Parasitic electric usage

[sc_rufctr]

My BIL who lives in Colorado recently "discovered" he had a heated driveway. An electrician was doing some work on his house and he told him about the heating system. It was set to switch on automatically when it snowed.

[Bill Douglas]

Oh sh**, now I've heard of everything. A heated driveway

[red-beard]

Several neighbors had those when I was a kid. Then the price of oil/electricity went way up and no one used them.

[frosty2]

An electric hot water heater accounts for 1/3 of your hydro bill. My neighbors have a teenage daughter so there is just the three of them, both adults are away working all day and the daughter is at school with the water heater maintaining temp 24/7.
I installed a timer that brings power on to the water heater at 5:00 am so is hot when they have there showers before leaving for work and school and then it cuts power at 8:00 am as house is now empty for the day.
When daughter wood get home from school she would have a shower and the water in the insulated tank would still be hot enough.
The tank would not be powered again till 5.00 am next morning. This 30.00 timer saved them approx 60.00 a month on there hydro bill.

[frosty2]

Yes they would and the thing is a well insulated water heater will maintain a good temp even though there is no power to it for most of the day.
Most timers will also have an override for weekends or if you have company and are going to use more hot water.

[rockfan4]

Originally Posted by peteremsley

On topic - I think my kids are my biggest electrical parasites :/

Isn't that the truth?
I have a geothermal heating system, with electric heat to supplement it when the temperature gets too cold. We're right around zero here, and that's about the temp where the system needs help. It REALLY needs help when the fiance's doofus son leaves the door open between the garage and the basement. I had to build a fire in the fireplace just to help the system recover.

On topic - I added power strips for the TV in the guest bedroom and the basement. The basement setup also includes a receiver, bluray player and ancient VCR. Turning those off when we're not using them saves about $10/month.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by red-beard

Oh, and our hot water heater is natural gas.

Why heat hot water?

Our water heater is natural gas. The old one had a always on pilot light burning. The new one uses an electrical spark to start up. So now if the electricity is out we don't get more hot water. SO I can't shower in the dark.

[red-beard]

The newest electric hot water heaters use a heat pump.