Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Water Saving Tips for Home

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Water

Fresh water is a precious resource not only in Malaysia, but in this WORLD as well. So, we should do our best to preserve it.

Today, we will discuss about why water should be saved, how you can do so at home and in the workplace, and the potential that reclaimed water has to improve the condition of our environment.

But today we will only focus in how to save water indoor. Let’s see what tips and tricks for saving water:

  1. Check for home for leaks, hidden water leaks can be wasting water without you even being aware of it. A good way to check for leaks is, if your property is metered, then read your water meter and do not use any water for a couple of hours and go back to check that the meter reads exactly the same. If it does not, there is a leak.
  2. Turn off tap while cleaning your teeth, shaving or washing your face. You can waste can up to few litres of water in a minute by just letting the water pour down the sink.
  3. Take a short shower (5 minutes or less is best) rather than a bath could save you up to 80% of water a month. If you do have baths, just half fill them.
  4. Replace you showerhead with an ultra-low-flow version. Some units are available that allow you to cut off the flow without adjusting the water temperature knobs.
  5. After your bath, try using the water left over to wash the toilet floor or to water plants.
  6. Fix any dripping tap, you can waste 70-90 litres a week which will cost a lot more than what might just be the price of a new washer.
  7. Don’t overfill the kettle when making a cup of tea. Only fill and boil what you need, this will save you money on your energy costs too.
  8. Only use the washing machine and the dishwasher when you can put on a full load. It wastes both water and energy to run only a half full machine.
  9. Collect and reuse the discharge water from washing machine to water the plants.
  10. Keep cool water in the fridge so that you do not need to run water down the sink to have a cold drink.
  11. Fit water saving device in your cistern to save when flushing, this can save you 3 litres a flush.
  12. Install faucet aerators on sink faucets can reduce the water flow.
  13. Think before throwing used water down the drain, eg water in a pan after cooking, this could be reused for watering plants around the house when cooled down, or in the garden.
  14. When washing dishes by hand, fill one sink or basin with soapy water. Quickly rinse under a slow-moving stream from the faucet.
  15. Do not use running water to thaw meat or other frozen foods. Defrost food overnight in the refrigerator or by using the defrost setting on your microwave.

Tomorrow we shall continue to how to save water outdoor. To know more water saving tips, visit us tomorrow.

Energy Saving Tips for Office

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Yesterday we had talked about Energy Saving Tips for Home. And today we are going to talk about Office.

If you’re a business man or having your own office, then you should really pay your attention in this topic. ;)

In this topic we are paying attention in the following parts:

  • Lighting
  • Air Conditioner
  • Office Equipment

Lighting

  1. Make use of daylight whenever possible to reduce lighting costs as office hour is usually day time, so the daylight is highly available.
  2. Cut down the number of lamps in areas with ample daylight.
  3. Keep all windos, lights and light fittings clean to maintain optimum lighting performance.
  4. Replace the incandescent lamps or tungsten halogen “spotlight” lamps with compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) as we talked yesterday in home.
  5. Install occupancy sensors to turn off lights automatically in public areas such as corridors, toilets, pantry etc.
  6. Do not switch on the light when it’s not in use like in meeting room.
  7. Switch off the light during lunch time.

Air Conditioner

  1. Turn off the air conditioner office right after use.
  2. Do not turn on the air conditioner in meeting room when it’s not in use.
  3. Lower windows blinds or curtains to reduce direct sunlight.
  4. Dress lightly to minimize the use of air conditioner.
  5. Clean dustfilers and fan coil units regularly for good ventilation.
  6. Set the air conditioner temperature not too low. 20-25′c is optimum in Malaysia.
  7. Adjust the fan speed according to needs rather than lowering the temperature setting to cater for increased cooling demand.
  8. If necessary, use fans to increase air circulation.
Saving energy also is one of the way to earn money.

