Hold Down that Heating Bill
It is possible to minimize your heating bill without spending a lot of money. Here are a dozen ideas to get you started.
Turn down the thermostat! You’ve heard that before, but it really does work. You’ll save about 3 per cent of your heating bill for every degree you lower that thermostat, according to the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). So wear a sweater! Wear fingerless mittens! Carry a hot-water bottle! If you can’t bear the thought, at least turn the heat down when you’re at work or in bed. If you turn it down 10 degrees for 16 hours a day, you can save about 14 per cent on your heating bill. That’s a significant drop in your payment! If you can’t stand a chilly house when you first get up on the morning or arrive home, you can install a programmable thermostat. Most of them cost between $50 and $100.
Turn off the vent fans! Yes, you need to remove steam and odors from the kitchen and bathroom, but turn the fan off as soon as the job is done, usually within 20 minutes. A small vent fan left running for an hour can exhaust a houseful of air. That’s expensive!
Close the fireplace damper. A fireplace chimney is specifically designed to pull smoke out of the house. Leaving it open is like having a hole in your roof. About 14 per cent of the warm air lost from your house escapes through the fireplace, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Cut back on fireplace use in general. It’s a great pleasure to sit by the flames, but a traditional fireplace sucks heat out of a room. Turn down the furnace when you build a fire. If you can seal the fireplace when it’s not in use, do it.
Clean or replace filters on your furnace as often as the manufacturer recommends. That’s usually once a month. Consider having your furnace and ductwork cleaned if you haven’t had it done in the last two years. Dust really cuts a furnace’s efficiency – and that raises your heating bill!
Make sure the heat vents or registers are not blocked. It’s tempting to improve the traffic patterns in your rooms by placing furniture in front of or over the heat vents, but you’ll pay for the convenience! Make sure the curtains aren’t redirecting warm air up along the windows instead of into the room, as often happens in older houses. If necessary, install a baffle to redirect the hot air. Be sure and clean the dust out of the registers at the beginning of heating season.
Put heat-resistant radiator reflectors between exterior walls and the radiators. That can be something as simple as a sheet of aluminum foil taped to the wall.
Use your curtains! Open the curtains on south-facing windows during the day to absorb as much sunlight and warmth as possible, and close all your curtains at night. One old-fashioned tradition that can really reduce your heating bill is to hang heavier and longer curtains in the winter. It’s even possible to interline your curtains for more warmth. Old blankets stitched between the curtain and the lining will do the trick.
Close off rooms you don’t use in the winter, and be sure to close the heat registers or radiators. This can save 5 to 20 per cent of your annual heating costs, according to Consumers Energy Company. Why are you heating space you aren’t using?
Use space heaters to supplement your furnace. If one area of your house is always chilly, don’t overheat the rest of the house just to make it comfortable. Use a supplementary heat source instead.
If you have a ceiling fan, set it to blow gently downward. Hot air rises, but having warm air along the ceiling won’t make your feet feel any better. Push that warm air down where you can enjoy it!
Insulate your windows. If you don’t have energy-efficient windows, install storm windows to cut heat loss. You can also tape a sheet of plastic over windows, being sure to seal it all the way around. You might miss the outside view, but you’ll appreciate the look of your fuel bill! Install weatherstripping around your windows, or caulk the join between the window frames and the walls. You can lose a lot of heat through those tiny cracks.
Install weatherstripping around the exterior doors, or caulk the doorframes. Install heat sweeps along the bottom of the door to block drafts, or use an old-fashioned sandbag. If the area around the door still seems chilly, consider installing winter curtains over the door.
None of these heat-saving ideas are difficult to accomplish. None of them are expensive, and some of them are free. Try a few of them – or better yet, all of them! – and you won’t be nearly so unhappy when your heating bills arrive.
