Ever since I’ve started this blog I’ve been more energy conscious than I already was. The drive to reduce our electricity and lower cost has been taken up like a religion for me. It all started with doing an energy audit of the house and reducing our electric bill by about 40% by getting rid of energy hogs or replacing appliances with more energy efficient ones.

Cooking wise we’ve switched to an electric stove since LPG prices were going sky high on us. We’ve also lowered our footprint by limiting our car use to just once per week, when we have to do groceries.
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This is the best gas saving technique that I know of. Quite easy actually, even my 1.7 year old son does this when I’m driving and I swear that it saves me tons of gas a week. And it works for all types of vehicles, from SUV’s to sedans, to compacts etc. It’s just a simple process too. First you put your hand on the ignition key… and the next step is… wait for it… turn the key to the left.

Yeah, I don’t believe in after market gas saving add-ons to the car. I think the most they can do is knock off a few pts of your gas consumption but the threat of damaging your engine could be much greater.
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If you’re planning to build it from the ground up, somewhere around the vicinity of Php 7M ($155k, $1=P45). Engr. Nestor Archival of Cebu put up a two storey 400sqm house on a 7,000 sqm property which uses biogas, solar and wind energy to power their electrical needs. And you can’t say that the house is spartan because along with working electricity it also has a swimming pool at the back.

Inspired by his work as chair of Cebu City’s committee on environment, he decided to redesign the original plans of the house he was planning to build so that he could contribute to making the world a better place. With a household of 8 people he spends just around P1,500 a month for their electrical needs.
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With World Oil Prices on a record high its but necessary to start thinking of ways to reduce your energy consumption. Was channel surfing through some cooking shows and one show in particular caught my attention because the chef mentioned that a sliced 30 cm thick piece of meet will take only 2 minutes to cook.

That’s about 1 minute per side in the frying pan. Imagine the time and gas savings you can incur by slicing your meat a little bit thinner. This way heat dissipates quickly into the meat. Another trick I like to do is to scar the meat, this way the heat can travel more quickly into the insides of the meat via the openings created by the scar.
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According to EnergyHog… the average US family spent about $1900 in 2005 for home energy consumption… or $158.33/month… still, there are ways to drop that even further by a simple energy audit of your house.

On their site they provide an Energy Checklist and Energy Fact Sheet that you can follow during your energy audit. Read the rest of this entry »