Gal	$394.47 – 131,490 Gal	$389.52 – 129,846.38 Gal
4	$6.60 – 2,191.5 Gal	$525.96 – 175,320 Gal	$519.36 – 173,128.5 Gal
5	$8.25 – 2,739.375 Gal	$657.45 – 219,150 Gal	$649.20 – 216,410.62 Gal

As you can see in the water usage chart above, taking a shower is expensive if you don’t use a 1.5GPM low water usage shower head and also turn off the water when you are not using it. Also remember I didn’t calculate in the gas or electric to heat 75% of those gallons of water! Which would make the cost of taking a shower even more, and you would save even more! But, so far I am just calculating just the water usage itself! I read that on average the heating of 1 gallon of water is $0.0025 so 75% of the gallons used you would multiply gallons of hot water by $0.0025 so on the 8GPM shower head for 1 person using 43,830 gallons a year, 75% of those gallons are hot water which would be 32,872.5 gallons of hot water which would cost $82.19/year to heat that hot water! Taking a shower my way and using a 1.5GPM shower head would use 547.875 gallons which 410.90625 gallons are hot water which would cost only $1.03/year to heat that water! So just in heating the water you are saving another $81.17/year in heating water for your shower!

Help conserve water and save money while taking a shower, go buy yourself a 1.5GPM water saving shower head that probably costs around $10.00 – $30.00! Which the water saving shower head will pay for itself in the savings it will produce! Even if you do not turn off the water during a shower, just replacing your non water conserving shower head with a low water consumption shower head will save you tons of money! Thanks for reading these water conservation tips while showering. Continue reading through Go Green in Your Home for more water conservation tips, go green tips, and also other money saving tips!

NOTE: I would recommend buying a 1.5GPM Low Water Usage Showerhead that has a quick on/off button/lever/switch built in. The reason I recommend this is that if you follow my steps of showering and turn on and off the water, you don’t have to readjust the water temperature. You can adjust when you first get in, then use the built in on/off button/lever to turn the water off until you are ready to use it again, then turn it back on with the quick on/off lever/button so you don’t have to readjust and waste time, water, and money while adjusting your water temperature again.

How to Save Water Brushing Teeth

Go Green In Your Home — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:15:50 +0000

Reasons Why Should We Save Water

Save money ($37.80/person/year)
Save water (12,600 Gallons/person/year)
Save Environment
Less gas/electric to heat water
Less wear and tear on your plumbing, valves, pumps, etc.
Less electric to pump water.

Most people don’t think about it but you can save water and save money by turning off the water to your sink while you are brushing your teeth! Most homes have a 4GPM, Gallons Per Minute, fitting on their bathrooms and kitchen sinks or even higher!

How Much Water is Used While Brushing Teeth

If you are one of those people that don’t think about how much water your sink it putting out, you will probably leave your water running while you brush your teeth. The average person will turn on the water, rinse off tooth brush, put tooth paste on tooth brush, brush teeth, spit a couple times, brush a little more, rinse tooth brush off, use a mouth rinse or mouth wash, swish that around a bit, spit it out, rinse out sink, and finally turn off water. This process will usually take 2 – 3 minutes to complete. During those 3 minutes you just used 12 gallons of water! The average person brushes their teeth 2 – 3 times a day, which would now make your water usage is at 36 gallons of water per person per day. The average person will also brush their teeth everyday which I will use 30.5 days for a month to make up for those with 28, 30, and 31 days. So now we are up to a single person brushing their teeth uses 1098 gallons of water to brush a single person’s teeth every month! Now there are 365.25 days in a year, so how many gallons of water does a single person use a year while brushing their teeth? The answer is, 13,129 gallons a year! Now let’s move onto the cost of this water usage.

The average cost of water is $0.003/gallon. So if a single person uses 13,129 gallons of water a year to brush their teeth, this costs $39.45/year for 1 person to brush their teeth. So take $39.45 and multiply this by how many people live in your home and you will see how much water is costing you just for you to keep your teeth clean! Now I didn’t factor in using hot water, so if you are using hot water to brush your teeth you are also paying to have that water heated either in your electricity bill or gas bill.

