Heating and Cooling Money Saving Tips, Ideas and Advice on How to Reduce Your Monthly Budget

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HEATING & COOLING

HEATING & COOLING MONEY SAVING TIPS

Heating and cooling your home is a major expense. Significant savings can be achieved by actions requiring little or no investment, as well as major investments. Noted below are several ways to save, while keeping your home at a comfortable temperature. The site michaelbluejay.com/electricity/howmuch.html provides an easy way to calculate the cost of running different types of AC systems, as well as other electrical devices. The Environmental Protection Agency also offers some free tools to assist in increasing home energy efficiency. Energystar.gov/homeadvisor recommends home improvement projects to increase energy efficiency. Energystar.gov/home offers a room-by-room house tour that identifies opportunities to cut home energy bills.

1. Tips for saving on both heating and cooling.

a. Determine a comfortable setting for your heat and then set it two degrees lower. For each degree lower, savings will be about 3-5%. Conversely, find a comfortable setting for you air conditioner and then set it two degrees higher.

b. When less heat or air conditioning is required, such as at night when sleeping or during the day when the house is not occupied, or when you are on vacation, set the thermostat significantly lower for heat and significantly higher for air conditioning. If you have heating/AC zones in your house, turn the heat and AC back in zones you are not using. In most homes, trying to keep a constant temperature will result in greater energy usage than reducing heat and air conditioning usage when less temperature control is required. Some estimates indicate that you can lower your heating and air conditioning bill by as much as 10% by lowering your thermostat to reduce heat, or raising your thermostat to reduce air conditioning, by five degrees for four hours each day. However, if you are using a heat pump for heat, avoid large changes in thermostat settings (usually over two degrees), to avoid having the supplemental heat strip activate, which is quite costly.

c. Do not try to heat or cool your house faster by setting the thermostat to a higher or lower temperature than desired. The house won’t heat up or cool down any faster, and chances are you won’t turn the thermostat back to the desired temperature until the house has gotten too warm or cool, resulting in excess energy consumption. And, as noted above, if you are using a heat pump, turning up your thermostat more than two degrees above the present temperature to try to heat up your home more quickly will result in a higher cost for supplemental heat.

d. Install a programmable thermostat to ensure temperature settings are lowered and raised when desired. Even a moderately priced programmable thermostat will most likely allow you to adjust settings for different periods of the day, as well as weekends versus weekdays.

e. When heating the house, keep the blinds and drapes open on the sunny side of the house to help with heating. Conversely, keep the blinds and drapes closed on other windows to help retain the heat. Make sure to close blinds and drapes on all windows at night to help retain heat in the house. When using the AC, be sure to close blinds and drapes on the sunny side of the house to keep heat out.

f. When heating your home, if you have ceiling fans run them at low speed and set them on reverse (pushing air upwards) to help move the heated air away from your ceiling and down where the people are. If you have exhaust fans, use them sparingly since they suck the heated air out of your house. When cooling your house, use ceiling fans (pushing air down) to create a gentle breeze. The fans will not actually make your house cooler, but will allow you to set the air conditioning at a higher temperature to save energy costs and still feel cool. Make sure to turn off the ceiling fans when not using the room.

g. If you have storm windows/storm doors, make sure they are shut when heating/air conditioning to keep your warm or cool air inside the house.

h. Make sure your forced-air heating/AC vents and return grills, and baseboard radiators, are out in the open and not blocked by drapes and furniture, so heat and air conditioning can freely circulate. However, you can close vents in unused rooms and keep the room’s door closed to save on heating and air conditioning costs, as long as your thermostat controlling the temperature in rooms being used is not in the closed room. Also consider keeping closet doors closed to avoid using energy to heat and air condition them. If you have radiators, consider installing a reflective panel (available at home improvement stores) behind them to reflect the heat into the room. If you are using space heaters make sure there is plenty of distance from the heater to any flammable materials.

i. Remember to regularly change air filters in forced air systems. A dirty air filter that restricts air flow can increase heating/cooling bills considerably, and may reduce the life of your system. In systems with hot-water radiators, bleed trapped air once or twice a season to improve efficiency.