The Shed

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 Jim Garten wrote:

 Dean wrote:

Switching off modern AV equipment will save you on average less than a penny a day and will shorten the life of your equipment, which wil ultimately result in a net loss and greater carbon footprint because you will have to replace it more often.

Very interesting claim, Dean - our living room electricals used to be on standby all the time (usual stuff - hi-fi, DVD/TV/Hard-disc DVD recorder/Digibox); are you saying this all only costs about about a penny a day? I was always under the impression the power drain was considerably higher than that. 

 Dean wrote:

Energy efficient light bulbs are more expensive to make, buy and do not last anything like as long as the makers would have you think - what starts off being quite dim gets even dimmer with age - your eyes may become accustom to reading by the glow of a fag-end, mine don't   - the newer plug-in replacement halogen lamps are an improvement, but their running costs are higher than florescent. I have replaced all teh low-energy bulbs in my home with good old fashioned tungsten and halogen after Debs fell down stairs - the extra cost by far outweighs the cost of having a broken wife

I'm not 100% convinced on that one - I use these all around the house & can honestly say I don't see them as being significantly dimmer than regular bulbs (which I seem to remember being told once are in fact more energy efficient as heaters, than light sources ); as for longevity, we do have two in the house which were in there when we moved in 17 years ago. 

At the risk of being an irritating git, I'm confused.com  - bottom line, I just want to save money  

Methinks Dean is being a little negative on these points.  I do exactly what you are doing Jim and have no problems with light levels or length of life of low energy bulbs.  I have slowly replaced all my tungsten bulbs with low energy ones as and when they failed; I have not yet had to replace a low energy bulb (one of which came from my previous house and is still working fine).  The argument for not switching electronic kit on and off is not really proven either way.  My view is that common sense must prevail and switching kit off completely when you stop using it for five minutes does not make sense; however switching it off overnight and whilst out at work does and will save money over time (also reduces the fire risk somewhat).

Going back to your previous post mentioning saving money by not turning your heating off this is a bit of an urban myth.  Running the heating at a lower level constantly rather than running it at full power intermittantly may well work out slightly cheaper but only because the house will be slightly colder.   Basically in simplified terms the amount of energy lost from a house is proportional to the temperature difference between the house and the outside world.  If you run your house at a cooler temperature then the rate of loss of energy will be lower.  
If you turn the heating off then the loss of energy will cease when the house reaches the same temperature as its surroundings, after this you are not losing any energy.  When you come home the house will be cold so you use excess energy to restore the temperature.  Due to the law of conservation of energy this process cannot use more energy than would have been lost if the house temperature was kept constant; but will certainly use less if the house remains colder for a long period of time.  This time period will range from a few to many hours depending on the build and insulation of the house.

Heating selected rooms rather than the whole house is a good way of saving energy as well.