How Do I Save Money Brushing My Teeth

So how can you save money while brushing your teeth? Turn your water off unless you are using it. Don’t turn on your water and just let it run in the sink while you are brushing your teeth! Also, do not use hot water to brush your teeth, the amount of water used waiting for hot water to arrive at the sink, and letting it run while you are brushing your teeth is wasting water and also wasting gas or electric to heat that water. So make sure when you and your family is brushing their teeth, use cold water and only cold water, and turn it off while you are not using it. Let’s do a simple comparison chart of how much money you could save while brushing your teeth.

Buy a 2GPM or lower faucet fitting for your kitchen sink and bathroom sink, this will allow you to use 50% less water, while the water is turned on. I have seen some 1.5GPM, 1.6GPM, and even 1GPM faucet fittings! The fitting is normally called an aerator, which screws into the faucet.

NOTE: If your faucet is newer than 1992 you already should have at least a 2.5GPM fitting on your faucet. Federal Energy Policy Act of 1992 requires that all faucet fixtures manufactured in the USA are to restrict maximum water flow at or below 2.5GPM. So you shouldn’t be too bad, but you can still buy a more efficient fitting for your faucet! If your faucet was purchased before 1992 you probably have a faucet rated at 4GPM – 7GPM! So if your faucet is older than 1992, you NEED to buy a new one, the chart below is based off of 4GPM so if you have a 7GPM faucet then figure almost double the amounts!

I will base this off of letting water run while brushing your teeth using cold water, and compare it to turning off your water while brushing your teeth using cold water as well so I don’t have to factor in heating the water. Also remember you are also using a little bit if electricity to pump the water to the sink, which is not factored in either. So you will save more money on electric bill as well! This is a yearly chart:

Persons	Turning Water Off w/2GPM fitting	Leaving Water Run w/2GPM aerator	Leaving Water Run w/4GPM aerator	Savings per Year
1	$1.65	$19.73	$39.45	$37.80
2	$3.30	$39.46	$78.90	$75.60
3	$4.95	$59.19	$118.35	$113.40
4	$6.60	$78.92	$157.80	$151.20
5	$8.25	$98.65	$197.25	$189.00

Looking at this chart you aren’t saving a whole heck of a lot of money, but you are saving many gallons of water, and also saving a bit of money every year! So conserve water and save money and also help save the environment by going green in your home using these water conservation tips. For more tips on saving water or saving money on other utility bills continue reading throughout Go Green in Your Home!

Nitrogen Filled Tires Improves Gas Mileage

Go Green In Your Home — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:50:56 +0000

A lot of people are wanting to know what the benefits of filling your tires with nitrogen vs. air. Well there are 4 major benefits you will get by filling your tires with nitrogen. The benefits of nitrogen are that your tires will last longer, your fuel efficiency or MPG will increase, your car will be safer, and you will help save the environment! Continue reading on how nitrogen filled tires will help benefit you.

How Much Money Will I Save Filling My Tires With Nitrogen

Depending on how many miles you drive, your car’s current fuel efficiency MPG, and a few other minor variables, you will most likely save around $130.00/year on fuel, and around $70.00/year on tires. Which means you will save around $200.00/year! These numbers are based from driving 15,500 miles a year, on a car that gets around 20MPG. Continue reading to find out why nitrogen filled tires saves you $200 every year!

Increase Your Gas Mileage

How does nitrogen filled tires help improve your gas mileage? Regular air filled tires lose 1-3 PSI every month! Which makes your tires slightly more flat! Ever tried pushing a car that had flat tires? If you have then you know that it requires more work for you to move that car. Same applies to your car’s motor, it has to work harder to move your car when the tires are flat or even low. If the car’s engine has to work harder, your engine will consume more fuel! Nitrogen filled tires do not loose as much pressure. See the image at the very bottom right, see how regular air leaks through the tire’s rubber more than nitrogen does.

Regular air filled tires will also vary in air pressure in the tire, just by them being hot or cold. So if the temperature changes in your tire, the tire pressure changes as well. The longer you drive the hotter your tire becomes. Nitrogen filled tires will keep a more stable pressure when the tire’s temperatures change!

