Thursday, October 9, 2014

Think It Thursday: 10 Tips To Cut Back On Heating Costs

With cooler temps starting to settle in, for some of us, it means it's time to turn our furnaces on. And with the added premise of another bitter winter, premature heating costs are the last thing we want. 

Here are ten tips to help you reduce your heating costs. 


1. Replace worn weather stripping. Some weatherstripping needs to be replaced every few years because of wear. 

2. Adjust door thresholds. For exterior doors you can either adjust the height of the threshold (be sure it doesn't interfere with opening & closing the door) or install a sweep. Sweeps are perfect for interior doors as well to help keep the heat in or out of certain rooms. 

3. Plug holes in exterior walls from pipes, gas lines & electrical cables with expanding foam. 

4. Use a portable heater. Turn down the thermostat & use a space heater in the most common room your family gathers, like the living room. The savings from reducing the furnace temperature should offset the cost of using the space heater & for the heater itself.

5. Plastic, plastic, plastic! Using plastic on your windows & patio doors will make a noticeable effect on your heating bill. 

6. Install a programmable thermostat. The U.S. Department of Energy claims that you can knock 10% off your yearly heating & cooling expenses by turning the thermostat back 10º-15º for eight hours a day. 

7. Take advantage of the sun. Open blinds & drapes during the day to let the heat of the sun in. At dusk, close them to help trap the heat inside.

8. Keep your furnace in proper working order by keeping furnace filters clean or replacing them as needed (at least once a month during frequent use). Also get your furnace or HVAC system serviced every year prior to using it for the season. 

9. Be efficient with your water. Aside from lowering the temperature of your hot water heater to 120ºF & wrapping the heater itself in jacket insulation, there are other ways to save. Taking shorter showers, using a low flow shower head, washing full loads in the dishwasher & clothes washer, along with using the cold water cycle when possible will all reduce your hot water usage. 

10. Choose ENERGY STAR! Appliances, windows, water heaters, furnaces & even light bulbs can come with the ENERGY STAR seal.

And please remember that you can always contact your natural gas company to find out if there are any current rebates or incentives available. 

15 comments:

  1. When I listen to my friends complain about how bitter cold it is during the Winter, I say a silent prayer and thank God that I live in the Caribbean. We don't need heaters, we need air conditions in every single room. :)

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  2. Great tips! All of which we can use as we come up on the cold weather! Our bills can sometimes get crazy for heat!

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  3. Good tips. I tend to be an energy hog. I try to use as least amount as possible. I feel like my heating costs aren't too high, but they could probably be lowered using some of these tips.

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  4. I like to use a small portable heater in my office during the day since I'm usually the only one home.

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  5. We added some extra insulation a few years ago. It helped so much!

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  6. I need to do some of these. We have a big house and our heating costs are so high... I bet if I would put plastic around my back porch it would help a lot.

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  7. These are great tips which I definitely could have used when we still lived on the East Coast! Now I'm thinking we're saving a bunch of money since we rarely turn on the heat in Southern California!

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  8. These are fantastic tips to save money on heating costs. We are looking into adding extra insulation to the front of our house. It gets SO cold in the winter!

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  9. Those are all great tips. We have a programmable thermostat but I almost always turn it on whenever I feel like it. I'm going to have to tell hubby about that plastic, because there's usually a draft coming through our front door.

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  10. A few years ago we joined the counties home winterization program. The city sent out workers to go over everything in our house. They swapped out our lights for energy efficiant ones, they sealed all the leaks around doors and windows, they patched a hole we had above the stove where our range used to be, they changed our smoke detectors to the carbon variety. They had this giant hose hooked to our front door so they could see where all the leaks were. They had blown insulation installed in some of our walls. It was such a great program. They also checked our boiler and heating elements and we have hot water / forced air heat. it didn't make a drastic change like reduce our bill by half, but it did make a significant difference.

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  11. These are all really great tips for saving money on heating. I know a lot of us are struggling to keep the heat on so these will definitely help. We bought one of those things that fits under the front door and it keeps the draft out, that definitely saves us a lot.

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  12. Thanks for these great tips. I am going to work on weather proofing our house this week.

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  13. These are such great tips. Thank you so much! I know we have a few things to do to get our house ready for the winter.

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  14. Great tips indeed! we don't need to use it as much here but heating and a/c can produce huge bills.

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  15. I've never heard anything about using plastic on windows and doors. Not sure how to do that?! Drying clothes also helps heat up the house ... just as in the summer I avoid drying clothes until night so as not to add to the scorching summer heat, I do like the way it helps warm up the house in the winter. :)

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