Make your home use less energy
A h, winter. It’s time to snuggle up under the afghan with the cat to enjoy a good book, or at least a new DVD.
But if you find yourself needing that afghan wrapped around your shoulders to go into the kitchen to make a cup of cocoa just to warm up your fingers, or if you retreat to the bedroom so you can curl up under not just the afghan but two blankets and a comforter to play the DVD, it might be time to make your home just a teensy bit more energy efficient.
Ditto if your energy bill this month was enough to make the cat’s hair stand on end.
According to the National Weather Service, this part of the world isn’t having an unusually cold winter; if anything, and despite single-digit nighttime temperatures in recent weeks, it’s been a bit warmer than normal so far.
Even so, both gas and oil bills are up from last winter – about 10 percent on average for gas, according to NIPSCO spokesman Larry Graham, and about 8 percent for heating oil, which last week hit $1.61 a gallon.
But there are many ways to make your home use less energy, both for the short term and the long run. And they don’t all take a huge investment or switching to an exotic alternative energy source.
If you can manage to cut back 8 percent to 10 percent of your energy use, then at least your bills will be even with last year’s. And you can start saving for big improvements to keep those bills trim.
Here are 10 ways to save energy you might not have thought of:
•Do an online home energy audit.
If you could find out how to halve your energy bill just by firing up your PC, would you?
You can. A number of good Internet tools can accurately calculate energy costs and savings to nearly pinpoint accuracy. The one at hes.lbl .gov, developed by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and billed as the first of its kind, is one of the best. All you need to do is answer 18 questions about your home’s construction and equipment.
Using the 46808 zip code in Fort Wayne, the calculator finds that an “average house” has an annual energy bill of $1,603, while an “energy-efficient” one has a bill of $803.
Site developer Evan Mills says the calculator is usually reported as “within a few percentage points” of actual costs and savings.
P.S: Don’t expect your local utility to provide a home energy audit for you. NIPSCO and Indiana Michigan Power discontinued these services as being uneconomical for the utilities, according to NIPSCO spokesman Graham and Indiana Michigan Power spokesman Mike Brian. Some businesses may do an audit for a fee.
•Add insulation to your attic and crawl space.
We know, you already did this years ago. But here’s what you might not know. If your home was insulated even 10 to 20 years ago, you will likely be able to improve performance by adding insulation now, says Gary Furniss, of Momper Insulation in Fort Wayne.
As recently as the ’80s, he says, an R-value (a measure of heat retention) of R-30 was common, and homes insulated before then might be only R-19 or so. Today’s homes, he says, are insulated to R-38.
Plus, Furniss adds, insulation settles and loses efficiency in about 7 or 8 years. “Think about all those homes built back in the ’80s,” he says. “The stuff has settled by now, and people are wondering why their rooms are cold.”
Insulating an attic with 10 inches of cellulose doesn’t require ripping out the old insulation, contrary to popular belief, Furniss says.
The new insulation can be installed over the old stuff. And, he says, a crawl space under a house might have been neglected entirely.
It might cost about $900 upfront to insulate an attic, but the cost will likely be recouped in about three years, Furniss says. Insulating can also be a do-it-yourself project, which will bring down costs.
•Check your furnace filter.
“The No. 1 thing” for saving energy is how Ed Merz of Merz and Sons Heating Plumbing and Air Conditioning Inc., Fort Wayne, describes this option.
Don’t know how to check? Call a furnace service specialist who will either walk you through the process or come out and check and tune up your unit – something that should be done every year.
Merz says many filters should be replaced every month or two during the heating season – dirt in your filter means the furnace has to work harder. New filters generally can be found at hardware stores for a few dollars.
•Check your chimney damper.
You don’t see it, but the traditional chimney damper that closes with rough metal to rough metal “is probably about as efficient as a mailbox covered with a trash can lid,” says Bob Daniels of HomeSaver in Fairfield, Iowa, a chimney products company.
The alternative, he says, is a non-rusting, stainless-steel and cast-aluminum Lock-Top damper with a silicone rubber gasket. The damper is installed high in the chimney so heat won’t affect the seal.
Daniels says the product can save about a $200 a year, about a two-year payback.
Combined with a well-lined chimney, a tight damper seal can make for a much more snug house by eliminating downdrafts. Information is at www.homesaver.com .
•Make your water heater more efficient.
