Great Ideas To Save Energy & Money On Your Heating Bill

Now that the temperatures outside are turning cooler it’s time to get your home ready for the cold months ahead.

As you do this, here are several suggestions to save money on your upcoming winter heating bills.

1. Open curtains on your south-facing windows during the day to allow sunlight to naturally heat your home, and close them at night to reduce the chill you may feel from cold windows.

2. Use a heavy-duty, clear plastic sheet on a frame or tape clear plastic film to the inside of your window frames during the cold winter months. Make sure the plastic is sealed tightly to the frame to help reduce infiltration.

3. Set back your thermostat to the coolest level that’s comfortable. When you are asleep or out of the house, turn your thermostat back 10° to 15° for eight hours and save around 10% a year on your heating and cooling bills. A programmable thermostat can make it easy to do this.

4. Clean warm air registers, baseboard heaters and radiators and make sure carpeting, furniture or draperies are not blocking them. This will block the heat from the register, heater or radiator making your furnace run longer and costing you more money.

5. Keep your fireplace damper closed unless a fire is burning. Keeping the damper open is like keeping a window wide open during the winter; it allows warm air to go right up the chimney. If you never use your fireplace, plug and seal the chimney flue. If you do use the fireplace, install tempered glass doors and a heat-air exchange system that blows warmed air back into the room.

6. During the winter months the air in our homes can get very dry. Adding humidity using a humidifier makes a home feel warmer and can generate energy savings as high as 20%.

7. Reverse the spin of your ceiling fans and this will push the warmer air trapped at the ceiling back into the room.

8. Change your furnace filters and prevent a blocked return from a filter from causing your system to work much harder than usual as well as not provide the temperature that you desire inside the home.

9. Lower the temperature of your water heater to the warm setting (120°F). You’ll not only save energy, you’ll avoid scalding your hands.

10. Eliminate drafts around your windows by adding caulk or weather stripping to seal air leaks around leaky doors and windows. Use a heavy-duty, clear plastic sheet on a frame or tape clear plastic film to the inside of your window frames during the cold winter months. Make sure the plastic is sealed tightly to the frame to help reduce infiltration.If your windows are over 20 years old you may want to consider replacing them with more efficient windows.

Don’t Forget to Schedule Your Fall Furnace Tune Up

Having your furnace checked out in the Fall is important in a couple of ways.  The first is that it will improve the efficiency of your heating system which lowers the cost to operate it.

Secondly, for older furnaces, it can often identify potential problems that can be addressed early.  This avoids being stuck without heat in the middle of the winter.

Mecko’s Heating and Cooling offers a $79 HVAC Tune Up that will get your heating system ready for the cold weather.  See the details by going to Super $79 Tune Up.