Lowering Heating Bills – A Simple Proposition

With the continued increase in costs to heat homes in the winter and mounting financial pressure to make ends meet, homeowners are challenged to afford the comfort of an optimally heated home. This article identifies a number of simple and relatively inexpensive actions that can result in lower heating bills.

Ceiling Fans

Be sure to establish the fan’s direction in the clockwise direction. In so doing, and keeping the fan at a low speed, the blades will create an updraft. Augmented by the natural tendency for heat to rise, a clockwise direction will result in moving hot air downward and eliminate hot and cold spots.

Damper

A primary contributor to loss of warm air is the chimney. In fact, a fireplace that may be burning a fire typically allows about 24,000 cubic feet of warm air to escape through the chimney, not to mention it allows cold air from the outside to come in. Consequently, a number of actions should be considered based on amount of use of the fireplace:

• If never used, a homeowner may want to consider sealing the flue.
• If used, then the homeowner should be sure to keep the damper closed when not in use.

Curtains

Choice of window treatments is a determinant of the amount of energy that can be saved over an extended period of time, particularly insulated curtains:

• They help reduce drafts and heat loss, particularly if they include acrylic or high-density foam insulation or reflective film.
• In terms of actual deployment, curtains should be open during the day to take advantage of the ambient solar heat and closed at night to ensure the home retains the heat.

Water

Lower the water temperature in household water heaters to 120-degrees F. According to DOE, a decrease in water temperature of 10 degrees will lower energy costs by as much as 5 percent. And, from an operational viewpoint, this lower temperature level also stems corrosion and sediment build up in the water heater.

Recognizing that dishwasher cleaning cycles should be run at 140 degrees F homeowners should verify that the installed dishwasher has a booster heater, thus allowing for this decrease in water heater temperature.

Programmable Thermostat

The average consumer spends in excess of $2,000 per year on home energy bills, half of which is for heating and cooling. By maintaining room temperatures in the range of 68 degrees F in the winter, significant savings will result. As a rule of thumb for each degree the temperature is lowered in the 60 to 70 degree range, customers will realize 5 percent savings. And a programmable thermostat so configured typically saves $180 on a homeowner’s annual energy bill.