As if the cold snap of winter isn’t enough, with winter comes heightened heating costs that can cause an already climbing energy tab to skyrocket over the winter months. There are many ways that you can save on your heating and energy bills just by taking a look around your house and making some inexpensive changes.
Keeping The Heat In
Heating your house is one large expense, but if you do not take the time to seal up your home, then you are fighting a losing battle. Heat will try to escape anywhere it can, and by limiting its opportunities to do so, you will be saving money on your heating costs.
The most common places that heat slips out of your home are around windows and doors. First, check your doors for drafts along the bottom and between the door and inner frame. If you can see light coming in around your door, then it will certainly be draining the heat from your house. If it is coming in around the side, that means that your door does not fit snugly inside the frame. Put some strip insulation (made of thin, pliable rubber) around the frame to make the fit snug. A door sweep for the bottom of the door is a cheap and effective way to make sure the cold isn’t sneaking in that way.
When examining your windows, look for cobwebs. Spiders will build their webs where there is a breeze, as this is where insects are most likely to seek refuge in the warmth of your home. To check around window frames, light a stick of incense and run it along the edge of the window. Drafts will be easily detectable with the disruption of the smoke.
If you find a draft, it can be fixed easily and cheaply with a little caulking. If the gap is too substantial for caulk alone to fill, use grab some old rags and cut them up in strips. Stuff the cloth into the gap until it is full, and then cover it with caulking. This will both seal and insulate the crack, and costs almost nothing! Once you have sealed the nooks and crannies, install your storm windows. If you do not have storm windows, you can buy inexpensive kits that allow you to seal your window with plastic to stave off the cold and keep in the warm.
In order to use the meagre sunlight we get in the winter to support your heating, cover north-facing windows with shutters, blinds or drapes. Leave south-facing windows uncovered during the daylight hours, and cover them at night when the sun has gone down. The sun will warm the windows during the day, and the cold night air will cool them at night. Closing your drapes will prevent some of that cold from creeping into your home.
Another area where heat is likely to escape is a working fireplace. Make sure that the flu is closed and that, when it is closed, no drafts are escaping around it. If you don’t use the fireplace, or the flu is busted and you don’t feel like fixing it, consider sealing it up so that it doesn’t become a drain on your heating bill. An open or drafty flu is like an open window. You can even convert it to a natural gas fireplace or consider replacing it with an incredibly efficient wood burning stove, which could provide you with a monster saving on your heating bill, using a totally renewable resource.
If there are rooms in your home that you do not use (for example, spare rooms, closets, pantry), close the heating vents in them and seal them off by shutting the door and stuffing a rug in the bottom crack. One caveat; make sure that there are no thermostat sensors in this room, as it will give the furnace a misread on how warm the rest of the house is.
Using Energy Efficiently
Aside from your parents’ advice to turn off some lights and put on a sweater (good advice, mind you!), there are several other simple ways you can save energy in your home. Sticking with heating, get your furnace serviced once a year, and change or wash the filters on it every 1-2 months. This will keep the system running efficiently.
The other thing you can do is to install an automatic thermostat with a timer. Keeping the temperature of your home as consistent as possible is one way to improve the efficiency of your furnace. It is recommended that you turn your thermostat down 6 or 7 degrees when you are out of the house (say, at work) and at night. The great thing about automatic thermostats is that you can set the timer to bring the heat back up to a comfortable level 30 minutes before you wake up or come home from work. If you have a manual thermostat, chances are that you will get up in a cold house and crank the thermostat way higher than is necessary in a bid to warm the house quickly. You will then have to turn it back down, making the furnace adjust to varying temperature demands. Furthermore, with the automatic thermostat, you don’t have to worry about forgetting to turn it down; the timer does it for you.
An automatic thermostat will cost you $50 or up, depending on the features you desire. Dropping the heat in your home every day you aren’t there as well as at night could mean big savings. The investment will likely pay for itself in one winter season.
The biggest energy-suckers in your home—besides heating and cooling—are old appliances, traditional light bulbs, hair dryers and irons. If you are replacing your old appliances, look for energy-saving models. Even if your appliances are not broken, the money you may save in energy saving, as well as the rebates that some utility companies offer, might make it worthwhile to trade in that old model. Hint: if you are buying a washing machine, buy a front-loader, which uses about 40% less water and 50% less energy than the top loader (and always wash on the cold cycle!).
In your daily life, simply switching from traditional filament light bulbs to energy efficient LED and compact fluorescent bulbs could save up to 90% of your lighting energy consumption. While they are more expensive up front, the energy saved, along with their increased life expectancy, will save you money in the long run.
Saving money on energy, and conserving energy in a world that is growing concerned for its supply, does not have to involve a huge investment on your part. Just the little tasks listed here can mean big saving when it counts: in the cold, financial crunch following the holidays.
