The majority of homeowners would love to lower their home’s monthly energy bills. With lower bills, you could budget more of your income to paying off debt, boosting your savings account, or funding a relaxing vacation for the family. One of the easiest ways to lower your energy bills is to focus on making your home more energy-efficient. Let’s take a look at a few tips for energy efficiency that can help your home become greener and your wallet become fuller.
Maintain Your Appliances
Much of the energy in your home is spent on running large appliances such as the refrigerator, washer, and dryer. When these appliances aren’t regularly maintained, they have to work harder and expend more energy to do so. For instance, if just one component in your air conditioning system is compromised, the entire system will have to work harder to keep your house cool, reducing your home’s energy-efficiency and increasing your energy bills despite a subpar performance from the system. This makes regular maintenance important for keeping your energy costs low in the long-term.
If your appliances are outdated, it may make more financial sense to completely replace them than to spend money on maintaining them. While you will have to face the initial cost of buying new appliances, your energy savings can be significant in the long-term. Many online resources, such as energy.gov, have information about the annual operating costs of various appliances and how the cost of purchasing the appliance will even out with your monthly savings.
Switch to a Smart Thermostat
With standard thermostats, you select a temperature for your home and your HVAC system keeps it there at all times. However, this system makes it easy to use a lot more energy than is needed. Even if you change your thermostat depending on the season or weather, you’re probably still wasting heating and cooling energy when you’re away from home and can’t adjust the settings.
Smart thermostats can help you solve these problems and keep your home comfortable at all times. These programmable thermostats allow you to dictate when it cools or heats your home each day. This means you can keep your HVAC system from wasting heating and cooling energy when you aren’t home and have it kick in just before you return so that it is at the perfect temperature. You can also control a smart thermostat from your smartphone, giving you even more control over your home’s energy use.
Smart thermostats are a bit costly upfront at about $200. However, they can allow you to save 15% to 20% on your heating and cooling bills. After a few months, you’ll have paid for the device and continue to save from there. If you can’t invest in a smart thermostat at the moment, you can at least start setting your thermostat back 10 to 15 degrees when you’re asleep or away from home. This can lower your annual costs by about 10% and reduce the amount of energy your home consumes.
Insulate Your Home
A home with poor insulation is a home that is wasting energy. Your heated or cooled air can easily escape through inadequate seals around your windows and doors, causing your HVAC system to expend more energy to heat or cool your home. To reduce your energy bills, try caulking and weatherstripping around all of your windows and doors. This is a fairly simple DIY project and you can save about 7.5% on your energy bill.
Another area that needs good insulation is your roof. Without appropriate insulation, you lose as much as 20% of every dollar you spend heating your home. You can improve your roof’s insulation by undertaking the project yourself or contacting a professional to do so.
If you’re uncertain as to whether your roof is the source of your home’s insulation trouble, contact a professional roof inspector. It’s recommended that you inspect your roof once or twice a year to look for any damage that has occurred, but a professional will be able to identify areas of energy-efficiency. They can also recommend the best ways to improve your home’s insulation, thereby helping you lower your energy bills.
These are just a few effective ways to lower your monthly energy bills. There are many more tips out there, but by starting with these you can start to see improved energy-efficiency in your home and reduced energy bills.