Comments on: 10 Money Saving Gadgets (That Actually Help Save Money)

By: John

John — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:15:02 +0000

You forgot the biggest money saving gadget. Magicjack at magicjack.com

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:08:53 +0000

low flow toilets…meh. How many times do you have to flush it twice? yep

cfls – love them, especially their curvy shape. I have a bag of them that have already burned out way before their time and now where am I supposed to dispose of these mercury-laden time bombs?

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By: Tony F

Tony F — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:19:45 +0000

Loved the idea behind the gadgets its always fun to find new gadgets that save you money. We installed a low flush toilet in our master bathroom last year and overall it seems to really good. I will say though that maintenance and toilet repair costs are much higher than traditional toilets. Some valve inside the tank costs like ten times more than a regular one, ours broke and we had to replace it.

By: marq goodfaith

marq goodfaith — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:32:24 +0000

We bundle with heavy blankets but some nights get really cold. I have oil-filled radiator heater. It has three settings (lo, med, high). I measured the settings with Kill-A-Watt device. Low uses 500 Watts, Medium 650 Watts, and High 1000 Watts. I’ve been lowering home gas furnaced central heating at night since my family sleeps in one room. Electricity is more expensive than natural gas heating but I don’t know which would be cheaper. Heating one room with radiator or heating entire home with central heat/gas.

The PVR recorder draws 50 Watts constantly. I would like to turn it off but the Dishnetwork would charge me additional $5.00 per month if they cannot ping the device. (I should really just drop subscription television).

Solar is still too expensive for me. I might get faster return by cutting water usage in the front and backyard. Water in California is getting expensive. I would like to be the first in the block to get rid of the lawn and adapt what dessert communities do: hardscape and native plants. It would also save on maintenance too. I need to calculate return on investment.

By: ernie

ernie — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:02:16 +0000

How do you evacuate a mason jar with this device?

By: choyak

choyak — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:19:11 +0000

I just purchased CFLs at Stater Brothers supermarket here in southern California $2 for a box of 4!!! Buy one and get one free! so it is 25 cents each. The electric utility here, Southern California Edison subsidizes the purchase. This wen site must be based in UK because subsidized is claimed inclrrect spelling. Subsidises works

By: leslie

leslie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:30:51 +0000

you can also usually lower the floaty thing in your toilet tank so that it stops pumping water at a more shallow levels. or put rocks/bricks/shampoo bottles full of water in the tank.

my favorite toilet water reducing method: if it’s yellow, let it mellow. if it’s brown, flush it down. depending on the number of people you live with, you can get a lot of pees on one flush.

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By: leslie

leslie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:28:02 +0000

you can stick pretty much anything in your toilet to take up space (old shampoo bottles full of water or rocks or bricks). sometimes you can also lower the floaty thing inside the toilet so that the water stops pumping in at a shallower height.

my favorite solution: if it’s yellow, let it mellow. if it’s brown, flush it down. depending on how many people you live with, you can get a lot of pees per flush.

By: leslie

leslie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:25:35 +0000

you can also purchase little valves for the pipes that you can install between your shower head and final pipe segment. This allows you to turn the water offer while you soap without having to turn the who shower off and on and readjust the temperature. these valve are normally 2 or 3 dollars at home depot.

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By: Charlie

Charlie — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:21:17 +0000

I’m with Chuck! JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY CHECK PLEASE! Mint, pay your researchers just a little more, if they branched out from Flickr to maybe Wikipedia then you’d have some content here. The sum total useful information could be summarized as ‘buy a space heater, a couple CFLs for lights you leave on all the time, and put a couple bricks in your toilet’. NOTHING ELSE here is guaranteed to be worthwhile without doing some number crunching.

I’m a PhD student in electrical engineering, and as Chuck said, the power supply in the picture has absolutely nothing to do with reducing the electricity used by your ‘gadgets’ – it’s a custom piece of equipment most likely used to power a mini computer-controlled machining system.

Laptops do or don’t come with energy saving rules in the software. I’ve never seen an AC adapter replacement that saves energy, although it would be easy to design one. Major manufacturers, especially Apple, don’t, because the tradeoff is that they’d be a little bulkier and slightly more expensive to manufacture.

As for a ‘high-efficiency power supply’ for anything else, just what the heck are you talking about, Mint?