There are factors that affect the cost of electric bill in our heating and cooling system that can help us in our burden of having an expensive electric bill. Here’s some tips and guides that might help you to reduce your power consumption.
- Upgrade the insulation
Upgrade the insulation, the R-value in your home in some cases drops or you’re blown in insulation or even bad insulation in the attic and it’s time is gone on and it is just in sad shape it’s not doing what it used to. Just getting in there and upgrading that or adding to it if that R-value higher some people sometimes get spray foam you could just go to the store and get spray foam and a can and fill in those cracks and gaps around your home areas that air was able to get in an extreme temperatures. That alone helps dramatically affect their utility bills and then the last thing that this isn’t necessarily insulation related but if you do have gaps and cracks in your windows and doors getting some foam tape going around the windows and doors. Filling in all those air gaps makes that home not being affected by the outside weather as much.
- Upgrading the window
If you are in a home you’re trying to lose your HVAC electric bills, consider upgrading the window. I was just talking to somebody the other week about upgrading the windows in their home from a single pane just to a double pane. Nothing fancy, they upgrade it to double pane windows and their utility bills have dropped dramatically just because they upgraded the windows. They didn’t get crazy and condition the attic and do some of the other things we’re about to talk about. All they do is upgrade their windows. They have a contractor come in to upgrade all the windows and their utility bills have dropped dramatically.
- Conditioning your attic
Conditioning your attic years ago you have open rafters in the attic and then you will put insulation in the bottom of that attic whether it’s blown in or bad or whatever kind of insulation you have. The attic itself was almost an oven sitting on top of your home and so we have seen a lot of people get away from that, they will not even insulate between the top floor and the attic but then instead those open rafters that used to see where your roof was they are now insulating that and turning that attic into a condition space itself. You will still have a hot outside between your attic and the outside itself yes but instead of having the sweat box that was just absorbing all the energy from the sun the sun beating down on a black roof. Some cases shingles or whatever kind of roof you have and then you’ve got this box in there that is just absorbing all of that heat and now you’re doing away with that now. If you don’t want to spend the extra money to condition that attic and do everything some people are installing an attic fan, you can even get solar powered attic fan so you’re not even adding to your electric bill powered attic fan it is still reduced their utility bills because they’re eliminating that oven that I was talking about.
- Encapsulate your crawl space
This is an additional attic but just like the attic which is a space right next to your livable dwelling, if you go down to the bottom of the house there will be a basement or a crawl space and a lot of people are encapsulating their crawl spaces. They’re making them airtight nothing from outside and get in and they’re being able to condition that essentially it becomes a whole another room in the house as a buffer there. One thing we got it coming up in a future video that we’re gonna talk about is that if you encapsulate your crawl space making it airtight you’re also making the air in your home safer to breathe.
- Add zoning to your house
Zoning is another one that can be a factor. you have parts of your house that you barely used and you’re still conditioning it. I’m not saying to shut off the zone entirely but you can add zoning to your house or even just turn the vents a little bit close pushing more air to the more high traffic areas of your home. That will help you save energy now be careful with us you might want to get the advice of a professional because closing vents and things like that can affect your heating and air system. You don’t want to make it to where it’s starving to breathe causing lower airflow and eventually maybe even a breakdown in the system.
- Heating and air system turned up
Get that heating and air system turned up clean the coils get the clearance around the outdoor unit get the bushes cut back get the refrigerant levels track. Lot of people don’t realize if you’re not having that system maintained properly, the EPA came out a few years ago and said just a 0.25 inch of dust on the coil will make your utility bills go up $10 a year. If you think what does a 0.25 of inch of dust that’s not that much, we see some coils with tons of dirt and dust on them and people don’t realize that is making your system work harder it makes it run longer and having that system cleaned up tuned up making it run as efficiently as possible will save you money
- Adjusting the thermostat settings
Adjusting the thermostat settings things like heat drooping back up heat stage timers, and extending fan run times. All kinds of things that you can change in your thermostat making that system run as efficiently as possible we talked about it some of our other articles. If you’re not sure, have a professional get in there and make sure everything’s on the up and up. If you can deal with a longer heat stage timer or a larger drew things like that especially in the winter time you can save tons of money making that says some more efficient.
- Humidity control
Controlling humidity in your home, a lot of people don’t realize that a temperature of 72° in your house might not be the same at 72° in someone else’s house. Humidity plays a big role depending on whether it’s winter or summer. Whatever season you’re in if that humidity is too high or too low it can affect your comfort levels. Get that and check adding a dehumidifier or a humidifier to make you more comfortable. When you’re home making it to where you’re not adjusting the temperature drastically makes your system work harder making your electric bills higher and all you have to do is control the humidity.
- Higher efficiency system
Going with a higher efficiency system a lot of people are always worried about every little penny and they’re trying to compare well if they spend this extra money to get this higher in the system. All that good stuff obviously installing a higher end inverter system will make you save money. Also look at things like maybe going ductless, if you don’t have ductwork at all do you want to worry about things like duct loss which I don’t care how good your ductwork is or how new it is there is there such a thing as duct loss. Meaning air that escapes from ductwork and also if your ductwork adds more static pressure to it maybe the velocity is not as high, things like that are all reasons that ductless is more efficient than your conventional ducted heating and air system.
- Going solar
People nowadays are looking at this option and in fact even government rebates and all kinds of incentives for people to look at going solar in their home because of heating and air systems. I’ve come a long way. A lot of them are way more efficient than they used to be. You can have your system run on solar. In some cases you’re not drawing any energy at all. I’ve heard some people say that they have put solar in their house and they’ve actually been able to not just save money but actually get credits from the power company because they were providing more electricity than consuming.
I hope this article helps you in lowering your HVAC electrical bill.