Replace, reduce your use of electricity to cut costs
Q Have you taken any steps to reduce your household electricity bill? Some people I know are paying more than $1,500 a month.
A You ask a great question, and yes, I’ve done quite a bit to reduce our electricity consumption over the last five years. Our all-in electrical cost are just over 26 cents per kilowatt hour, with more than half of our consumption happening during off-peak or mid-peak times. That’s almost a 300 per cent higher rate than it used to be in the early 2000s. Our monthly bills are currently in the $300 to $400 range, but we’d be paying about four times this amount if I hadn’t made changes.
Reducing the production of heat with electricity is the single biggest thing anyone can do to reduce electrical bills. The production of heat requires far more electricity than other household uses.
Operating a 2,000-watt electric heater for just one hour, for instance, consumes the same amount of electricity as a typical LED light bulb burning for more than 300 hours.
Running an electric clothes dryer for a single 45-minute load uses the same amount of electricity as a 42-inch TV running for 20 hours.
In regions with natural gas, it makes sense to convert all heatproducing applications away from electricity and toward gas. Propane costs about 25 per cent less than electricity for a given amount of energy, so it’s better but not nearly as economical as natural gas is right now.
Where I live in rural Ontario, there’s no natural gas supply for 150 kilometres, so I installed an outdoor wood boiler to handle all heat-related needs.
It looks like a little metal garden shed and burns wood inside to heat water. This hot water is circulated to and from my house and workshop through insulated underground pipes where it heats the air and all domestic hot water for showers and washing. Our electricity consumption is about 75 per cent less than it used to be before the boiler.
We have a lot of wind and sunshine here where I live on Manitoulin Island, so I’ve investigated a windmill and photovoltaic panels feeding power back into the grid. As I’ve discovered, when you consider the installed cost of alternatives like wind and solar, the amortized cost of equipment and batteries, the greater difficulty reshingling a roof covered in solar panels, and the tinkering needed to keep a homebuilt electrical system running properly, the economics don’t look as good as they seem at first glance.
FINISHING A WOOD CABINET
Q What’s the best way to finish a bare pine cabinet we use to store paper at work? I was thinking of an oil finish, but is there a risk of the oil seeping into the drawers and messing up the paper?
A Yes, oil finishes can creep over time, so it’s not ideal for a cabinet storing paper. One option I recommend is water-based urethane. Applied over a white pickling stain, it does an exceptional job on pine.
You’ll also need to sand the surfaces lightly after each coat of urethane has dried. Use 240-grit sandpaper, then vacuum the surface and coat again. Two coats are a minimum. Three would be better. If you want a supersmooth finish, rub the cabinet down with a fine of super-fine 3M rubbing pad after the last coat. Steve Maxwell always loves a small hydro bill. Visit BaileyLineRoad.