Save Big $ on Your Heating Bills, Starting Now (Part 1)
Filed Under: Do It Yourself on October 22, 2009
One of my favorite projects is finding ways to do things differently or cheaply and save money without sacrificing quality. I grow food, build stuff, repair other things, do maintenance, and so forth. The large number of DIY things I’ve posted to this blog in only a few short months should attest to that, I think.
Well, last year, I took some advice I’d read somewhere and applied it to what I already knew about saving money on the winter heating bill. In this part of the country, that’s a big deal. Anything you can do to save your heat bills without freezing to death can ad up to big money. Heating energy is about 28% of the average American home’s energy usage. More so for those of us in the more northern states.
This year, we’ll have it easy, of course. Our winter is going to be harsh, but those of us using natural gas (the majority of the nation) and it’s variants (CNG, LP, etc.) can expect to have lower bills this year regardless. That, however, is not good enough.
If you’re like me, you don’t just want to save money, you want to help the environment by using less while you save that ca$hola.
Alright, here’s the ways you can save money on your heating costs this year without spending a lot to make it happen. Let’s start with the basics.
Thermostat - Turn it down. You’ve probably seen this a million times and know this already. If you can afford one, get one of those automatic, electronic thermostats that you can program to turn itself down at night and back up in the morning and then down again while you’re gone during the day or whatever.
We don’t have one of those fancy units, but our heating bill last year was much lower than the year before. By usage, (prices change, use doesn’t unless you change it yourself), we cut our energy by 41%. I compared our bills from November-March 2007-08 and November-march 2008-09 and that was the average cut. All we did was turn down the thermostat to 68° and I drilled a pin into it so it wouldn’t go beyond that accidentally.
Of course, that’s not the only thing that cut our energy usage, but it’s a big one.
Seal Up Your House – Step 1: Doors and Windows
Until we started going around checking for drafts, I had no idea how much of a sieve a house could be. Even brand new homes leak all over the place. We did our house in three sections over a weekend. We started with the obvious stuff: doors and windows.
With a trusty tube of caulking, a can of spray insulation foam, a paint scraper/trowel, and a candle, we walked from window to window, door to door and made our check. First, I went around each window (at the glass) and put a new layer of caulk on them. Using the caulking gun and my finger, I made a nice seal around each. It can’t hurt and isn’t very hard once you get the hang of it. Very much worth the trouble.
Then we lit the candle and my wife slowly held it near the window, moving it around the edges and watching the flame. A draft will pull or push the flame. She marked the spot with a pencil on the window frame and kept going. As I moved through caulking, she came behind finding leaks.
Fixing the leak depends on where it’s located. Most of ours were between the glass frame and where it slides up and down. So if you open the window fully, you can usually see a rubber seal of some kind. Some were out of place, some were ripped, one was completely missing. So I had to replace or rig new ones for them. Another option is to just caulk the window shut and worry about it next year. Assuming you remember. I confess I did this on a couple of them.
The windows that don’t open (any more) because of age were a real problem. Rather than replace the window (that costs money and is a pretty big project), I used the spray foam insulation. Going down each side of the window sliding frame, between the glass frame and the wall frame, I sprayed insulation in to fill the hole. It’s hard to explain unless you have these kinds of older, wooden-frame windows.
Then came the doors. Most of our air leaks on our doors were where gaps between the storm door and the frame allow drafts, not with the actual doors themselves. Those gaps were filled by first adjusting the hinges/swing of the storm door to make it fit better, adding new insulation strips around the edges (this stuff is only about $4/roll and one roll does 3 doors easily)–and that insulation probably has to be replaced yearly anyway.
To fix doors with leaks is a little more involved, but generally the same procedure. Most often it will be either stripped door seal (rubber around the door frame) or a door that isn’t quite adjusted correctly and fits into the frame crooked. The first is easily fixed by just replacing the rubber seal.
If, however, the door is out of whack, open it and examine the hinges. Chances are, there’s a screw sticking out of one of them or something similar that makes it not close entirely, flexing the door out of square. Adjust and it’s fixed. If that’s not the case, you can shim one of the hinges by taking screws out of it, pulling the hinge away from the door jam, putting a sliver of wood or metal in and sandwiching it between the hinge and the door jam.
Alright, that was the first wave. Doors and windows are usually your biggest culprits for heat loss.
We’ll look at the other two house projects for sealing it up and saving money in the second half of this article.
Related posts:
- Save Big $ on Your Heating Bills, Starting Now (Part 2)
- Energy Efficiency Upgrades For Your Home
- What You Need to Know About Home Energy Audits
