Don’t Let Energy Vampires Suck All Your Home’s Energy

Is your home plagued by vampires? All those plugged-in items that keep sucking electricity after you shut them off are energy vampires and they can account for about five percent of your total household energy usage. Here’s how to find the vampires hiding in your home, so you can eliminate them before they drain your wallet.

How to Lure Energy Vampires Out of Hiding

Some of the most commonly-found energy vampires in the average home are LCD, LED and large-screen televisions, satellite/cable TV boxes, surround-sound systems, cordless phones, mobile phone chargers along with computers and their related peripheral equipment. Vampires aren’t very difficult to find because how they work and how they’re powered are usually dead giveaways. Just take a good look around for items with remote controls, external power supply boxes on their electric cords, continuously-lit displays and built-in clocks.

How To Kill Lurking Energy Vampires

Once you’ve staked out exactly where your resident vampires are located, take these steps to control or end their power drain:

• Unplug rarely-used items. Just pull the plug on devices like an unused computer, the TV in the guest room, an older stereo or DVD player. There’s no reason to plug these items back in until you plan to use them.
• Invest in basic power strips. Placing groups of items, like your main TV and any related devices, onto one power strip makes it easy to shut them all down with the flip of a single switch when they’re not in use.
• Starting using sleep mode. If it’s a hassle to unplug items like your computer or your child’s video game console, go in and adjust the settings so they’ll automatically go into energy-saving sleep mode if they sit idle for a few minutes.
• Make energy-wise replacements. When vampirish items finally give up the ghost, replace them with new, efficient models with the Energy Star logo. Products that are Energy Star-certified consume less energy all the time, whether they’re in use or on standby.

To learn more ways to deal with energy vampires in your Lorain home, contact us at Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Lorain, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about energy vampires and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 440-201-2959.

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