Search
Thursday 28 March 2024
  • :
  • :

Tips to Reduce Your Heating Bills This Winter

Tips to Reduce Your Heating Bills This Winter

heating-bill

We are looking at a long cold winter this year. If you are like many homeowners, you are hoping to find some quick and inexpensive ways to cut those heating bills. Changes in the weather have left many of us with more severe weather and that includes bigger snowstorms and bigger swings in temperature. All of this means that we need to work smarter instead of harder to find ways to keep our homes warm and snug throughout the cold months. Here are a few tips to help make your home more winter ready and able to withstand those long dark cold winter months without having the heating bill break your bank account.

Protect Against Winter Getting In

This is a basic that every homeowner should be thinking about before winter hits. Do a walk-through of your home and look at every place that winter winds can sneak into your home. Do you have good solid weather stripping around all your windows and doors? While it might be a bit of an investment, good insulation around these areas will help to keep your winter heating bills down.

Don’t forget to check in your attic for areas where chimneys and heating vents exit to make sure these are solid as well. Any area that leads to the outdoors needs to be checked, even little things like pet doors and basement vents. Don’t forget that those sliding glass doors will need extra insulation as well to ensure they aren’t leaking cold air into your home.

Update Insulation

We often tend to forget that our insulation in our homes is only good for a set amount of time. In addition, there have been new and innovative approaches to insulating our homes that might make a big difference. These include using LEED certified SmartCi panels instead of the traditional approach to insulating our homes. By taking the next step in insuring our homes are not only insulated but done in a green manner we can make the future bright for our future generations as well.

Give the Furnace a Break

If you primarily use only one room at a time in your home, why heat the whole house? Turn down the thermostat and bring in a small area heater instead. If you are just sitting and watching television or sitting in front of the computer, why not invest in one of those electric lap blankets to stay warm and let the rest of the house cool down. While it may feel lovely to walk through the house with it all toasty and warm, if you are heating rooms you aren’t using you are wasting heat and electricity.

Let Mother Nature Help

Some of us live in areas in the country where the sun shines while the temperature drops. If you are lucky enough to live somewhere that has plenty of sun in the winter, use it. Open up those curtains and let Mother Nature help you to keep warm with sunlight. You would be surprised how much it affects the temperature in a room when you open the curtains and let the light in. Best of all, it costs you nothing to use natural heat from the sun to warm up that room.