Looking to cut costs around the house? You can watch the thermostat like a hawk, but if you’re not making a point to protect your home from damage, then you’ll never be able to prevent the kind of energy loss that costs you big bucks.
You can control your home’s energy consumption best when you know where your heat’s going and what to do to stop that flow.
How Is Your Home Losing Energy?
When it comes to cutting your energy bill, you need to start by finding the source of your problems. Why, then, is it so difficult to control the temperature inside of your home?
While there are several ways for your home to lose energy, some of the most common include:
Lack of Insulation – if you don’t have insulation down in your basement or crawl space, then you are asking for a higher energy bill. Basements and crawl spaces alike are more vulnerable to hydrostatic pressure and can start to weep heat (or cooler air in the summer) if that pressure cracks your structural supports.
Gaps and Drafts – are there gaps between your floors and walls? Is one room in your home especially drafty? The longer you let that kind of damage sit, the more money you’re going to lose. You can caulk these trouble spots or reach out to area professionals to try and determine the best way to make your trouble rooms more comfortable, not to mention more energy efficient.
Lack of Energy-Efficient Materials – when you were first shopping for insulation, did you do your research, or did you grab a brand that looked inexpensive and easy to install? Alternatively, what kind of filters are you using around your home? If these protective measures aren’t energy efficient, then they’ll bleed you both of your HVAC’s effort and of your money.
What Are The Financial Benefits of Making Your Home Energy-Efficient?
Homeowners who make a point of setting aside a budget to repair cracks, install energy-efficient appliances, and more can cut:
Twenty percent off of your energy bill for crawl space encapsulation services
Between five and thirty percent off of your energy bill for sealed air leaks
Ten percent off of your bill for a programmable thermostat installation
Between twelve and thirty-three percent off of your bill for storm window installation
Up to fifteen percent off of your bill for the use of an EnergyStar gas furnace
Checking Your Home’s Thermal Performance
To determine whether or not your home is suffering from poor energy efficiency, you can look both to your electric bills and to your space’s thermal performance.
Consider this: as the temperature in your home changes, warm air rises to the upper floors while cooler and moisture air moves into your basement or crawl space. By investing in effective home insulation, you can redirect that density flow and instead send air warmed or cooled by your HVAC system around your home in equal measure. This not only helps you get your money’s worth from your HVAC system, but it also makes your home more comfortable to live in.
Why Should You Improve Your Home’s Energy Efficiency?
Even though improving your home’s energy efficiency will save you money down the road, you may be reluctant to commit to the kind of work that improving your home requires. That’s understandable, of course, as the initial costs of crawl space, basement, or foundation repair can make you reconsider your home repair budget.
When you’re seeing unreasonably high energy bills on a monthly basis, however, without benefiting from a more comfortable home, those repairs are more than worth the effort. A SmartMeterTexas in your home is a sure way to check your monthly usage and how much energy you’re spending; this way, you’ll know when you’re spending way more than you should and can protect your power bill. Improving your home’s energy efficiency will not only lower your energy bills but will also make your home a more enjoyable place to be. Not only that, but you can also work with platforms like TurboTax to write off your improvements on your 2020 taxes.
Ready to start improving your home? You can reach out to a contractor in your area for a home inspection so you can better understand how to better control temperatures in your home.
To read more on topics like this, check out the Lifestyle category
Leave a Reply