Steve Collison

It’s a question we’ve all asked – should I leave the air conditioning on when I leave the home to save money? It’s a question that could be costing you money!

Is it cheaper to leave air conditioning on?

In short, no. If you’re still not convinced, read on.

An air conditioning unit uses the same amount of energy to reduce a house from 99 to 98 degrees as it does from 79 to 78. Your house basically ‘leaks’ heat either inwards or outwards. Without any kind of temperature control, your house will begin to match the temperature outside. When the temperature changes, your air conditioning unit kicks in to cool the house again.

If you turn the air conditioning off when you leave the house, your house will reach the outside temperature. Suppose at this point the air conditioning is turned on again while you’re not home, then when the house gets to 70 degrees again the air conditioning is turned off. The house will reach the outside temperature again. All the energy used to cool the house while you weren’t there was wasted.

This is what you’re doing with an air conditioning unit all the time, except that it does it in smaller cycles.

You will consume less or the same amount of energy turning your air conditioning off when you’re not at home, as you would maintaining the overall temperature. PERIOD.

Even if you’re only leaving for 30 minutes, you will not consume more energy. The work the air conditioning unit does cooling the house down is work it would have done just in smaller doses. In fact, an air conditioning running at full speed is more energy efficient than an air conditioning that turns on and off every 5 minutes.

You can test this yourself: Buy an electric energy meter, and plug your air conditioning unit into it. One day when you leave the house, reset the meter and turn the air conditioning unit off. When you get home turn it on. When the house is at the right temperature, read how much energy you used. Do the same for the air conditioning unit being left on, just remember to reset the unit before you leave. The energy used will be the same or less in favour of turning it off in EVERY CASE.

Big sad face – I lost my phone the other day. A brand new HTC Eris on the Google Android network. Losing my phone has been a nuisance, but more importantly it has compromised my privacy. My phone was configured to link into my email accounts – way too much information for someone I don’t know to be looking at.

I decided to search for some software to install on my Android phone, and came across WaveSecure.com. The software is also compatible with many other phones.

The most important feature for me is GPS tracking. If I lose my phone, I can log on to the website and track its location. Having a vague idea of where it is really helps!

But the software also offers some other features:

• You can lock your phone either by the website OR via text message.
• You can back up your data even while your phone is locked.

If the phone was stolen, being able to lock the phone, back up your data and then give the GPS location of the phone to the police gives you much better odds of finding your phone or at least avoiding some of the problems it could have caused.

It is incredibly cheap to use the GPS tracking, locking and back up services provided by Wave Secure, I think it equated to less than a dollar a month.

Worth it in my book.