While temperatures continue to drop, your bill will have an opposite reaction and begin to shoot up. It’s inevitable, but sometimes it can be more than the yearly seasonal increase we’ve come to expect.
You can take precautions to lessen the impact of the cold season on your monthly expenses. To do this it’s important to understand the reasons behind the sudden rising costs.
We will help you figure out how to lower your costs while ensuring that your family stays warm.
The Reasons for Rising Heating Bills
As mentioned earlier, you can expect changes in seasonal energy requirements. You will turn up the thermostat a few more notches the colder the weather gets.
Your furnace will work harder to keep up with the higher temperature setting. It will burn more fuel or consume more power if it’s an electric one. As a consequence, you pay substantially more than usual.
The extra clothing and blankets your family will use to keep warm means additional laundry to wash and dry. The colder it gets, the more layers you will need, which means even more laundry.
Using your washing machine and dryer more frequently will significantly raise energy and heating bills, and worse, if you use hot water. You will also use up your laundry detergent a lot faster.
If you feel that your heating bill seems unreasonably high, there could be some underlying reasons behind the increase.
Poor Insulation
One factor that could be contributing to increasing costs is inadequate or damaged insulation. Your HVAC network of ducts may be old and worn out and starting to leak.
Leaks would be hard to notice at first until they become worse and eventually get bigger over time. It would cause less warm air to spread, especially where it’s needed most.
Leaks are a waste of energy. They force you to turn up the thermostat higher than usual to maintain a comfortable home temperature.
Inefficient Furnace
Besides the ductwork, the furnace itself could be showing signs of wear and tear and not performing like before.
It could need some maintenance, or worse, be nearing the end of its lifespan. In any case, it would struggle to reach its designed capacity.
How to Reduce Your Heating Bill
Some quick measures would help mitigate your expenses.
Set Your Thermostat Lower
See if lowering the temperature one or two degrees will keep the house still reasonably warm. It may be slightly less comfortable, but you can save a few dollars per month.
Buy a Programmable Thermostat
A regular thermostat will continue cycling indefinitely to maintain your temperature setting even if left unattended until it dies from exhaustion.
A programmable thermostat will automatically turn the furnace off during times you are away and preheat the house before you return. This helps lessen your energy consumption and saves you the effort of turning the heat on and off.
Bundle Up With Layers
A less technical solution would be to bundle up with layers of clothing and blankets. You can lower your thermostat further and save even more money.
But as said before, this will increase your laundry expenses depending on how many times you wash your clothes. Frequent washing of more items will add to costs, but it will offset heating expenses.
Increase Insulation
Another practical tip would be to invest in double-paned windows and apply weather stripping to doors for more insulation.
Your primary intent is to prevent the cold from entering and the warmth from escaping your home. It also works the opposite way when you’re trying to save on air-conditioning costs during the Summer.
It is a trip worth pursuing because it will give you extra energy savings the whole year-round.
Hire Heating HVAC Service
Early preventive maintenance will eventually save you a lot of money in the long run. An HVAC expert would know what clues to look for that you may not be aware of or notice.
We highly recommend that you let a specialist check your furnace yearly, especially before the winter months roll around.
The Specialist can inform you of any vital issues or perform a tuneup that will have your HVAC running at optimum performance in no time.
You can contact Air Professionals Heating & Air Conditioning if you have more questions.
We at Air Professionals Heating & Air Conditioning have licensed Specialists working for us, and we can send one over to solve any issues with your HVAC system.
