How to Keep from Losing $575 Every Year to Your Utility Company

Energy efficient homes mean you protect your money from the electric company just because you were smart when choosing the options for your home. When you buy an energy efficient mobile home, not only do you save every month on your utility bills, but you get a more comfortable house. When you have the choice, we always recommend going with an Energy Star home.

What an Energy Star Home Means for You

While everyone’s utility usage is different, the average family in an Energy Star home saves $575 every year compared to the average homeowner without an Energy Star home. 

Yes, you have to pay a little more for an Energy Star home, but usually the upgrade pays for itself because your savings is usually more than the increased amount of your loan payment. If you are buying the home for cash, most people will save on the Energy Star upgrade within 5-7 years. 

Looking at water heaters at your local building supply store is an easy way to see the difference. You can buy a 40-gallon electric water heater for about $300…and pay your electric company about $419 every year to run it. Or you can buy a hybrid 50-gallon water heater for $1300 that will cost you about $110 every year to run. Sure, the first year is painful, but that means, the energy saving heater paid for itself in about three years, and over the 10-year life of the unit, you will rescue about $2,000 from going to the electric company.

Comfort Comes from More than Just Saving Money

A well-insulated home improves your comfort in two ways. First, you will have less hot and cold spots in your home. The insulation encourages uniform temperatures throughout the house. You also get less noise from outside creeping into your home. Insulation naturally dampens sounds, so you hear less traffic outside, and you get more “calm and serenity” inside…unless, of course, you have a gaggle of young, noisy kids. In that case, all bets are off when it comes to quiet regardless of your Energy Star rating.

You Reduce Your Pollution Contribution

If you could cram your greenhouse gasses down into the size of a vehicle, buying an Energy Star home instead of a regular home means you keep your local power plant from yearly belching out about 5,500 pounds of bad gasses into the air, or the same weight as an F-150 with 2-3 adults inside. That might not seem like a lot but multiply that by the 94,633 homes built in 2019. If they were all Energy Star homes, that would save the weight of two and a half Nimitz class aircraft carriers (those are the big ones) worth of greenhouse gasses…every year!

But What if I Have Renewable Energy for My Power?

Even if you have solar, wind, or hydraulic power sources, Energy Star is still the way to go. You need to invest less in equipment when you have an Energy Star home or, depending where you live, you may have more power to sell to your utility company.

Every time we sell a home, we encourage it to be an Energy Star home. We are big fans of saving you money over the life of your home ownership, so we are thrilled to offer you energy saving homes in our lineup of homes.

What Does the Future Look Like?

The Department of Energy proposed a rule in 2018 to require even higher energy saving standards for the manufactured home industry (a.k.a. mobile homes). It was almost live in 2017, but that release of the rule was pulled back for further review. The rules are very exciting for the consumer because they are expected to save the you about $350 every year in energy costs on a single wide and about $500 on a double wide. 

The rule mostly addresses how the structure of the house is built, but also encompasses the rightsizing of heating and cooling equipment for optimal efficiency. The rules affecting the build are important, because many of the changes won’t require maintenance or replacement of systems, but they will sit there doing their job of keeping your home comfortable year after year without any more dollars spent.

The homes will cost a little more to make, but the savings will pay for the additional costs in about seven years, and these proposed changes should continue to save you money for the life of the home. Between these new rules and upgrading to an Energy Star home, that could potentially save you over $1000/year in energy savings every year. Wouldn’t that be nice?