How much is my hot tub costing me?
A myFreeMonitor user sent this screen shot to us recently, saying that he was stunned when he logged in from work and checked in on his home electricity usage.
What had this individual so concerned was that he had turned on his hot tub the weekend before. If this sudden increase in usage was due to the hot tub, could he afford to keep it running? A quick investigation at the end of the day turned up a couple of additional items. Due to a wet weekend, the dehumidifier had been running constantly for a few days – adding over 1000W (1kWh) to the typical hourly consumption. In addition, his wife had taken a day off work and was catching up on some cooking during the day.
Dehumidifiers are high energy users! Many people are completely unaware of the load they draw.
The next day, before he (and his wife) headed off to work, he turned off the dehumidifier and just left the hot tub running. Much to his relief, energy usage was much closer to normal operation and it appears his hot tub is using somewhere around 300W (with little heating required). In his view, a manageable cost.
Here are a couple myFreeMonitor tips:
– The “Highlights” view is extremely useful. Not only does it give you the big alert as to your change in usage that day, but the graph at the top really shows you when things are off the norm. The line in the graph shows your average usage (4 week average) for a given hour in the day, where the bars show your usage that day. Very helpful in knowing when you are back on track.
– When trying to troubleshoot or find the source of energy usage use the Live view, either on your computer or smartphone. In particular, if you select a “1 min” view in the Live graph, you will see the impact of turning off appliances instantly.
Enjoy the hot tubs!