Office Equipment

  1. Switch off photocopiers and printers after office hours.
  2. Follow the maintenance schedules of the appliances.
  3. Photocopy in batch as it can minimize energy consumption due to less frequent starting.
  4. Use ‘Print Preview’ function to check the layout and style prior to printing.
  5. Adjust the margins and font size of documents in printer in order to optimize use of paper.
  6. Divert calls to one or two units after office hours and turn off the remaining units if there are many fax machines.
  7. Switch off the computers after office hours.
  8. Switch off the computers whenever they are not in use for an hour or more to reduce power consumption.
  9. Use power management features of computers to set them to sleep mode if they must be left on when not in use.
  10. Avoid using screen savers as they don’t save any energy.
  11. Enable the hibernation mode setting.
  12. Reduce brightness level of the screen to the lowest comfortable leve.
  13. Unplug all equipment chargers and adapters when they are not in use.
  14. Avoid workers to use the office plug to re-charge their own mobile phones, PDA devices or music players.

If you have any other tips, please do not hesitate to share with us here.

Please make sure you always return here for our surprise. ;)

Energy Saving Tips for Home

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Yesterday we had just talked about the electricity tarif for house. And as our promise, today we are going to tell you on how to reduce the energy and save your electricity bill legally. ;)

And in this topic, we will put our concern to the following part:

  • Lighting
  • Air Conditioner
  • Refrigerator
  • Cooker
  • Washing Machine
  • Iron
  • Electronic devices like computer, speaker, radio, television

Lighting

  1. Switch off the lights that are not in use or when you don’t really need it.
  2. Maximize daylight usage.
  3. Keep light bulbs and light fittings clean to maximize the lighting efficiency.
  4. Replace incandescent lamps like ordinary bulb with compact fluorescent lamps (CFL).

 

Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) saves up to 75% of electricity consume compared to ordinary bulb, but it can produces the same amount of light and less heat. CFL lasts for 6 to 8 times longer than ordinary incandescent bulb or even more.
So, basically using CFL can save your money and energy, and help to protect the environment.

Ordinary bulbs CFL equivalent
25W 5-6W
40W 8-11W
60W 13-18W
100W 20-25W

Air Conditioner

  1. Set room temperature to 23-25′C during hot whether and higher during raining season.
  2. Clean the filters regularly to make sure the ventilation and to decrease the workload of the air conditioner.
  3. Keep the windows and doors closed when turn on the air conditioner. Use curtains or blinds to shade against the sunlight.
  4. Remove any obstructions at air vents in air conditioner.
  5. Turn off air conditioner when it’s not in use or set auto turn off when you sleep.
  6. It’s not necessary to turn on for whole night. Set the timer to shut down when you go on bed. It can set 30-60 minutes after you fall asleep to reduce energy.
  7. Of course, use fans instead of air conditioner will save even more. ;)
Saving energy is one of the way to save money.

Refrigerator

  1. Do not set the refrigerator temperature unnecessarily low.
  2. Let the hot/warm food to cool down to room temperature prior to transfer it into refrigerator.

Cooker

  1. Use microwave to cook small quantities of foor or reheat dishes.
  2. Use pressure cookers as they can save up to 66% cooking time.
  3. Always cover pans with lids to keep the heat inside to save energy.
  4. Turn off the oven or fire before cooking is completed. Let the residual heat finish the job.
  5. Do not start cooking too early ahead of the meal time, because reheat or keep food warm simply wastes energy.
  6. Defrost the frozen foods in air (room temperature) before cooking them. Not necessary to defrost with microwave.

Washing Machine

  1. If you have less clothes to wash, then keep it for another day or two.
  2. Wash the clothes 2-3 times in a week to reduce the time of using washing machine.
  3. Full load for the machine. Half load of clothes uses almost same amount of energy as full load.
  4. Of course, if you hand wash your clothes save more energy than washing machine.

Iron

  1. Iron all items in 1 session to avoid frequent reheating of the iron.
  2. Iron the items requiring highest temperature first. Switch off the iron and use the residual heat for fabrics requiring low temperature like silk.
  3. Switch off the iron when it’s not in use for a period of time.

Electronic devices like computer, speaker, radio, television

  1. Switch off electronic devices after use.
  2. Avoid leaving appliances in standby mode if not going to use it for a prolong period of time.
  3. Standby power consumption for morest electrical appliances is small, typically ranging from 0.5 to 10W. However, with large number of devices all in standby mode, the accumulated power will be large. It can up to 5-10% of your total electricity use.
  4. When leaving home for vacation, switch off, or you can even unplug the electrical appliances from the power sources.

I think we shall stop here and tomorrow we are going to tell you in how to save the energy in office.

Beside that, if you have any other tips, please do not hesitate to share with us here.

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