Our nation’s birthday is tomorrow, and we couldn’t be more excited to get out of the office and fire up the grill! If your tenants are anything like us, they’re already checking their shopping lists and planning to swing by the liquor store for a borderline-irresponsible amount of beer after work.

(Fun fact: Americans buy an estimated $1 billion of beer every year to celebrate our independence. We also buy about $675 million in fireworks, 150 million hot dogs, 190 million pounds of beef, and 700 million pounds of chicken. Wow!)

In all of the excitement, it’s easy to check early on the third, but you’d be missing an important opportunity! It’s easy to cut operating cost over the holiday with a couple of quick actions that your building team can take in just a few minutes. Let’s lay them out:

1. Set Your Temperatures Forward

Most people are familiar with temperature setbacks, but set forwards can save a building money too. Depending on your climate and building envelope, set forwards could save you energy every night, but they’re far more likely to be effective over the weekend and holiday when there’s more time to rest at the higher temperature.

It’s easy to forget to set your building forward for weekday holidays, but often it means leaving money on the table. Your engineer can usually do this in a matter of minutes, so there’s no excuse not to!

2. E-mail Your Tenants

Now that you’ve done something about the largest energy costs that you control, engage your tenants to cut down on the energy costs that you don’t control. Tenants spaces account often account for half of all energy use in a building. Ask your tenants to turn off all lights before they go home for the day and unplug everything that can be unplugged (except the fridge!). “Vampire” devices, like laptop computers and coffee makers eat up a surprising amount of power even when they aren’t actively in use.

Your tenants will appreciate that you’re working to save them money and help the environment!

3. Look For Other Energy Drains

If your tenants are doing it, you can do it too! Look for other energy users in common spaces and shut them down or unplug them. Even better - have your engineer shut them down remotely if your building is equipped to do so. Taking a quick walk through your building before going home for the holiday can help your building use a lot less energy.

4. Get Ready For Wednesday

In all of this, make sure that you don’t forget to prepare your building for startup on Wednesday morning. Letting your temperature drift on the 4th means that your HVAC system will have to start earlier to get temperatures down to a comfortable level. You may also have to take a little bit of extra time to walk through your building and plug everything back in and turn lights back on.

Our nation’s energy is a precious resource, so what could be more American than helping to conserve it? A little bit of extra time this afternoon can help to cut your operational costs over Independence Day, giving you and your building engineer some extra piece of mind over the holiday.