During the holiday season, and wintertime in general, residential heating bills and other energy expenses can go through the roof (sometimes literally). That's why it's crucial to be aware of the energy-saving strategies available to homeowners.Follow these suggestions to enjoy lower energy bills in your Broken Arrow-area home:
Seal air leaks in your home's outer walls. A substantial amount of warm air can be lost through holes and cracks in the walls, forcing your heating system to work overtime to compensate. Similarly, missing or inadequate insulation can make a warmed-up home lose its heat quickly.
Consider arranging an energy audit to ascertain where air and heat energy are escaping your home. Once you have that information, you can seal air leaks with caulking or weatherstripping, and upgrade insulation where necessary.
Adjust ceiling fans so their blades are rotating clockwise (the opposite of summertime rotation). This pushes air upward instead of downward, and redistributes warm air that floats around near the ceiling. Forced down into the part of the room where people hang out, it raises the temperature, relieving some of the workload on the furnace.
Make sure to program energy-saving setbacks into your programmable thermostat. Get one if you don't yet have one of these essential devices. You can program your heating system to a much lower temperature during the day when nobody's home, and a night when everybody's sleeping. This can be a real energy-saver.
Remember to open drapes, curtains and other window coverings during sunny winter days. Even when it's cold outside, sun shining through windows will heat up a room by several degrees. Make sure you close the curtains before the sun goes down, though, since they'll add a layer of protection against the cold.
Schedule seasonal maintenance on your heating system if you haven't already. This improves efficiency, ensures safety, and enables the technician to find small problems before they become big problems.
For more advice on how to enjoy lower energy bills this holiday season and winter, please contact us at Air Assurance. We provide superior HVAC services in the Broken Arrow area.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in the Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about lowering bills and other HVAC topics, call us at 918-217-8273. Credit/Copyright Attribution: “Pexels/Pixabay”