Easy Ways To Lower Your Heating Bill
For homeowners in the Chesterfield area, the arrival of winter brings a familiar and often significant increase in household expenses. As the temperatures drop, your furnace becomes the hardest-working appliance in your home, and the resulting monthly utility bill can be one of the largest costs you face all year. While heating your home is a necessity, a shockingly high bill does not have to be an inevitability.
Many homeowners resign themselves to these high costs, believing them to be an unavoidable part of living in a four-season climate. The good news is that you have a tremendous amount of control over how much energy your home consumes. By adopting a few simple habits, making some targeted low-cost improvements, and ensuring your heating system is in peak condition, you can make a substantial and immediate impact on your winter energy bills without ever having to sacrifice your family’s warmth and comfort.
Master Your Thermostat for Automatic Savings
Your thermostat is the command center for your entire heating system, and how you use it is the single biggest factor in your home’s energy consumption. One of the most common and wasteful practices is leaving the thermostat set to one single, comfortable temperature 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This means you are paying the full cost to keep your home perfectly warm even during the long stretches when you are away at work or tucked warmly in bed at night.
The most effective strategy for immediate savings is to practice temperature setbacks. This simply means turning your thermostat back 7 to 10 degrees from its normal setting for eight-hour periods. The Department of Energy estimates that you can save as much as 10% a year on your heating costs by consistently following this practice. The easiest and most effective way to automate this process is by using a programmable or smart thermostat.
A programmable thermostat allows you to create a schedule that matches your family’s routine, automatically lowering the temperature when you leave for work and raising it again shortly before you arrive home. A smart thermostat takes this a step further, often learning your habits automatically or using your smartphone’s location to detect when the house is empty. This “set it and forget it” approach is the easiest way to ensure you are never paying to heat an empty house.
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Harness Natural Heat and Prevent Its Escape
Beyond your furnace, your home has another powerful, free source of heat: the sun. Our Missouri winters often include days that are cold but bright and sunny. Learning to use this passive solar energy to your advantage is a simple, no-cost way to reduce your furnace’s workload.
On sunny days, make it a habit to open the curtains and blinds on all of your south-facing windows. This allows the natural solar heat to stream into your home and provide a significant amount of warmth, supplementing the work of your furnace. This can be especially effective in the morning and early afternoon.
As soon as the sun begins to set, it is just as important to do the opposite. Close all of your curtains and blinds. This simple act adds another layer of insulation over your windows, which are a major source of heat loss. This helps to trap the warmth that has accumulated inside your home during the day, preventing it from radiating back out into the cold night air. You can also use your ceiling fans to your advantage in the winter. Locate the small switch on the base of your fan motor and switch it so the blades rotate in the clockwise direction. Running the fan on its lowest speed will create a gentle updraft that pushes the warm air that has naturally risen and collected near the ceiling back down into your living space, making the room feel warmer.
The Battle Against Air Leaks
One of the biggest hidden energy drains in any home is air leakage. All of the small, unsealed gaps and cracks in your home’s exterior can collectively act like an open window, allowing a constant stream of your expensive, heated air to escape to the outdoors. You are effectively paying to heat the neighborhood. Finding and sealing these drafts is one of the most cost-effective ways to lower your heating bill.
Take some time to become a draft detective in your own home. The most common culprits are your windows and doors. Check the weatherstripping around your exterior doors for any cracks or gaps. You can test for leaks by holding a lit stick of incense near the edges of a window or door on a windy day; if the smoke wavers, you have a draft. Other common sources of air leaks are the gaps around electrical outlets and switches on exterior walls, and any place where pipes, vents, or wires penetrate a wall to the outside.
Sealing these leaks is often a simple and inexpensive do-it-yourself project. You can apply new weatherstripping to your doors and use caulk to seal any small gaps around your window frames and trim. For the numerous small leaks around your outlets and switches, you can install inexpensive foam gaskets behind the cover plates. These simple actions can dramatically reduce uncomfortable drafts and have a noticeable impact on your energy bills.
Prioritize Your Furnace’s Airflow
Your furnace is essentially a breathing machine. It needs to be able to pull in a massive and consistent volume of air to operate safely and efficiently. If its ability to breathe is restricted in any way, it will be forced to work much harder and run for longer periods to heat your home, which wastes fuel and money.
The number one cause of restricted airflow is a dirty, clogged air filter. The filter’s job is to protect your system’s internal components from dust and debris, but as it does its job, it becomes saturated. A clogged filter is like forcing your furnace to breathe through a thick blanket. This puts an immense strain on the system’s blower motor, which can lead to premature failure. More importantly, it can cause the furnace to overheat, which can trip a safety switch or even cause the heat exchanger to crack over time. Checking your furnace filter once a month and replacing it as soon as it is dirty is the single most important maintenance task a homeowner can perform.
You should also ensure that the air can circulate freely throughout your home. Take a moment to walk through your house and check that all of your heating vents and your larger return air grilles are open and are not blocked by furniture, rugs, or other items. Your HVAC system is designed to be a balanced, closed-loop, and blocking off too many vents can create a pressure imbalance that can also cause the furnace to overheat and run inefficiently.
The Power of Professional Maintenance
While the do-it-yourself tips are powerful and effective, they are not a substitute for the comprehensive care and safety inspection that can only be provided by a professional. Committing to an annual furnace tune-up is an investment that will pay for itself in the form of improved efficiency, enhanced safety, and the prevention of a costly and inconvenient mid-winter breakdown.
Over the course of a heating season, a furnace’s components can become dirty and fall out of adjustment. A certified technician will perform a detailed, multi-point tune-up that addresses every aspect of your system’s performance. They will thoroughly clean the furnace burners to ensure a clean and efficient combustion process, which allows your furnace to get the most heat out of every bit of fuel it consumes. They will also clean and inspect the blower motor and other key components to ensure proper airflow.
Most importantly, the annual tune-up is a critical safety inspection. The technician will perform a careful examination of your furnace’s heat exchanger to look for any cracks or signs of fatigue that could pose a carbon monoxide risk. They will also test all of the system’s safety sensors and controls to ensure they are functioning correctly. This professional service is the key to a safe, reliable, and efficient winter.
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A warm and comfortable home during a cold Missouri winter does not have to come with the consequence of a shockingly high energy bill. By taking a proactive and multi-faceted approach, you can significantly reduce your heating costs and improve your home’s comfort. It begins with adopting smart, no-cost habits with your thermostat and window coverings. It continues with sealing the air leaks in your home’s envelope, ensuring your furnace can breathe freely with regular filter changes, and committing to an essential annual tune-up.
These strategies work together to create a home that is not just warmer, but also smarter and more efficient. If you are ready to take control of your winter energy bills and ensure your heating system is running at its absolute best, contact the home comfort experts at Lolich HVAC. We can provide a professional furnace tune-up to get your system ready for the season and to help you prepare for a more affordable and comfortable winter in your Chesterfield home.