Energy and water bill
I’ve been living in my apartment building for a little over a year and recently moved from a 1 bedroom to a 2 bedroom. I just got my first full month utility bill (billed from May 6 - June 5) and my water and energy charges were insane. I’m looking for any tips to reduce them.
As far as water goes, me and my roommate each only shower once a day, occasionally if my boyfriend is over he will use my shower but he’s in there for maybe 10 minutes max. We have in-unit washer/dryer but I did in my last unit as well and my water bill was nowhere near this high. We collectively do laundry maybe twice a week. We run the dishwasher once a week or week and a half since there’s only two of us and we don’t use that many dishes in a week. Idk if hand washing the dishes vs using the dishwasher would have that big of an impact on the water bill?
As for the energy bill, we have a Samsung thermostat that was the same thermostat in my last unit that I truthfully don’t really understand how to use. In my last apartment the fan would only kick on to regulate the temperature in my unit and would run for maybe 30 seconds before shutting off again. In this unit the fan is running 24/7 and never shuts off. I was looking at our energy usage on the thermostat for last month and it said our usage was 2,433.6kWh. To be fair this could be inaccurate because it said it was for the month of July and it also things it’s currently 4 hours later than it actually is and I don’t know how to change the date/time setting. There is an eco mode on the thermostat to set a timer but there’s no information on what that actually means/does. I’ll attach a picture of the thermostat to this post if anyone has the same one and can help me figure out the settings. I found a user manual online but it still wasn’t very helpful.
We don’t have a bunch of appliances plugged in, we both have tv’s in our room, my roommate watches tv every night and I have a switch and ps5 that I play occasionally. We typically use lamps instead of the overhead lighting and always shut them off before we leave to go anywhere. We are in a top floor unit but don’t get a lot of direct sunlight so there isn’t a lot of heat from the sun coming in and we both keep our shades closed halfway anyways because our windows directly face other units.
Any help, tips or tricks on lowering our utilities would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!