When your water heater makes water hot, it also makes itself hot, and that heat radiates to wherever your heater is, probably someplace cold. Wrap the heater in an R-12 insulation blanket, and more of that heat will stay in the water, where you want it.
Water heating is one of the largest overlooked energy expenses, according to the Department of Energy. As much as a quarter of the average household’s energy use goes to heat water for laundry, dishwashing and bathing.
Cut it by half, and you’ve probably got your energy bill even with last year’s.
Short of a blanket and wrapping insulation around pipes that pass through cold spaces, try these tricks:
Set your water temperature at 120 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 140 degrees (unless your dishwasher doesn’t heat water to that temperature).
•Stop leaky hot water faucets. Take shorter showers and lower the water level in the bath. Put in low-flow showerheads (probably $10 or less). Wash most clothes in cold water and use low-water settings for small loads that must be washed in warm or hot.
If you also flush the heater to get rid of sediment that can make it work harder, as well as become noisy, you’ll likely improve energy efficiency. Check www.energy loans.org/EnergyReference/body_waterheater.html for energy-savings advice.
•Clean and seal your air ducts.
My what?
These are the hidden “pipes” that get heat from the furnace to your fingers and toes. According to energy calculator guru Mills, they’re energy piggies, capable of gobbling hundreds of dollars annually.
“On average, nationally, we found that about a third of the energy that leaves the furnace never makes it to the register in your floor or wall because it escapes from the ductwork,” he says.
“Even in new-home construction we find errors like forgetting to seal ducts or connect them properly.”
If duct joints aren’t tight, or there are obvious holes, the simple and cheap remedy is, yes, duct tape. For ducts that are accessible, sweep out as much dust as you can manually or with a vacuum cleaner. For bigger cleaning and insulating jobs, consult a pro. Start in the Yellow Pages under “Duct.”
•Install replacement windows and doors.
These are big-ticket items, and it’s probably less confusing to walk into a kindergarten class full of identical twins than to decipher the differences between the windows and doors that all claim to save energy. But there are a couple of new developments to consider, says Dan Miller of Springfield Enterprises Inc. of Harlan.
First, look for double-pane windows if your home doesn’t have them, he says. But know that some new windows improve on them by having a layer of argon or krypton gas, which has better insulating properties, between the panes instead of air. A further improvement is coating on the interior of panes that improves energy efficiency, while maintaining the look of clear glass.
A starting point for advice: www.efficientwindows.org .
A cheap and quick solution for leaky windows is sheets of painter’s plastic duct-taped over windows or window kits. Not the most attractive things in the world, but neither are blue fingers and toes.
•Get a programmable thermostat.
The best programmer might still be you – if you can remember to turn the thermostat down at night and when you leave the house for long periods of time. If you can’t remember, buy a device that will – in the $50 to $150 range, depending on features. Also, consider a zoned thermostat that heats only the part of the house you use. For shopping info, try The Thermostat Store at www.atlantasupply.com/thermostat-honeywell-white-rod gers.htm.
•Try energy-saving paint.
Yep. You heard right. The folks at www.hytechsales.com sell a ceramic paint and paint additive that, according to the site, contains microspheres that have both a low thermal conductivity and a vaccum inside to them that slows down heat loss. The coating, based on NASA technology, is said to prevent heat transfer of as much as 90 percent of solar infrared rays and 85 percent of ultraviolet rays while also deadening noise.
Mike Dager of Porter Paints in Fort Wayne says he hasn’t heard of this product line but the buzz in the biz on insulating paint is that it’s got too long a payback time to be an efficient money-saver.
•Live smarter.
Take a good look at your house. Do you have a ceiling fan? It can push warm air that rises in the winter back down where you need it. Do you have drapes or shades on drafty windows that could be closed during the night and opened when the sun shines and warms the room? Do you really need to run your bathroom or kitchen fan that opens directly outdoors for long periods of time?
Can you consolidate oven use by cooking more than one dish at a time and open the refrigerator or freezer door fewer times? Can you move furniture away from heat vents? Can you caulk cracks and insulate around holes made when exterior lighting was attached to the house? Can you clean dryer vents, use water already boiled for after-dinner tea to heat up the dishwater, invest in a small space heater that heats you instead of the air around you? Can you toss a throw rug up against the bottom of a leaky door?
Small steps, but every little bit helps. In the meantime, it might not be so bad to cuddle up under an afghan, two blankets and a comforter (and the cat) to watch that DVD – especially if there’s also someone 98.6 degrees warm next to you when you do.
