I had seen a Home Depot ad a week or so ago for a high efficiency toilet for $88. I was searching on their website to see if the ad was still available, and saw a link for local rebates. Clicking the link redirected me to a Fort Collins utility page about the city's toilet rebate program. Provided the toilet is labeled Water Sense Meets EPA Certification, the city will credit $35 for mailing in the receipt, and $15 for recycling your old toilet and providing documentation to the city. The offer is good for only two toilets per household.
The $88 toilet did qualify from Home Depot. Total for the two toilets with tax was $190, with $100 to be credited back from the city on future water/electricity bills. That equates to a cost of only $90 for two brand new toilets, and the savings do not stop there!
The two toilets replaced were more than 20 years old, and used 3.5 gallons per flush. The new high efficiency toilets require only 1.28 gallons per flush. A family of 4 averages 20 flushes per day, requiring 70 gallons with the old toilets, but only 25.6 gallons with the new toilets. That amounts to a savings in water of 44.4 gallons/day, or just over 16,000 gallons/year!
Based on roughly what Fort Collins charges for a gallon of water, the reduced water usage equates to a savings just over $34/year. Of course as the price of water increases in the future, the amount saved per year will also increase. Not bad for a toilet that only costs $45 net of the rebate!
Follow up everyone regarding the rebate(original blog post was beginning of March), I received the latest water/electric bill from the city of Fort Collins about 3 weeks after applying for the rebate, and my bill was only $19.02($100 credited by the city as part of the rebate program)! The processing time was about one month for the city to apply the rebate. Really a great deal, not to mention pretty slick how the newest technology of toilets work!
Frank Glenn
CMarie Property Services
http://www.cmarieproperty.com
I purchased our first CFL(Compact Flourescent Light) bulbs a few days ago, and saw an ad for Home Depot offering the same bulbs at half the price. I decided to conduct a bit of research to see if it made sense to switch out all the lights in our house. I discovered CFL bulbs can save you and your family a lot of money. I loaded up at Home Depot, and switched out every light in our house! Now for the research:
I found a spreadsheet online comparing savings from CFL bulbs versus incandescent bulbs, and modified based on Fort Collins costs and our family usage. From a cost standpoint, CFL bulbs were on sale for $1.50/bulb in a package of 4, while incandescent bulbs were on sale for $.50/bulb in a package of 6. The CFL bulbs will last for 10,000 hours, while the incandescent I compared will last for 1,500 hours. Based on the comparison, the CFL bulbs are 3 times more expensive, but last almost 7 times longer.
The big savings show up in the reduced energy to run the CFL versus incandescent bulbs. You can buy 60-watt or 100-watt incandescent bulbs, while the CFL bulbs were 14-watt. Your electricity consumption is billed on what is called a kilowatt hour, or a charge per 1,000 watt hours. In our household of 30 bulbs assuming an average use of 3 hours per day, we would use each 9.0 kWh if we had all 100-watt incandescent bulbs, 5.4 kWh for all 60 watt incandescent bulbs, and 1.26 kWh for the 14-watt CFL bulbs.
Factoring in the usage with the Fort Collins charge per kWh, we would pay $.78/day for the 100-watt, $.47/day for the 60-watt and $.11/day for the 14 watt CFL. Extending that out for a year, that equates to a cost of $285 for 100-watt incandescent bulbs, $171 for 60-watt incandescent bulbs and $40 for 14-watt CFL bulbs. In addition, there is also a little savings in the approximate 9 year life of the CFL bulb, I will have to purchase 7 incandescent bulbs to last the same amount of time.
In the end for our house, I figure we are saving between approximately $130-$245/year, not taking into account the charge for energy will probably go up every year. That will create even greater savings over the approximate 9 year life for the bulb given our average usage. It also is pretty cool not having to switch out a light bulb for a long, long time. Not bad for an investment under $50 total!
Frank Glenn
CMarie Property Services
http://www.cmarieproperty.com
Want a quick way to save money for your household if you are not already doing it....start recycling. Just to give you an idea of how much you can save, my family started recycling here at home about one year ago. At the time, we were paying about $34/month for a 95-gallon container. We reduced our container to 65-gallon along with a 65-gallon container for recycling. There was no additional charge for the recycling bin, which they dump every two weeks, and our bill was reduced to $25/month. Just recently, because I realized we rarely have more than half a bin of trash, I switched out the container to a 35-gallon container. Want to guess our new monthly bill for the service? $12.50/month. In one year our trash bill has went from $34/month to $25/month to now $12.50/month. Over the course of a year saving $21.50/month, it amounts to $258/year. Not too shabby, and so if you are not currently recycling, I would highly recommend it!!
Frank Glenn
CMarie Property Services
http://www.cmarieproperty.com
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