With friends and family in the house during the holidays, you want to ensure everyone is comfortable and one way of doing this is to keep the house warm. Unfortunately, heating and cooling systems are one of the biggest energy hogs accounting for almost half of the total energy costs.
This means when you keep the heating systems running the entire day, you stand having a gigantic heating bill at the end of the month. You don’t want this, do you?
What if I told you, you can keep your heating costs low and keep your guest comfy? It would be interesting, wouldn’t it?
To help you out, here are tips given by furnace repair services providers on how to do it:
Service the furnace beforehand
Sometimes you have to spend to save and servicing the furnace is one of those instances. Before the holidays kick in, hire a service technician to inspect the furnace and clean it. The contractor should also fix any issues the appliance might be having.
One of the most essential things the contractor should do is cleaning or replacing the air filter. When air filters get dirty, they make the furnace work harder than it should, leading to a high energy bill and you don’t want this.
To keep the costs low, clean the filters, or replace the worn-out pieces.
Insulate your home
With many people in the house, a lot of warm air leaks to the outside as people keep opening the windows and doors. What results from this? You have a high heating bill.
To keep your costs low, think of your house as an envelope, and to keep the envelope sealed, close all cracks.
When you hire a furnace technician, ask them to feel for drafts around doors, windows, pipes, and electrical and cable outlets. If there are drafts, fix them using draft blockers and outlet sealers.
You also should ensure window and door stripping are in good condition. Pay a furnace professional to inspect and seal cracks around the windows and doors. If you are a dab hand at DIY projects, you can spend a weekend doing the work yourself.
You can also purchase a winterization kit and shrink wrap your windows in plastic for winter. While the kit doesn’t look beautiful, it’s highly effective when done right.
Before wrapping things up, ensure your home’s insulation is working properly. If your home was built before 1980, you most likely need to upgrade your insulation.
If snow melts quickly off your roof or creates icicles, you have an insulation problem you should address as soon as possible. If you don’t have time to replace the entire insulation, find the individual cracks, and seal them.
Finally, draw the blinds at night to prevent the cold air from coming in, and this way you will save you up to 10% on your room’s heat.
Lower your thermostat
It might sound absurd telling you to lower the thermostat when you want to keep your guests comfy and happy, but doing it will go a long way towards saving you a lot of money.
Studies show that Americans are used to warmer homes so they keep their thermostats high, which leads to them wasting a lot of money.
Want to save some money? Lower your thermostat. Keep your temperature at 68 degrees during the day and lower it to 60 degrees at night. If this is too cold, grab a few extra blankets.
If there will be no one in the house, shut the heat off to save energy.
Got a programmable thermostat? Make use of it. This thermostat allows you to set the thermostat to work at certain times of the day and stop working at other times.
For example, you can set it to stop working when there is no one in the house, then work when people are getting back home.
Work with an expert
If you have done all the above and still your heating costs are high, chances are your furnace is old. Work with a reputable furnace service Arlington and find a furnace that is the right size for your home. The furnace should also have a high energy star rating to have peace of mind that it will function efficiently for a long time.
