There are so many ways to cut down your energy expenses all year long. Most homeowners go along paying the bills without addressing these easy fixes for making your home more energy efficient. Today, we’ll focus on the soon-to-come fall season and how to save money on heating.
Tips on How to Save Money on Heating
- Seal your home. The warm air from your heating system needs to stay inside your home. When it leaks into the outdoors through minute cracks, you’re wasting energy. Furthermore, cold air can make its way inside your home through these cracks in exterior walls. Go around your home and wave a lit incense stick around these areas: baseboards; holes for cables, pipes, and wires; recessed lighting; electric plug outlets; door and window frames, under doors, and through cracks between window panes. If the smoke wavers, you have an air leak. Seal up these cracks with insulation, weatherstripping, and caulk.
- Open up windows on sunny days. Whenever the sun’s shining, open the blinds, curtains, and shutters so the solar radiation can get inside your home and help warm it up naturally, which is one of the great answers to the question of how to save money on heating.
- Use the thermostat to program home heating efficiently. All year long, you can save money on energy by programming your thermostat to cut back on energy during the day when occupants are away at work or school and at night when everyone’s sleeping. Sometimes you can cut back on energy as much as eight degrees. In winter, program the thermostat to raise the heating to a more comfortable setting during the mornings and evenings when people are moving around.
- Change your air filter. Your heating system will work more efficiently when you keep a clean filter in the unit. A dirty filter will cause the system to struggle to heat, creating friction and wear on parts so that breakdowns are more likely.
- Schedule preventative maintenance. Always schedule preventative maintenance in the fall and spring so that your system works well throughout the heating and cooling seasons.
For more on how to save money on heating, contact Ace Hardware Home Services of Dayton.