Guest Post — As the winter approaches many of us start to worry about how much money will this winter cost to keep us warm. No, I’m not talking about going on a shopping spree for clothing and shoes. Instead, I’m focusing on how to keep the heat inside the house. Regardless where you are getting your energy from, (renewable source or not), the cost to keep you place nice and warm during the winter months won’t go down unless your home is properly sealed and your appliances are operating in an efficient way.
The first thing you should do in order to reduce your energy costs, is to check for air leaks. Although you may already have an idea the source of some of the air leakage in your home, you still need to find the less obvious places so you can properly air seal your home. The best way to address this matter is by hiring a qualified technician to conduct a complete energy assessment, including a blower door test. While the energy assessment will also help determine areas in your home that need more insulation, thru home depressurization, the blower door test will show you the air leakages.
Without a blower door test, there are still ways to find some of the air leakage. Start by performing a visual inspection on both interior and exterior of the home. When assessing the exterior of the house, focus on places where two building materials meet as well as any cracks on the walls. On the interior part, you should be checking for crack on the walls, as well as drafts coming from doors, windows, and outlets as those are the most common places for air leakage. Another way to check on your home air tightness is by turning all the fans that blow air out of the house on and with a lit incense go thru the most common places looking for drafts. If you see the smoke being sucked out of the house, voila! You have just found an air leakage. While many times installing a weather strip around doors and windows or caulking certain areas will address the leakage, sometimes you will need a big investment that includes replacing your doors or windows. In this case, look for energy efficient ones.
Besides addressing the air leakage, you should check your appliances too. Make sure they are all energy efficient (Hint: look for the Energy Star seal on them) as well as they are fully functional and well maintained. If you are in the market for a new furnace, look for the dual stage, high efficient ones as besides being silent when it comes to operating noise, they will also save you money.
As the days are getting shorter and the nights longer, many of us tend to turn the outdoor lights more often and use them for longer periods of time, especially during the Holiday season. If your outdoor lighting is hard-wired with no motion sensor, you can definitely save a reasonable amount of money on your energy bill by replacing those lights with more energy efficient ones. Replace the conventional, hard-wired path lights with solar ones. Furthermore, the light fixtures installed on the walls and ceilings should be equipped with a motion sensor to trigger the lights to be on for few minutes based on movement. This way, when nobody is around the lights will be off and, upon some movement is detected the lights will be turned on for few minutes to allow you to get in and out of the house, while surprising intruders too.
When decorating your home for the Holidays, look for solar powered ornaments to be used on the exterior of your home as well as LED lighting fixtures for both indoors and outdoors as they will help you to reduce your energy bills without compromising the quality of your décor. After all, you don’t need to compromise comfort and beauty to save energy.
VK Sustainable Concepts’ Principal Andrea Vollf, LEED AP ID+C, is a registered interior designer and sustainability professional with over fifteen years of experience in the interior design and marketing industries. Connect with Andrea on Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
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