Fitness Center Marketing won’t help you much if your power bills are sucking every dollar out of our profit. There are many things you probably don’t think about that can lower your Gym power bills
by: Shannon Cook, Fitness Marketing Consltant and expert in How to open a 24 Hour Gym
Yes the power company will come to your business and help you find ways to lower your power bill for your gym business like they did for me.
The summer’s in Alabama are as hot as a blistered butt rash and my power bill almost doubled. I did everythign Icould think of to lower it like insulating the ceilings and making sure the air conditioner was maintained, but the air conditioner runs non stop when its 110 degrees outside.
The power company sent out an employee to do a power audit for me. He told me I could combine the 6 power meters into 2 and save $50 per meter because they charge $50 per meter plus power usage, which i did not know. I saved $200 per month just by doing that one thing.
Then he went through my gym. He told me to turn the water heaters down to 115 to 125 degrees to keep them from working so hard to heat water to a high temp.
Then we looked at my lighting. He recommended i take the old strip lighting out that required T-12 bulbs and install the new energy efficient T-8 lights. Actually I had 28 lights to begin with, but with the light output of the new T-8 bulbs, I only have 13 now, and it puts out way more light and the ballast that run the bulbs are about 1/4 the size of the old ballast and don’t even get hot like the old ballast. If you have an acoustical ceiling with lay in lights, then you can get the new lay in lights with the T-8 small bulbs, or you can get a T-8 conversion kit for the old lights if you want to but it’s about as difficult as being married to my ex-wife to install. I also recommend getting the daylight type of bulbs because they are brighter and put off a better quality of light.
Then the guy suggested I install motion switches for all lighting. Here is where I went through hell backwards with gasoline underwear on. I wanted good switches that were easy to set and worked even if members were 50′ across the gym. I ordered the best motion activated light switches amazon offered, which was about $60 apiece.
Well, needless to say, I spent hours upon hours trying to set them to work right. I turned the setting a tiny bit to make it stay on for a few more minutes extra, but they wouldn’t come on at all then. I have about 6 switches all together so you can see how frustrating this was. I finally went to Lowe’s and got a $20 motion switch and put one in. It worked perfect and was easy to set for the correct 15 minute time limit I needed in the main gym area. The bathrooms and child play room have 5 minute time limits. Time limits meaning if their is no motion detected for the set time, then it goes off, but when motion is detected it automatically comes on.
Just note that if your going to buy a switch make sure it isn’t ”auto off, manual on”, because it will not come on automatically, you have to press it on which defeats the purpose.
All these power saving changes made a tremendous difference in my overall power bill.
Make sure your ceiling is insulated with the correct amount of insulation also. if you have a drop ceiling or acoustical ceiling, then make sure the insulation is laying correctly and not scattered like a wasp nest in a tornado.
