Cutting Down Home Energy Bills: 9 Expert Tips
Saving home energy is something you should do regardless of whether or not you are environmentally concerned as it allows you to save money.
This article will focus on some of the things and places where we unkowingly use up excess energy, and some expert advice on how to cut down the amount of energy we use in these places without compromising our living standard:
1. Heating up our homes. We can save money and also heat up our homes by reducing the temperature of our thermostat by 1 degree, and by keeping it constant. If you feel that you need more heat, you can wear an extra layer of clothing, or even use extra bedding to make yourself warm.
2. Furnace/boiler maintenance. This appliance can only do its job most effectively if it is well maintained. If it is not kept in good condition, it will continue to consume the same amount of energy but will not deliver the heat you need - which is a very big waste of money.
Even if your home heating system is well maintained, you might notice that your heating is still not very effective. This is likely to be due to one of the following reasons:
3. Poorly maintained/old insulation. The walls, roofs and sometimes even floors in your home are insulated with certain materials in the core of their structures. This insulation is responsible for reflecting heat back into your home (if it is well maintained and reasonably new) and also for allowing your heat to escape through it (if it is not so well maintained). You should make sure to have your home insulation checked in order to ensure maximum efficiency of your heating.
4. Not closing your curtains and windows at sunset. This may seem like an insignificant suggestion, but the reality is that by closing your curtains and windows at sunset/dusk, the heat that enters your home throughout the day is allowed to remain inside.
5. Cracks/holes in your walls, roofs and floors. These allow cold air drafts to enter your home, and also allow heat to leave your home. You can fix this problem by using something called a draft excluder, which will allow you to fill in and patch up these areas. Holes and cracks in your home usually take form near the edges of doors and windows, so be sure to check them in your own house.
Electricity is used very, very abundantly in our homes, and often when we don't even realize. Data shows that up to 15% of your energy bills are due to the electricity you are constantly using. There are many ways you can improve this:
6. Replace your home's light bulbs with energy efficient LED lights. Regular, old-style filament lamps produce a yellowish light, which consumes a lot of energy, burns out relatively quick, makes noise, and heats up to burning temperatures. LED lights have none of these drawbacks. They can last up to 10 times longer than the regular filament bulb, produce very little heat, give off brighter, white light and use a fraction of the energy that a regular filament bulb uses. It is more than worth the investment to incorporate these lights into your home and replace the older ones, if you have not done so already.
7. Turn off appliances after use. People argue that leaving your appliances on standby after using them, it's "the same as turning them off". This is incorrect. Studies show that your appliances can use up to 60% of the energy they use when they are actually on, during a time of being in standby. Be sure to turn them off when they are not being used.
8. Turn off lights that are on for no helpful purpose. This is probably the most obvious and most-heard-of thing when people talk about saving energy at home. Believe it or not, it still claims the title of being one of the best, easiest and most effective ways of saving energy at home.
9. Make use of solar power. The benefits of using solar power to provide your home's electricity range from reducing your energy bill by small amounts, all the way to making a stable source of money income for you and freeing you of your dependency on external electricity providers. It may be expensive to set up initially, but the benefits you can have by using solar power are enormous.
The ideas presented here are only a small amount of what is available out there. Don't forget that the biggest energy saving tool, resource or idea that is available to you and everyone else is imagination. If it wasn't for the imagination of scientists, homeowners and all other people that are environmentally concerned, we would never reach such a great number of simple and effective solutions to almost every single source of energy waste in our homes.
So, don't be afraid to use your imagination and come up with new ways of saving home energy!
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