November 7, 2009
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Money saving heating tips
How do you save money in the winter when it is cold out? Any tips on keeping your heating bill low?
Here are somethings I have read. Do you use any of them or have any to add?
Minimize your use of ventilation fans such as bathroom fans and kitchen hood fans in winter. A bathroom fan can suck all the heated air out of the average house in little more than an hour. Over the course of the winter, ventilation fans can increase your heating costs by a surprising amount. Kitchen exhaust fan covers can keep air from leaking in when the exhaust fan is not in use. The covers typically attach via magnets for ease of replacement.
Set your thermostat as low as is comfortable in the winter
Wear warm layered clothing indoors during cold weather. If you live in a cold climate and can comfortably walk around in a tank top and shorts – you’re wasting money!
Use rugs on bare floors.
Wear more clothes.
Sweats are warmer to wear than jeans
While sitting at the TV or computer, cover up with a comforter.
Make sure all windows are closed tight. Lock them to be sure, a window that is open if even a tiny bit usually will not lock.
Do what you have to do. Right now it is so cold and windy, I have a blanket tacked up over a door that currently feels like ice. The blanket is stopping some of that cold air. May be ugly, but its working.
Comments (9)
I don’t pay for heat with my apartment right now but when I do, I’ll be sure to consider these things because I know how wretched heating bills can be.
I was just telling my boyfriend I’m freezing and he gave me a blanket! good blog!
There’s a small gap between my door and the frame that really sucks in the winter.
Dear Kristen,
Move to sunny Southern California.
Seriously, I turned on the heat for the first time this winter season last night, and it was because I got up at 2am to watch some video and it was rather cold. (Cold being 60 degrees. LOL) In my mobile home, which I bought in February, there is central heating, which I’ve never had before, and is wonderful. The whole place heats up rather easily, and I keep the thermostat to 69 degrees. While sleeping, I keep the heat off and an extra comforter on the bed.
In order to save on heating costs this winter, I’m wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt more often, which is in your list. I also carry a blanket around with me in the evenings, and am thinking of getting one of those “snuggies” a blanket with a hole for your head and arms.
We have warm nights until November, then it gets cold quickly, which lasts through February, with some hot weather sometimes coming in the middle of December. All told, however , it isn’t unpleasant at all duirng the winter. I always wait as long as possible to wear a winter coat, for example,and I still haven’t started to wear one, and I go to work at 5:30 in the morning, so the sun hasn’t even risen yet.
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
We put plastic up over our windows outside.
We put insulating foam stripping around our attic door so that it has less space for air to slip through. (this can also be done for joyouswind who said she had a draft form her door)
Put a knee high over our dryer vent and allow it to come into the house.
Don’t allow your house to drop in temp too far, because there is a point where it is cheaper to maintain heat then it is to reheat. A lot of people will turn their heat way down at night or while they are at work to save money, but if it is more then so many degrees it’s cheaper to maintain. I’m thinking if it is more then around 10 degrees it’s cheaper to maintain, but not positive. I’m sure a google search could tell you the exact number.
Also the number one thing I don’t ever see get recommended… Get up and move! Get up and do something whether it’s cleaning or exercising or whatever, if you are moving around you will create your own body heat and not be so cold.
Thick (and/or layered) curtains for the windows. Saw a recommendation last year for taking bubble wrap, cut to the size of your window panes, spritz window panes w/ water and put bubble wrap on them (makes an extra layer of air). Electric blankets is one of our faves. Small electric heaters for bedrooms at night and for the bathroom during baths. We also flip the switches on our ceiling fans to reverse the flow…this helps to move the warm air at the ceiling.
The obvious should be to warn you not to keep the house so cold that the pipes freeze.
My grandmother use to stuff folded newspaper under the door and close the door tight on it.
There is some kind of filler you can put in your attic but I forget what it is called and you may want to worry about the weight limit of your attic. It is unsafe to keep a house from breathing because of radon and other dangers but one of my co-workers took the large foam ceiling tiles from work and put them in his attic. If I wanted to do that, I would probably use plastic sheets in the attic. He was the same co-worker who rented out his house to other people and his house caught on fire because they were using space heaters. You can put a space heater in one room, close the doors and just heat one room towards desireable levels while not having to heat the rest of the house to desireable levels but you have to have a safe and monitored space heater. I would probably choose one with a fan verses one with just a heating element and it should probably have a lot of safety features.
If you can boost the humidity in your house, you might be able to keep the temperature lower.
Use thermal blankets. We also have an electric blanket but it works on an entirely different principal. Instead of getting warm, it just raises the temperature by a degree or two. I don’t know why it works.
Invest in a wood stove. A cord of wood costs less than a tank of fuel oil and there is an abundant supply of wood. Put trees, bushes and stuff around your house to help isolate it from the wind. We were in a corn maze and while it was cold, we were protected from the wind. My parents used coal because it would last for hours during the night and they would put a kettle of water on top of the wood stove to help with the humidity.
Schedule when to make trips in and outside of the house and don’t let the door stay open long.
When we had our heater replaced, the service guys were able to get to the chimney and tell us it was partially blocked which made the heater run more incomplete cycles.
We get sheets of plastic at work as part of packaging so there are companies which just throw it away or some of the employees just take them home as I do. Some of the workers put them over their windows and there are some windows in my house we don’t use so platic should go up there to keep the heat in and the cold out.
Invest in a programmable thermostat and do research into whether keeping the temperature constant or bringing the temperature up and down won’t just make the heater run longer.
I also stopped running the clothes washer with hot water as it is the detergent which cleans the clothes anyway.
Ad you might want to wrap the outside faucets with cloths and plastic on top so the cloth can’t get wet and freeze.
The reason you shouldn’t seal off your attic is because when it rains, the attic can get wet. The attic needs ventilation so the wood doesn’t rot out. We had our shingles replaced and the roofers had to put nine boards on the roof because the boards had rotted out and we needed new ones.
I suppose people could set up tents or sleeping bags in their houses if heating ever becomes a problem. There are sleeping bags for below 40 degrees. I suppose you would need a washable insert or liner because I think washing sleeping bags could pose a problem (they are so large).
Getting a wood stove isn’t an overnight process. You need to have a brick wall to keep the house from catching fire and so that it also radiates the heat. You need a thermometer in the wall so that you know what temperature the wall gets as it can’t get too hot because you don’t want the house to catch fire. You also need to have a tall enough chimney so the ashes don’t burn anything and you need a chimney brush to clean the chimney yourself. You also don’t want to build a fire too hot as it will crack the stone inside of the wood stove or it will destroy the special adhesive that holds the brick to the stove. The stone is what protects the wood stove and it is a good idea to have a small layer of ashes to protect the bottom of the stove.
I hate fireplaces because my stepmother would always get smoke in the house. If the chimney is cold, the smoke will not go up the chimney and it will go back in the house and then you will have to open the doors to get the smoke out.
We know people who run the duct from their drier into the duct of their house heating. That may violate the code and I didn’t want to do it because of risk of fire and having the house smelling like laundry but it would keep humidity in the house.
Our neighbors dry their clothes outside to save electric. They opt for the utilities to give them an “average” bill every month so they can always pay.