So filling your tires with nitrogen will improve your gas mileage by keeping your tire’s pressure more stable!

Increase the Life of Your Tires

Your tires will last longer when they are filled with nitrogen! Regular air inside of your tires will have nitrogen N₂, oxygen O₂, water vapor H₂O, argon Ar, carbon dioxide CO₂, neon Ne, helium He, methane CH₄, krypton Kr, hydrogen H₂, nitrous oxide N₂, xenon Xe, ozone O₃, nitrogen dioxide NO₂, iodine I, carbon monoxide CO, and ammonia NH₃. Some of these gases in the air will cause rubber to break down, dry crack, etc. Nitrogen doesn’t damage rubber. So if you fill your tires with air they will dry crack and also the tread will wear faster!

Filling your tires will nitrogen will not harm your rubber in the tire, and will increase the life of your tires, so you don’t have to buy tires as often!

Nitrogen Filled Tires are Safer

Some of you may have already figured out why nitrogen filled tires are safer from reading the information above, but for those of you that haven’t I will explain why nitrogen filled tires are safer. First of all in the section explaining that nitrogen filled tires increase your gas mileage, it says that air filled tires lose 1-3 PSI every month. Under-inflated tires are more prone to blowing out! So you are driving 65mph on the highway and your tire blows out because it is under-inflated! Filling tires with nitrogen will reduce the risk of a tire blowing out on you as it will maintain tire pressure.

Secondly, in the next section explaining how nitrogen increases your tire’s life, it says that regular air filled tires will start breaking down and dry cracking, which can cause a tire blow out as well.

Nitrogen Filled Tires Help Save the Environment

By switching to nitrogen filled tires vs. regular air filled tires, your car will burn less fuel, which will put off less emissions into the air we breathe. We will also use less tires, which will put less pollution in the air by making more tires.

Nitrogen Filled Tires Perform Better

If you are into performance on the street or track you want to have your tires filled with nitrogen as they maintain pressure at different temperatures better than regular air filled tires. When on the street or track racing you are putting a lot of stress on your tires, accelerating, breaking, etc. this causes your tires to get even hotter, which will change your tire’s air pressure. Filling your tires with nitrogen will not change pressures while the tire’s temperature changes!

Also while taking a turn at high speeds, your regular air filled tires will allow the tire to roll slightly, which creates resistance and slows you down, and possibly roll the tire off of your rim. Nitrogen filled tires will roll less, allowing you to maintain speeds through turns. Filling your tires with nitrogen will give your car better traction and handling!

Who Uses Nitrogen in Tires?

FAA requires all commercial air-crafts to have their tires filled with nitrogen. Nascar racers are required to have their tires filled with nitrogen, so they are safer, faster, change tires less, and use less fuel! Jay Leno’s car’s tires are also filled with nitrogen, and you know how much Jay Leno loves his cars!

Anyone can fill their tires with nitrogen to increase their tire’s life, safety, fuel mileage, and performance! So go green and save money by filling your tires with nitrogen today!

How to Save Energy with Computer

Go Green In Your Home — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:33:33 +0000

For those of you wanting to know how much power is your computer drawing? A typical personal computer’s power consumption is 300 watts not including your computer monitor! You can open your desktop computer’s case and look at your computer’s power supply ratings. You don’t have to be a computer expert to do this, all you need to do is remove 1 -2 screws on the back of your computer tower, and the side panel will slide off. There will be a big square box on the top rear of the tower where your power cord connects. This is your computer’s power supply. There will be a label on the power supply saying how many watts it outputs.

Most personal desktop computers will have a power usage of 250 – 1200 watts, depending on what that computer was designed for. If you have a high-end gaming computer you will probably have at least a 550 watt power supply in your computer.

So how much energy does a computer use? A lot! I’ve seen some people ask does leaving a computer on use less energy? Quick answer, no. If your computer is turned on it is using energy, even if the computer is idle and no one is using it, your computer will still be using energy! So be sure to turn off your computer when no one is using it. A typical computer only takes maybe 30 seconds to turn on.

