Saving Electricity

We met with the electrician Monday and went over details. We requested switches for wall outlets in a number of places. It is common to have one side of an outlet on a switch for a lamp. But, we wanted switches also for electronics that consume electricity even when they are off, such as the TV and computer. In our current house, we've put these on surge protectors so that we can switch them off at night and have seen significant savings in our electric bill. We plan to use CFL or LED bulbs in most of the lights. They now sell dimmable CFLs, so Tom requested a number of dimmers throughout the house. Unless we are reading, we find that a low light in the evening makes us feel cozy.

Electric and plumbing are continuing this week, with low voltage (cable, audio, phone, and security) to follow. Time Warner wants to charge us $750 to bring cable service to the house. We don't understand why because the neighbors surrounding us already have service, and we're not that far from our nearest neighboor. We will probably put the electric line underground from the street to the house to save a tree and we can have a cable put in the trench. We're hoping this will convince them to lower the price.