My new electricity-saving trick

I'll be honest, I'm not sure how much electricity this saves and I haven't tried to do any math on it. I "discovered" this (noticed is probably a better word) completely by accident.  It is dark here by the time I get home and need to take care of animals, so I use my rechargeable Loma Creek headlamp for all those chores.  I came in from doing this and forgot to turn the headlamp off before I came in.  I realized there was no need to turn on any overhead lights at all, I just used the headlamp in the house for the rest of the evening.  I don't really turn on house lights at night anymore :)  

We got LED headlamps for Christmas. Not rechargeables, but this our first experience with band headlamps. We are impressed. And as you, we are forgetting about turning on the house lights. Yes, the headlamps work that well. We find ourselves using them first thing in the morning, since our first chore of the day is to tend the animals, mostly outdoors (it's dark here that early in the morning).

When the moon is down, my interior is pretty dark, so I invested $5 in a solar garden light mebbe 8 years ago.



It's in a vase that I place where it's needed (bathroom) and then out on the deck in the morning to re-charge.  
Admit I haven't used it for task or reading light, but I could.  Surprised these are not more widely recommended for disaster areas like Puerto Rico after the hurricane.

This headlamp trick worked well for a buddy of mine until one night the cops were knocking on his door in response to what the neighbors assumed was a burglary in progress!

Matt Todd wrote:This headlamp trick worked well for a buddy of mine until one night the cops were knocking on his door in response to what the neighbors assumed was a burglary in progress!

I would be just fine here. Her, the ONLY way to get the police to show up at your house for any reason is to mention guns. I literally had a person sneaking around my sawmill, and the police would not show up...they were too busy, so I said, "That is okay, I got a shotgun", and in five minutes they had found a police officer not doing anything.

It is crazy here, but not surprisingly we have the lowest crime rate of any town in the United States. (Of course it helps when the police never show up to make a crime report).

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My Father in law bought a $12 solar light from Harbor Freight and uses it inside his garden shed. It works so well that we were talking about using them inside our houses? Would it work? I am not sure? All you would have to do is cover the outside sensor when it was daylight, and uncover it when you wanted it in your home. How long it would last I am not sure, but a person could always flip on a light if it ran low. I mean electricity not used is electricity we do not have to pay for, and a $12 light from Harbor Freight is easy to pay back in a return-On-Investment situation.

Su Ba wrote:We got LED headlamps for Christmas. Not rechargeables, but this our first experience with band headlamps. We are impressed. And as you, we are forgetting about turning on the house lights. Yes, the headlamps work that well. We find ourselves using them first thing in the morning, since our first chore of the day is to tend the animals, mostly outdoors (it's dark here that early in the morning).

Same here.  It's dark in the morning when I go to work, and at night when I get home.  Winters are rough here.

Matt Todd wrote:  This headlamp trick worked well for a buddy of mine until one night the cops were knocking on his door in response to what the neighbors assumed was a burglary in progress!

Lol, I can see that as a problem in urban areas.  I'm in the boonies.

Travis Johnson wrote:

My Father in law bought a $12 solar light from Harbor Freight and uses it inside his garden shed. It works so well that we were talking about using them inside our houses? Would it work? I am not sure? All you would have to do is cover the outside sensor when it was daylight, and uncover it when you wanted it in your home. How long it would last I am not sure, but a person could always flip on a light if it ran low. I mean electricity not used is electricity we do not have to pay for, and a $12 light from Harbor Freight is easy to pay back in a return-On-Investment situation.

I used to do that during power outages.  Bring them in, flip them upside down and set them around the house.  They give off plenty of light to walk around things like that.  If you put one close to you, you can see to read.  I usually get them at the dollar store.