Frugal Tip: Put Lights on Timers
Many housing communities (including mine) encourage us to leave our porch light on all night to discourage thieves. I am happy to oblige, but the problem is since I work second shift, I am often not home to turn on the lights, and my spouse is not good at remembering things like that. If I turned them on before I left, they would run for an additional 4 or so hours a day – not a lot but they do add up. And remembering to turn them off in the morning is not foolproof either.
Our solution is to put the lights on solar timers. This has the lights only come on when it is dark, so I don’t waste any unneeded electricity running the light in the daylight. But even regular non-solar timers are useful to control your outdoor lights, as long as you update the program once in a while to account for the changing seasons.
Stop wasting electricity but keep your house well lit outside – install a timer on those outdoor lamps and porch lights.
This frugal tip provided by paidtwice of I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…
May 30th, 2008 12:33
Timers still use power to keep the time, but I’m sure it’s significantly less than the power used to light a bulb. I’d be interested to see the calculations on it.
Right after moving in, we just installed a motion-sensing light. Again, it uses power even though the light isn’t shining, but it’s less than having the light constantly on (like our neighbor).