Save Big $ on Your Heating Bills, Starting Now (Part 2)
Filed Under: Do It Yourself on October 22, 2009
This is a continuation of a 2-part series. Part 1 can be read by clicking here.
Seal Up Your House – Step 2: Attic
This is a lot more work than the last one. Doors and windows are just about walking around your house, from one room to the next, and checking seals and leaks. The attic? Well, if yours is like ours, it’s a pain to get into and it sucks to be there once you are in it.
The attic, though, has a lot of leak potential. Heat should come up through your house and only get into the attic after battling through a thick layer of insulation. Even at that, though, it shouldn’t easily get out of the house except in those places it’s designed to do so. Like attic fans and vents.
If you can, do this during daylight as it makes it a lot easier to spot the holes. Check around the chimney, pipe vents, and other locations where breaches through the rooftop happen. Many times, you can just see daylight streaming in even though the spot doesn’t leak water when it rains. If you can see daylight, you’re losing heat there.
Around our chimney was a piece of flashing (outside) that keeps water from getting in. Inside, though, it reflected sunlight off the roof tiles, to the flashing and down into the attic. Which means air was getting out there where the light was getting in. Not good.
Roof caulk (aka tar in a tube) was designed for this kind of thing. So I loaded it up and went to work. I went around the entire chimney breach and filled it with as much caulking as I could get to stick. Then I went out on the roof and came down at it from the other direction, sealing off the bottom of that flashing. For us, that was the only major breach, but others will be similar.
If you can afford it, spend the money and ad another layer of insulation too. Figure the square footage of your attic by measuring your home. The easiest way to do this is to just take a tape measure outside and measure the length and width of your house from widest point to widest point. Multiply the two measurements together and that’s your square footage for the attic. Some houses might be a little more complicated to measure, but I’ll leave you to figure out how to do it. Your number doesn’t have to be 100% exact, just close. I always round everything up because having a little too much is a lot easier to deal with than not having quite enough.
Once you have your square footage for your attic, order up the insulation. Most come in 40-foot rolls or packages (if it’s the loose-fill kind, which we have). So divide your attic’s square footage by 40. Easy. Most houses can have an extra R13 of insulation value added to the attic for about $400 or so. Cheap! You’ll probably save that in a couple of years of savings from your heating bills.
While you’re busy insulating (or even if you can’t spend the money for your whole attic), look at your air ducts. Most of them are probably hidden throughout your house, in floors and such, so ignore those you can’t get to. Look at where the duct work comes off your furnace, where it goes, and how far it goes before it disappears. Is that duct work insulated? You might need to talk to a professional to find out the easiest way to do this and to know for sure how far to stay away from your furnace with flammables like insulation. If you have the pro doing this, have him advise you on the hot water pipes from your heater too. Insulation on those is only a few bucks and can do a lot to save your bills.
Finally, while you’re doing all that, look at the ducts (while they have forced air blowing through them). Do the candle check form earlier on the duct work you can see from the furnace head to wherever it disappears into the floor. If there’s a leak, well, duct tape has its name for a reason. Seal it.
Seal Up Your House – Step 3: Your Habits
Now for the hard part. Keep doors and windows closed, use ceiling fans (ya, even in the winter) to move air around to circulate that warm air, and use the sun to your advantage. In the late afternoon, when the sun it at its hottest, we open our curtains and let it stream in. Not only is it nice for your spirits, but it does a lot to help warm up in the house.
In the morning, the other side of our house has sunlight coming in, so we do the same thing. It does great to help heat things up and make us feel happier about the day.
At the same time, we invested some money (about $80) in thermal curtains. These are heavy curtains with a thick backing that can be pulled shut over the windows to create a barrier between the cold glass and the room. This does a lot to change how hot or cold the room is.
The next time it’s colder outside than it is inside, put your hand by the glass of one of your windows and feel the huge heat difference without even touching the glass. Thermal curtains help shield that from cooling off the room. Seems like it’s not much, but it makes a difference.
Other obvious things to think about here are how you open and close doors (keep them closed in the cold), what kind of clothing you wear, and so forth. This was hard for me because I’m one of those barefoot fanatics. I hate shoes and the first thing I do when I come in the house is shuck mine. I have warm slippers for winter time, wear socks a lot, and otherwise try not to be too miserable about not being able to go raw-footed. It helps me feel warmer, though.
Last but not least, get some pets. Sounds stupid, ya, but it’s actually kind of a no-brainer if you think on it. We have three large-breed dogs. Those guys put off a lot of heat. Cats are awesome for keeping you warm in bed. Birds make you feel happier. Reptiles I’m not so sure on, but they probably have some kind of use here too. The point is, not only do pets cheer you up and make life more interesting, but they can actually save you money on your heating bill too.
Those are the major things you can do to save a lot of money every winter. If you do everything I list here, you will have spent around $600-$1,000 in improvements. Most of that is hiring a professional (heating) and putting in insulation. If you skip that stuff and just go with everything else, you’ve spent about $100 or so.
In the article you touched briefly on ceiling fans. I just wanted to clarify some of the benefits of ceiling fans. A lot of people are unaware of the fact that an energy efficient ceiling fan such as the Hunter ceiling fans actually do not use as much electricity as a 100 watt light bulb. During the summer a good ceiling fan can save you as much as 40% on your cooling bill and during the winter, as much as 10% on your heating bill. To reap the most benefit from a ceiling fan it should be around 7 to 8 feet above the floor. It should also push air down in summer and pull the air up in winter. For more information and videos explaining this and more go to http://www.HunterCeilingFanStore.com/Ceiling-Fan-Videos.com
Thanks for the info. We have fans in every room on the top level of our house (ground floor). They can potentially save hundreds in A/C and heating bills every year. Thanks!
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Last summer, my husband spent days re-insulating our attic. Over the course of the winter, we are noticing the heat coming on less often. We’re saving probably $30-$40 dollars a month. Really worth doing it if you have the time.
I love my husband! :D