Daily Home Renovation Tips

A lot of dads in families are alike in many ways.

They like to tinker around the house, even though they might not be very good at it.

They don’t like seeing money wasted. They are skeptical about new products until they know others have successfully used them.

Their families have a hard time buying presents for them.

Here’s an idea that might help with deciding what to buy them this Christmas.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the PowerCost Monitor we acquired from Blue Line Innovations.

If you missed that article, it is a device which measures the amount of electricity consumed by a household on a real time basis.

The above picture is the display unit taken in our kitchen.

It is a proven product per, the manufacturer’s web site, to help a household take action to reduce its electricity consumption and thus save money through its actions on the home’s electric bill.

It can show on a real time basis the amount of electricity consumed (per the above picture) or the amount of money being spent (per the picture below) on the electricity being used in the home.

It can be considered a gadget by dads; and, as we know, dads are simply boys at heart and as we all know, boys must have their toys.

It is very easy to install and use, as my prior articles showed.

Now, as indicated above I have placed the display unit in our kitchen so it is always visible (as our kitchen is next to the eating area and our family room, and is also next to my home office.

What I have noticed me doing the past few weeks is that when I see it I am always looking at the amount of money or kilowatts (depending on which display I have at the moment) of electricity being consumed. I think about what appliances might be on or which lights might not be off, etc. And, as I do that I find myself looking around and if I see lights on that no one is using I turn them off and watch the meter go down.

I noticed recently how it changes when the microwave is being used. I did a test to see how much impact the microwave would make on the electricity consumed in the house. So, I wrote down (for purposes of this article) that the PowerCost Monitor’s Display unit was showing our home was consuming 1.4 kW or $0.07 / hour just prior to my turning the microwave on to heat up a cup of coffee. When the microwave was on, the readings were 2.4 kW and $0.13 / hour.

Now, I have no idea what exactly a Kilowatt (kW) is, other than some sort of measurement of electricity; but, that’s not the point. The point is that when the microwave was on the amount of electricity being consumed jumped by a large percentage.

Most dad’s will say they understand kWh, but they don’t. That’s not the point. Whether they do or not, they understand $$$, the other type of electrical consumption displayed on the device.

So, to me, this is the type of gadget which a lot of dads could appreciate receiving for Christmas. It is different; its likely they don’t already have one. It is a gadget, but simple to install and use. It is not expensive, around $119 plus taxes, etc. from the manufacturer’s web site, selected specialty energy conservation product retailers in North America  or from web sites, the latter two which you can find on this page again within the Blue Line Innovations web site. 

And, it comes with a lot of instructions both on this page of the manufacturer’s web site as well as in the installation and usage guides which come with the product.

Hopefully this gives you yet another idea on what to consider buying dad for Christmas this year.  It’s a pretty cool gadget that can help him save money, especially if he is into energy savings, one that’s sufficiently easy even for dad to setup and use.