How to Save Energy with Computer

For a typical computer user you don’t need anything high-end. You can buy an energy efficient computer or a green computer! There are many energy efficient computers on the market that work great. My favorite is the IONITX computer. This computer typically comes with 65 – 90 watt power supply, but usually doesn’t consume all these watts. The IONITX also has either a single or a dual-core 1.6GHz Atom CPU, which makes it fast! The nVIDIA ION GPU in the IONITX board is basically a nVIDIA GeForce 9400 GPU, which makes this computer have fast graphics. This IONITX computer is capable of playing 1080p HD videos, playing games, internet, e-mail, office, etc. IONITX board has Wi-Fi built in, LAN, VGA, DVI, HDMI, and many more ports.

There are also many other green computers, you could use any computer that is powered by the Atom CPU. These computers hardly use any electricity, but the IONITX is far more powerful and uses about the same amount of electricity!

You can also buy a laptop computer! Most high-end laptop computers will have a 65 – 90 watt power supply. Which is the same as the IONITX but on a laptop computer this 90 watts power supply is powering your monitor as well! If you are using a laptop, try to run your laptop on the battery as much as possible to save energy!

For those computer users that demand more power for video editing or extreme graphic intense games, I suggest a high-end laptop and remember to turn off your desktop computer when you are not using it. Most computer owners will leave their computer on 24/7, which consumes a lot of power!

Below is a chart comparing a typical desktop computer running 24/7, the same typical desktop computer running 16 hours a day (just shut off when sleeping), and the same typical computer running only 8 hours a day. This is based off of a 250 watt desktop, 132 watt 17″ LCD monitor, 4 watt computer speakers, and 0.10/kWh. You can look at your kWh usage charges on your electric bill to see what you are actually paying per kWh. So we are using a total of 386 watts.

Typical Desktop	24 Hours	16 Hours	8 Hours
Cost/Day	$0.93	$0.62	$0.31
Cost/Month	$28.26	$18.84	$9.42
Cost/Year	$339.06	$226.04	$113.02

So you can see just turning off your computers will greatly save you money on your electricity bill. Next, I will show you a chart comparing the same typical desktop, IONITX, typical laptop computer, and an Atom-Based laptop running 24 hours, 7 days a week! Most of you after seeing the chart above will turn off your PC at least at night, but for those that don’t here is a chart comparing your typical desktop with an IONITX running 24/7. I will even use the same monitor and speakers for both personal computers.

	Typical Desktop/Monitor	Dual Core IONITX/Monitor	Dual Core Laptop	Single Core Atom Laptop
Cost/Day	$0.93	$0.40	$0.22	$0.03
Cost/Month	$28.26	$12.15	$6.59	$0.88
Cost/Year	$339.06	$145.81	$79.06	$10.54

As you can see in the chart above that the laptops that use the single core Atom CPU are the most energy efficient computer. The laptops that use the Atom CPU and Intel chipsets are set to use no more than 12 watts of power, such as the Acer Aspire One, HP Mini, ASUS EeePC, Dell Inspiron Mini, MSI Wind, Lenovo IdeaPad S-Series, and pretty much any other Atom netbook! The power supplies that power these Atom based laptop generally are a rated for higher wattage, but these laptops only consume 12 watts. When your battery is dead and you are charging your Atom based laptop, you will consume a little more power.

UPDATE:These are old now, there are many newer, faster, laptops/PCs that use the same amount of power. Technology keeps moving! If it’s AMD and starts with an A, like A4-XXXX or A6-XXXX they are very slow, efficient, but very very slow, avoid them. Look for CPU/Processor model numbers ending with a U from either AMD or Intel. They are usually the low power, energy efficient computers.

The Atom based laptops are also very light and ultra portable. Their battery life is amazing, and they are also a very low cost laptop! So go green and buy one of these cheap laptops! They are cheap to buy and also cheap to run!

If you are wanting to go green and save money in your home by using energy efficient computers I would highly suggest using an Atom based laptop run on battery as much as possible, and turn it off when you are not using it! For more tips on how to save electricity or any other ways to go green, continue reading through Go Green in Your Home!

