ELECTRIC NOTES
FOR HAPPY HOLIDAYS, FOLLOW SAFETY TIPS
Keep electrical safety in mind when decorating for the holiday season:
• Before decorating, read and follow the manufacturer’s instructions concerning installation and maintenance of all decorative electrical products.
• Indoors and out, use lights and other electrical decorations certified by a recognized independent testing laboratory such as CSA, UL or ETL.
• Outdoors, use lights and other electrical decorations certified for outdoor use.
• Carefully inspect each decoration before plugging it into an outlet. Cracked, frayed, loose or bare wires and loose connections may cause a serious electric shock or start a fire. Replace damaged items.
• Always unplug decorations before replacing lightbulbs or fuses.
• Don’t mount or support light strings in any way that might damage the cord’s insulation. Never nail or staple light strings or extension cords.
• Do not connect more than three light string sets together. Light strings with screw-in bulbs should have
no more than 50 bulbs connected together.
• Don’t overload extension cords—they can overheat and start a fire.
• Keep all outdoor extension cords and light strings clear of snow and standing water and well protected from weather.
• Don’t decorate near power lines. Contact with a high-voltage line could lead to electrocution.
• Never use electric lights on a metallic tree.
• Don’t allow children or pets to play with electrical decorations.
• Turn off all electrical decorations before leaving home or going to bed.
• Plug outdoor lights and decorations into circuits protected by ground-fault circuit interrupters (GFCIs). Portable GFCIs can be purchased wherever electrical supplies are sold.
BUY THE ULTIMATE GADGET FOR YOUR ELECTRONICS LOVER
There’s always one person who seems impossible to buy for around the holidays: the electronics lover who already has every TV, DVD player, sound system, computer, printer and handheld gadget you can think of.
Rather than add to the collection, try a creative gift that will help the technology lover on your list manage and protect those expensive electronics.
For someone who has the ultimate home theater or office, buy a smart power strip that cuts down on “phantom” or “vampire power”—the small amount of electricity that electric devices use even when they are turned off or put in sleep mode. The strip will have one control outlet for a computer or TV and additional outlets for printers, fax machines, speakers, DVD players and the cable box, for example. When the TV is shut off or the computer enters sleep mode, the strip will cut power to the other outlets. This not only makes it easier to shut off all electronics at once, but it will also save the lucky recipient money on power bills effortlessly. Most strips come with separate outlets that don’t shut off with the others—for devices like clocks that need to run all the time.
To encourage your gadget lover to save money on larger appliances like refrigerators and flat-screen TVs, give a watt reader, such as the Kill-A-Watt, which will reveal the home’s biggest energy guzzlers. Plug the device into the wall and plug appliances in one by one to find out how much energy each appliance is using in real time. By multiplying the electricity used by the cost of electricity (which can be found on the monthly power bill), your electronics whiz can find out how much money it costs—or saves—to flip each appliance on or off.
WELL PUMP PROBLEMS: A HIDDEN ENERGY WASTER
A leaky faucet or toilet can be more expensive in a house that gets water from a well instead of a utility company. That’s because a leak can cause the well pump to run more than it needs to, wasting energy with every drip.
Repairing leaks isn’t the only way to keep your pump in top shape. Regular maintenance not only can help your pump operate more efficiently, but it can also help extend the life of the equipment. A service technician should inspect your pump to see if it has fallen victim to either of these two major energy wasters:
• A waterlogged pressure tank. If this problem exists, the pressure sensor inside the tank becomes overactive, causing the pump to start and stop continuously. Because the pump uses the most energy when it’s starting up, such unnecessary cycling can put a drain on your energy bill.
• The pump is oversized for your needs. Many homes have 3- to 4-horsepower pumps, when they really need only 1- to 2-horsepower pumps. A properly sized pump can save about 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year.
HOW IS YOUR HOME’S ‘PHYSICAL FITNESS’?
The “physical fitness” of your home can make the difference between soaring energy bills or comfortable savings this winter.
An energy-efficient home is a strong defense against winter winds, rain, sleet, snow and chill while also protecting the environment by cutting wasteful energy use. A home “energy diet” benefits your pocketbook and the planet, notes the Alliance to Save Energy, which offers consumers step-by-step home physical fitness tips to cut energy bills and increase comfort:
Plug Energy Leaks
• Plug air leaks with sealant, caulking and weatherstripping to increase your comfort, make your home quieter and cleaner and reduce your cooling and heating costs.
• “Insulate” yourself from price shocks. Appropriate insulation can increase your comfort and reduce your heating costs up to 30 percent. Start with attic insulation, followed by exterior and basement walls, floors and crawl spaces. Insulate and seal attic air ducts.
• Go “window-shopping” at www.efficientwindows.org to discover how high-performance Energy Star-labeled windows can cut heating and cooling costs by as much as 30 percent while increasing indoor comfort and keeping your home furnishings from fading.
• Refinancing your home or obtaining a home equity loan to remodel? The big news is home decorating and remodeling. Consider wrapping in energy-efficiency home improvements to your refinancing package. Interest could be tax-deductible, and you could reduce your monthly energy bills comfortably.
Use Heating Wisely
• Consider replacing a faulty or inefficient HVAC system with a unit that has earned Energy Star certification. Installed correctly, these high-efficiency heating and cooling units can reduce heating and cooling costs by up to 20 percent.
• Let a programmable thermostat “remember for you” to automatically coordinate the indoor climate with your daily and weekend patterns. This reduces heating costs by some 10 percent when you’re home and saves energy when you’re not.
• Open curtains and other window treatments during the day to allow sunlight to naturally heat your home; close them at night.
Look for the Energy Star label, the symbol for energy efficiency, when replacing your heating and cooling systems—as well as appliances, lighting, windows, insulation and home electronics. Find retailers near you at www.energystar.gov.
Lighten Up Efficiently
• Popular halogen torchiere lamps are relatively inexpensive to purchase but are expensive to operate and can cause fires. Consider safer, more efficient Energy Star torchiere lamps instead.
• Don’t like coming home to a dark house on short winter days? Instead of leaving lights on, put timers on a few of the lights in your home, or install motion detectors and daylight sensors. Motion detectors on exterior floodlights improve your home security at a lower operating cost.
• Replacing four 75-watt incandescent lightbulbs with 23-watt compact fluorescent lightbulbs that use two-thirds less energy and last up to 10 times longer saves $190 over the life of the bulbs. If all our nation’s households did the same, we’d save as much energy as is consumed by some 38 million cars in one year.
• Turn off everything not in use: lights, TVs, computers.
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The Alliance to Save Energy is a coalition of business, government, environmental and consumer leaders who promote the efficient and clean use of energy.
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