by Cooper Climate Control
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Heating and cooling costs make up about 48 percent of the average person’s utility bill. If you’re looking to lower your living expenses, you can probably do a lot to lower your heating and cooling bills and, by extension, your entire utility bill. You don’t have to spend a fortune on new heating and cooling systems or expensive equipment to lower costs.
The first step is keeping your existing system maintained. A properly cleaned and maintained system heats and cools your home more efficiently, using less energy. You can cut costs further by promoting better airflow within your home, covering your windows against cold air in the winter and sunshine in the summer, and lowering your thermostat when you’re asleep or out.
Care for Your Heating and Cooling System Properly
No matter what kind of heating and cooling system your home uses, you can make it function more efficiently and cheaply by taking good care of it. If you have central heating and air, you can start to curtail your costs by sealing your ductwork. You’ll probably want to get a professional to perform this maintenance service, which will involve checking your ductwork for leaks, sealing those leaks, and then rechecking them.
Why is sealing your ductwork important? If your ducts are leaking, that means warm or cold air is seeping out of them and into the inside of your walls or even worse, your attic. This means your heating and cooling system has to work harder than it needs to control your home’s temperature, and this costs you money. Sealing your ductwork will pay for itself in two to four years.
Another simple — and even cheaper — thing you can do to keep your heating and cooling costs low is to change or clean filters in your vents, furnace, and air conditioner. Window air conditioner units have filters you can pull out and rinse. Change your central heating and cooling filters once a month. If you have filters in your home’s heating vents, change those regularly, too. Make sure you have your furnace and central air conditioner regularly serviced.
Put the Hot Air Where You Want It
You probably already know that hot air rises, so when you heat your home in the winter, the hot air rises to the ceilings, up to the second floor if you have one, and into the attic. Because you’re closer to the floor, this means that you won’t be feeling all of the heat you’re paying for. You can remedy this situation by improving the air flow within your house to bring that hot air back to where you want it.
Fans are a low-cost and easy way to accomplish this. If you have ceiling fans, you’re in luck; you can push hot air back down from the ceiling by running your ceiling fan backward during the winter, so that it blows upward toward the ceiling. This pushes the hot air in your home back down to where you can actually feel it, and might even enable you to turn your thermostat down a little. Not sure how to run your ceiling fan backward? It should have a switch for this purpose; if not, you can achieve the same effect by running your fan on the lowest setting. If you don’t have ceiling fans, put desk or box fans on a high shelf and aim them at the ceiling to push hot air back down into the room.
Weatherize Your Windows
In the winter, you lose a lot of heat through your windows, and in the summer, heat comes into your home through the windows. Throughout the year, 30 percent of your home’s heating and cooling costs go right out the windows. Even if you can’t afford more energy-friendly windows, you can easily make your existing windows more efficient.
Make sure you’ve installed weather stripping around your windows. In the winter, tack clear plastic sheeting over your windows to keep heat in. In the summer, use a combination of curtains and window film to keep the sun from heating up your home via your windows. Place tinted window film on south and west-facing windows to keep the sun from heating your home unnecessarily in the summer; in the winter, remove this film and allow the sun to give you a little free heat. Use insulating curtains to keep heat in or out all year around. Alternatively, you can cut your cooling costs by planting trees or shade trellises woven with ivy around south and west-facing windows; this is especially helpful in warm climates.
Turn Down the Thermostat
Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t cost more to heat up a cold house than it does to keep your house constantly heated to the same temperature. So go ahead and turn down the thermostat at night and when you go out of town or leave for work. You can use a bed warmer, like a heating pad or hot water bottle, to keep yourself toasty while you sleep, and save energy, too. Use a smart thermostat so you can program your furnace to kick on, allowing you to wake up or come home to a warm house. Make sure all the vents in your home are open; otherwise, your heating and cooling system will keep struggling to heat or cool the entire house, and you could damage your ducts or furnace.
Heating and cooling costs represent the lion’s share of most peoples’ utility bills. But you don’t have to resign yourself to paying sky-high heating and cooling bills — not when just a few simple, cheap steps can cut your heating and cooling bills by 20 percent or more a year.