CFL Light Bulbs Save on Electricity

Go Green In Your Home — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:59:29 +0000

How Much Money Will a CFL Light Bulb Save Me

A single CFL light bulb will save you $28.23 every year! That’s right just changing 1 incandescent light bulb to a compact fluorescent light bulb will save you $28.23 every year! How energy efficient is that?

By switching or replacing all of your lights in your home to CFL light bulbs will greatly reduce the amount of electricity usage in your home! Some of you may think these CFL light bulbs are expensive, they are not! I will do a break down of the cost to purchase CFL light bulbs and also the cost to run these CFL light bulbs in your home so you can see a comparison between CFL light bulbs and your regular incandescent light bulbs. Scrool down to the chart comparing CFL vs. incandescent bulb.

What is a CFL Light Bulb

The term CFL stands for Compact Fluorescent Light. I’m sure you’ve seen fluorescent lights before, they are long tubes. Well these CFL bulbs are very similar, but they are a smaller diameter tube that is spiraled to take up less room, but still give off enough light, and save electricity.

How Much do CFL Light Bulbs Cost

Compact fluorescent light bulbs costs anywhere from $1 – $3 each, depending on where you buy them and what brand you buy. On average you will find them for about $1.50 in most stores. Remember to buy CFLs in packages and online, they are usually cheaper this way. Buying CFL light bulbs individually may get a little expensive, but will still pay for itself!

How Much Electricity Do CFL Bulbs Use

Your average CFL light bulbs will consume 13 watts of power and still give off the same amount of light as a standard incandescent light bulb that consumes 60 watts! This means that your regular incandescent light bulb will use 4.6 times the amount of electricity than a CFL bulb, which means the CFL will save you 4.6 times the amount of money to use it! These CFL bulbs are very energy efficient!

Why are CFL Bulbs more Efficient than Incandescent Bulbs

CFL bulbs use a different technology to produce visible light. Your average incandescent light uses a small wire, known as a filament, to cross the negative – and positive + electrodes which cause the filament to heat up, so hot that the metal turns a bright white. Which also produces a large amount of heat! So in the summer you run your air conditioner to cool your home, yet your incandescent lights are heating your home causing the air conditioner to run longer and harder, which uses more electricity.

CFL bulbs use a different technology to produce light. CFL bulbs use a ballast to make electrical current flow through mercury vapor gases in the glass tubes. When electric current flows through the mercury vapor it causes the gases to produce pour ultraviolet light, or UV light, which is invisible to the human eye. The glass tubes have a phosphor coating on the inside, which the ultraviolet light emitted by the mercury vapor gases cause the phosphor coating to emit visible light. This method uses a lot less electricity to produce the light and also does not create a lot of heat!

How Does a CFL Bulb Compare to an Incandescent Bulb

I will give you a break down of the initial cost to buy these light bulbs and how much it cost to run the light bulbs. I will give you actual numbers of measurements and prices of these bulbs so you can see how much money you will save using CFL light bulbs vs. incandescent light bulbs!

	13w CFL bulb	60w Incandescent Bulb
Cost to Purchase 1	$1.50	$0.50
Buy in Next 5 Yrs	1	10
Total Purchase Cost	$1.50	$5.00
Electricity Cost	$38.064	$175.68
Total Cost over 5YR	$39.564	$180.68

Now let me break down this chart for you, CFL bulbs will last for at least 5 years! Most CFL bulbs are rated 5 – 7.5 years! So in the next 5 years you will only need to buy 1 CFL bulb, where an incandescent light bulb will last around 6 months so in the next 5 years you will have to purchase 10 of them to last as long as the CFL bulb!

The cost of electricity to run them is based on the light being on for 16 hours a day, every day for 5 years and $0.10/kWh which is average, but you can look on your electric bill and see what you are paying. Most likely this would be a kitchen, living room, or dining room light. Which actually most of you probably have a ceiling light that holds 3 – 5 lights in it not just 1!

