Tips To Reduce Heating Costs In Your Home

As the Kansas City area shivers in winter, many residents are on the lookout for ways to reduce heating costs and conserve energy. If you’d like to take a load off your pocketbook this winter, follow these simple and effective tips to increase the efficiency of your home. Cost-reducing measures fall into two basic categories: things that require an initial investment, and things you can do for free.

Investments

These are actions you can take that require you to spend a little money at the outset, but will inevitably pay for themselves in the form of energy savings and lighter utility bills.

  • Insulate: Insulation may be your most important layer of defense against the cold. Roof and attic insulation is the most important; heat can easily escape through a poorly insulated roof.
  • Get a programmable thermostat: They are generally very reasonable to purchase.Its easy to justify the cost when there is a substantial amount of money that will offset the original investment in no time by programming your thermostat to heat your house less at night and during parts of the day when nobody’s home.
  • Take care of your furnace: Make sure it has clean filters — dirty filters will cost your furnace more to operate and also encourage more breakdowns. Be sure to have a maintenance plan to keep your furnace in top operating condition. Schedule an appointment to have your system serviced today!

Freebies

These are measures you can take to effectively reduce heating costs without spending a penny.

  • Turn down your thermostat: Keeping your house even a few degrees cooler can go a long way toward reducing heating costs over the course of a winter.
  • Use the sun to your advantage: Open the shades on south-facing windows for a natural greenhouse effect on sunny days. Once the sun has helped warm up your house, shut the shades at night to seal in the heat.
  • Lower the set point on your hot water heater: Chances are, you are heating up your water more than you need to. Reducing the temperature to 115 or 120 degrees will save money and make showering more comfortable.

If you have any questions about how to efficiently heat your house this winter, contact Overland Park Heating & Cooling. We’ve been serving the Kansas City area since 1983.

Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about heating costs and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

Overland Park Heating & Cooling services Overland Park and surrounding areas in Kansas. Visit our website to see our special offers and get started today!