Hire A Professional and do an energy audit to find and fix the most common home-efficiency issues with answers to where your home is most vulnerable to cold and what a homeowner can do to lower home energy costs. A professional auditor will have knowledge and sophisticated tools to search out and find leak. The average homeowner would be hard pressed to match a professional’s blower doors and infrared cameras. Be on the alert for notices from local utility companies for free home energy audits.
Draft-proof All Exterior Doors to Your Home
Adding weatherstripping to seal cracks around every exterior door will make a nice difference. Some homeowners have successfully used a strip of pipe insulation. Start by trying it along one side of the door way, see if you can determine the area where air is coming in. If, needed do down both side. Make sure your insulation is on the softer side as the stiffer installation doesn’t work as well.
Draft-proof All windows
Ideally, if you have a drafty windows, buying replacements windows will be the most effective. However, by some estimates, to keep 25 percent of your heating costs from flying out of the window, use an insulation kit. Window installation kits are available that are both effective and unobtrusive. A simple weatherstripping kit that uses the same types of seal found in modern windows and is practically invisible. For about $60 and an hour’s installation time per window, homeowners can transform a leaky performing window.
Add Attic Insulation To Lower Home Energy Bills
To obtain an R35 or more, add 10 inches of cellulose on top of the existing insulation or whatever amount of insulation is needed. If needed, install baffles at the edge to keep it away from the sheathing on the roof so as to maintain proper ventilation of the roof. DIY homeowners should remember to leave enough space for the soffit vents to breathe. blocking these vents with insulation, may make your home’s shingles prematurely age.
Unplug Your Home’s Large Appliance When Not Needed
Modern digital must-have’s can actually be enormous power suckers in your home and huge amounts of energy even when they’re off. Consider unplugging your flat-screen TVs, media playing centers, and music centers. Get used to thinking to unplug your chargers when they aren’t in use. Turn desktop computers down to the battery backup level when not in use. Vacationers, should unplug large applesauce like the washing machine and clothes dryers while they are away.
Service Home Heating System
Schedule fall furnace maintenance. Which furnace filter is used and how often it is changed matters more than most people think. Foremost, keep it clean and changed. When furnace filters get dirty they make it really hard for air to get through which makes the motor in your furnace to work harder.
Programmable Thermostats
It has been tested and proved to be true that homeowners use less energy when they turn down the unit during the day, when everyone is gone, and program the unit to turn back up before return at the end of the day’s activities.
Check Your Chimney Damper
A chimney damper prevents the loss of cold air through the chimney when it is not in use and can control how much heat goes into the room the fireplace is situated in. If your chimney damper is not opening or closing properly, it can add heating costs to homeowner utility bills. This is one job homeowners should be sure to use a professional service for.
Having completed a home energy audit, and the tasks indicated, homeowners can settle in for winter and perhaps save enough money on lower utility bills to take a weekend away to brighten up winter months.
