Tips for Winterizing your Home

If you live in the Raleigh area, you likely spend hundreds of dollars on your heating bill during the cold winter months. While a rise in your heating bill during the winter is largely unavoidable, it’s likely that you’re paying more for your heating bill than you should. Here are a few tips that will help you save money on your heating bill during the winter.

Yearly Tune-Ups

Without any maintenance, heaters have a tendency of becoming more and more inefficient over time. Therefore, you should have your heater maintained at least once per year, preferably right before the winter months. Not only will this help you save money on your heating bill, but it may also allow you to catch a problem with your heater early on. For example, if you’re heater doesn’t work, you’ll be able to have it fixed before the winter months. If a gas line or exhaust flue has been bumped accidentally, the issue will likely be resolved before a dangerous situation arises if you have your heater yearly tuned.

Set Your Thermostat

Another way in which you can save money during the winter is by setting your thermostat to about 68 degrees Fahrenheit. The lower you set the temperature of the thermostat during the winter, the easier time your heater will have heating your home. This will enable you to save money on your heating bill. When you leave your home, you should consider setting the temperature of the thermostat even lower. In fact, you may want to purchase a programmable thermostat to make adjusting the temperature automatic and therefore more convenient for you.

Take Advantage of the Sun

During the day, you want to take advantage of the sun as much as possible in order to decrease the cost of your heating bills. If you have south-facing windows in your home, open these windows or open the window coverings while the sun is out. You want to do the opposite at night when the sun is not out. Close the windows to help your home retain as much heat as possible.

Insulate Your Home

Before the cold winter months, you should insulate your home to improve its ability to retain heat. If you don’t have much money to spend on an insulation project, you should just add insulation to the attic of your home. Insulating an attic is both cost-effective and relatively easy. You may also want to add insulation to any crawl spaces or basement walls that happened to be unfinished in your home. Wall insulation is rather difficult, so you definitely want to enlist the help of a contractor. One question to ask your contractor is as follows:

Will insulating the walls of my home be worthwhile for all the difficulty and cost involved?

You may see the cost of your heating bills decrease as much as 20% after insulating your home.

As you can see, there are many ways in which you save money on your energy bills during the summer. Just follow some of our HVAC tips for winter discussed above and you will likely see a great difference in the cost of your heating bills.