As you can see with this chart that the CFL bulb is way cheaper in initial cost and in electricity usage! Remember this is only 1 light bulb running in your home that will save you $141.12 in 5 years, that’s $28.23 every year in savings! Now think how many lights are turned on in your home right now!

Formula for kWh Calculator

Go Green In Your Home — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:00:09 +0000

For those of you out there wanting to save electricity one of the formulas you will need to know is the formula to calculate your kWh usage or electricity usage. This way you know what each device in your home is using. So you know where you can cut your costs in your home. The information found here will teach you what is a kilowatt hour, how to calculate kWh, convert watts to kWh, and more!

First of all kWh stands for Kilowatt Hours. This is usually what you will see on your electricity bill or electricity statement when you receive it. The electric company knows how much electricity you are using by reading your kWh meter. You will also have the electricity cost per kWh listed on your electric bill so you know what each kWh is costing you.

A kilowatt hour is a measurement of how many kilowatts are used in a hour. Most electrical devices will have printed on them how many watts they are using, which it takes 1000 watts to equal 1 kilowatt. So a 1000 watt microwave oven running for 1 hour will use 1 kWh.

Watts is a measurement of how much electricity that electrical device uses constantly, where kilowatt hours is how many watts that electrical device has accumulated over time. For example a 60w incandescent light bulb in your closet will use 60 watts every time it is turned on. But if it is turned on an hour a day while you pick out your clothes that’s 30 hours that light has been on that month. That’s 1,800 watt hours or 1.8 kilowatt hours. Continue reading this information on how to calculate kWh to get the formula used to calculate your kWh usage

But for those of you that are wanting to calculate what each electrical device in your home is using then you will need to use this formula to calculate the kWh usage in your home:

( Watt Usage * Hours/Day * Days/Mo. ) / 1000 = Kilowatt Hours used that month

So for an example we have a normal incandescent light bulb that uses 60w, that we have on 16 hours every day of the month. So I can calculate how many kWh this incandescent light bulb is using every month by using this formula:

60w * 16 hours/day * 30.5 days/mo / 1000 = 29.28 kWh per month

After you know how many kilowatt hours a device is using you can multiply this kWh by the cost per kWh that is stated on your electric bill:

kWh * Cost/kWh = Cost per month

So using the 60w incandescent light bulb example, which was using 29.28 kWh/mo.:

29.28 kWh * $0.10/kWh = $2.928/mo.

So a single 60w incandescent light bulb will cost you $2.93/mo.

NOTE: This is based on $0.10/kWh and also I have the amount of days per month 30.5, I figured this way I don’t have to figure out if this month is 30 days or 31 days.

You have to know how many watts a device is using before you can use any of the formulas found in the information above. Most devices will have the wattage printed on the electrical device somewhere. If your electrical device does not have the wattage printed on it but it does have amperage printed on it, please look at Volt Amp Watt Convert to learn how to convert amps to watts. If your electrical device does not have amperage or wattage printed on it, then you will have to learn How to Measure Amperage with a Multimeter.

For those of you that find calculating your kWh usage using the kWh formula too complicated you can purchase a kWh meter to measure kWh usage.

For anyone that would like to use Go Green in Your Home’s kWh calculator you can check out Calculator to Calculate Kwh

Thank you for reading this information on How to Calculate kWh on Go Green in Your Home. Go Green in Your Home hopes this information has helped you calculate each of your electrical devices kWh usage so you know how much electricity you are using. For more tips on how to save electricity or save the environment continue reading through Go Green in Your Home!

Cost per kWh: (found on your electric bill) Average is $0.15/kWh Used to calculate cost of charging.
	Rechargeable Batteries	Disposable Batteries
Cost of Batteries:
Batteries/pack:
Capacity in mAh:
Charge Cycles:
Cost of Charger:
Input Power Consumption of Charger (watts):
Hours to Charge:
Batteries Charged @ Once:
Number of Batteries Needed @ Once:

Cost/kWh	This can be found on your electric bill. The average cost per kWh is $0.15, so you would enter 0.15
Device Name	Watts	Hours Used/Day

Yearly kWh (from electric bill) — Example: 6000	Inverter Efficiency — Example: 92	Hours Generating — Example: 5