4 Energy Saving Tips For Your Kids
Summer vacation is in full force for Virginia residents, and kids are enveloped in video games, laptops, smartphones, and televisions. And while your kids might deserve this leisure time after a long school year, it shouldn’t come with a higher utility bill. To help avoid your kids driving up energy consumption with their daily summer routines, you’ll want them to practice some energy saving tips.
Hickerson Brothers would like to help Catlett homeowners save energy during their summer vacation. Below are 5 energy saving tips for kids!
1. Manage Power Settings on Devices
Thanks to technological innovations, most computers, tablets, smartphones, and video game consoles come with power saving settings. And enabling these settings can help reduce your kid’s energy consumption. Here are some examples of power saving settings:
- Disabling Backlight
- Reducing Brightness
- Enabling Automatic Sleep Settings
2. Take Showers Instead of Baths
Although the summer heat could make a bath seem tempting, you should always opt for your kids to take a shower. Taking a shower within a good timeframe uses less water than filling the bathtub and is generally more energy-efficient. On average, filling the bathtub can use anywhere from 35-50 gallons of water, while taking a 10-minute shower only uses about 25 gallons. Additionally, it takes much longer to fill a bathtub, meaning more time is spent using the water heater.
While we recommend your kids take showers over baths, that doesn’t mean baths have to be completely omitted. Have them as the occasional, special treat!
3. Use a Ceiling Fan Instead of Increasing AC Usage
During the hot summers in Virginia, air conditioners become our best ally. But with your HVAC system accounting for almost half of your home’s energy consumption, blasting the AC can severely impact your energy bill. And while you could just simply turn off the AC to save energy, that would make your kids (and you) suffer. Fortunately, there’s a more comfortable solution: ceiling fans!
Turning down the AC while utilizing a ceiling fan can help your kids save energy without losing the cooling. Since a ceiling fan focuses on cold air distribution instead of refrigerants to provide cooling, it uses barely a fraction of the energy of a typical central AC unit. So, by powering down your AC unit about 10 degrees and running the ceiling fan on high, you’ll be able to maintain suitable comfort for your kids while also having more reasonable energy consumption.
Don’t have a ceiling fan in your home and want to install one? Contact Hickerson Brothers for our ceiling fan services!
4. Turn off Lightning When not in Use
Whenever your kid leaves a room, make sure they turn off the lights. Not only does having lights on in empty rooms waste energy – it also uses up the bulb’s lifespan. Additionally, turning off lighting can keep a room cooler, especially if you have incandescent light bulbs.
Want to save even more energy on lighting? Consider replacing your incandescent bulbs with LEDs. Not only are LEDs the most energy efficient of the light bulbs, their lifespan is also the longest. Contact Hickerson Brothers to help install new LED lightning in your home!
Help save energy during the summer by practicing these energy saving tips for kids! And when your Catlett home requires ceiling fan or lighting services made with supreme quality, contact Hickerson Brothers today! Give us a call at 703-594-3913 to schedule an appointment and get started!
