Many people suffer in silence when they move into a new home – whether they own it or not. If it’s a rented home, they don’t want to invest in making energy efficiency fixes to it. If it’s a home that they recently bought, often, they have very little money left over after the home purchase.
The fact is that you don’t need to own the home you live in make a few cost-effective changes to the way energy is used around the house. Many of the changes you can make are free; when the changes needed cost money, they usually come in at under $50.
Energy Saving Moves You Can Make At No Cost
- When the weather permits line drying, using the heat of the sun to dry your clothes is certainly the cheapest way. If you do need to use the dryer, though, you should remember to turn off the dryer several minutes before your clothes are completely dry. This saves energy in two ways. To begin, obviously, turning the dryer off earlier saves you power. You also save power, though, when you iron those clothes. Clothes that have a bit of moisture in them iron easily. You won’t need to run your iron very long.
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- Turn down both the thermostat on your water heater and the pressure on your shower. You could save a great deal of heating energy and hot water this way.
- Make sure that you keep up with the furnace manufacturer’s filter replacement recommendations. A clogged filter can mean having to run the furnace for far longer than necessary.
- Unplug all gadgets and appliances – even mobile phone chargers, televisions and computers and peripherals – when you don’t use them. These silently sip power even when they’re not in use.
- To many people right after an expensive move can be out of the question. If you have a large refrigerator, raising its energy efficiency is easy. To begin, you need to never leave it empty. Your refrigerator needs to be as full as possible. If you have nothing to put in it, you should at least consider filling it with bottles of water. When your refrigerator is full, there’s very little empty space for air. This way, when you open your refrigerator to retrieve something, there will be very little cold air in there that could go to waste.
Energy Saving That Costs Very Little
If your new house has heating radiators, consider getting a radiator fan. These are little fans that sit on top of your radiator and force air past the coils. Air circulation assistance like this can cut your heating time by half. Here are other cost-effective modifications that you can make, whether you own your new home or not.
Insulate everywhere: Attic insulation is cheap and offers massive heating savings. People often spend their own money insulating the attics of the homes they rent. The savings to your heating bills could be so great that the expense insulation could pay back for itself and then some.
You could also consider spending your own money on insulating the hot water boiler and all the hot water pipes. If you have a fireplace, a chimney balloon or pillow could be an inexpensive way of making sure that most of the heat that goes up the chimney doesn’t get out entirely. The chimney balloon idea can save 25% off your heating bills.
There are other insulation ideas that you can take up, too: Switch plates and power outlets can be a bothersome source of drafts in any house. To check if your switch plates are a source of waste, pick a quiet time of day and put your hand next to a few of them. If you feel a bit of cool air coming through, you can buy switch plate gaskets to install.
You need to go after air leaks wherever you can. You could apply a caulk gun around every door and window frame and around every glass pane. You will be richly rewarded for your trouble through generous savings.