MyHomeZine

It’s not a secret that heating costs continue to rise each year. In fact the two significant factors of natural disasters and the war in Iraq contribute to this inflation of home heating expenses related to electric, gas and oil furnaces alike. In order to lower your bills you should follow the next tips:

First of all,  if it is sunny on a winter day, be sure to keep your curtains and blinds open during the day to let the rays in to provide some warmth. However, as far as my personal experience can be taken into account, when dusk and night hours come, you should shut and curtains and blinds. Don’t forget to re-open them the next morning. Besides, if you are not using a room, leave the door closed. If we are making a closer investigation of this problem, this will avoid the necessity to provide extra heat to that room, and also limit the cold air from escaping into the other rooms. When this happens, as a matter of fact, the boiler must work harder to heat the house and increase heating costs.

Don’t forget to check your windows to see if they are well sealed. If not, as far as this issue is concerned, the windows will allow cold air from the outside to enter the home, again making the furnace work harder to provide heat. By the way, a good way to test if your windows are well sealed, is to turn of all fans as well as the furnace, and produce smoke near the window. Remember, if air is entering the home through the windows, the smoke will move toward the window. You can purchase window sealing packets, for example, from a home improvement store. It is obvious that undersealing the windows is another option. It’s common knowledge that cold air may be coming into the house from the attic due to poor insulation. An important point is that there should be enough air pockets in the insulation to trap the cold air and push it away from the living areas. You should also remember, old, insufficient insulation is usually flat and brittle which indicates that it is time to replace the insulation.

As a matter of fact, buying a ceiling fan is another way to retrench heating costs. As you know, ceiling fans help push and keep the warmer air down. Besides, most models include reversible switches allowing the fans to be used in the summer as well. Don’t be afraid, the cost of the fan will, at some point, be made up with the money saved in heating costs. As you could observe, even the implementation of a few steps above will lead to better heating and a reduction in heating costs.