Energy Saving Upgrades for Your Older Home

If you live in an older home, chances are that you don't have a lot of energy saving features. You may have and old and inefficient heating system, poor insulation, and energy draining windows and doors. The good news is that there is probably a lot of "low hanging fruit," easy and inexpensive projects that you can do yourself to save money and improve the comfort of your home.

Windows and Doors

Does your home have single paned windows? Can you feel drafts around your windows when it's windy outside? If so, you need to give your windows some attention. Apply weather stripping to your windows so that they have a better seal on them. When the wind is blowing, single paned windows have almost no insulation capability, so you need to isolate the windows from the air in your home. Window coverings, particularly ones designed to provide some level of insulation, can help mitigate the poor insulating ability of your windows. You can also cover your windows with plastic during the winter to help reduce drafts. Most home improvement centers sell various window covering products that can help you save. Xcel Energy, one of the largest utilities in the country, estimates that you could save up to $40 per heating season in cold climates.

Inspect your exterior doors for drafts. If you discover a significant amount of air moving into your home, apply weather stripping to stop the inflow of outside air. When replacing doors, look for a replacement that is energy star certified.

Attic Insulation

Take a look up in your attic. How many inches of insulation do you have installed? What type of insulation is? A poorly insulated attic can be a significant drain on your home's warm air during the winter. The result is you need a larger furnace that runs more frequently, costing you money. If you're a do it yourself type, you can probably save a significant amount of money on your heating and cooling bills by increasing the insulating capability of your attic to at least R40. The R value of insulation is a measure of the thermal resistance of the insulation, the higher the number, the better the insulation. Insulating materials usually are rated by R value per inch thickness of material. Once you've determined what type of insulation you have in your home, you can measure your attic's current R value by simply finding the average thickness of the insulation and multiply by the rated R value of your insulation.

Drafts and leaks

Drafts and leaks around windows and doors are often easy to detect and correct, but they generally aren't the biggest source of air entering your home. Check the exterior walls of you home for cracks and gaps that are not plugged. Pipes and wire conduits should be caulked to prevent air leaking in around them. Make sure that your fireplace's damper is closed when the fireplace is not in use. Before you seal things up too tightly, you may want to have your radon levels measured. Once you plug leaks and seal your home more effectively, you may need to install a radon mitigation system.

Ducts and the Furnace

Uninsulated and leaky ducts can dramatically reduce the efficiency of your heating and cooling system. Sealing leaks and applying insulation to exposed ductwork, particularly when located in unheated crawlspaces and basements, should be a big part of any upgrades that you perform to your heating and cooling system. Before you insulate exposed ductwork, make sure that you inspect the ductwork for gaps and leaks. Seal these with duct mastic, a product you can find at your local home center. Don't use standard duct tape.

You can buy duct insulation at your local home center. It usually comes in packages that cover 5 feet of duct and is usually rated between R-6 and R-8. Buy the highest R value product that you can find. Each 5 ft. segment will cost about $5-$10 to insulate.

If you have an old furnace, consider replacing it with a new, high efficiency model. If you can afford a new furnace at the moment, make sure your existing one is properly maintained. This will ensure that it is running as efficiently as possible. During the heating season, change the furnace filter a regular intervals to ensure proper airflow through the furnace. Have your ducts cleaned every couple of years to improve air flow and air quality.

Lighting

Replace the light bulbs in your home with compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). These use a quarter of the energy of incandescent bulbs. They also last considerably longer. They do cost more than incandescents, but you'll save money over the life of the bulb. CFLs can also improve the comfort of your home because they don't put out nearly as much heat as older bulbs.

This article was furnished by your Louisville Colorado specialists, Automated Homefinder.

Saving Big on Your Home Energy Costs the Easy Way

Energy, the price of food, The cost of healthcare, and just about everything you can think of -- prices seem to be rising everywhere. Everywhere you look you find that prices are increasing. If you have to spend more of your resources on medical care, groceries and gas and electricity, that leaves less available for other things. Important priority items like your rent or mortgage and monthly health insurance premiums are harder to cut back without making big changes, but energy usage is an area where you can do a lot to keep expenses down without making really big changes. These things won't even cost anything to start saving. Start saving money today by using these simple steps.

Use sensible window treatments to reduce your temperature inside the house. During the summertime, close your south and west facing curtains or blinds. Keeping harsh sunlight out of your home will reduce the burden on your air conditioner and will make your rooms cooler. During the winter, do the opposite. Open up on sunny days to let the sun's rays warm your rooms. In the evening, be sure to close them again to keep the warm air in.

In summertime, set your temperature to 78 degrees or even higher if you can get used to it. You can save quite a lot on energy by raising the temperature to 78 from 72 degrees. Your air conditioner is probably your home's most energy intensive system, so even small decreases can yield big returns.

Make sure your dishwasher is full before you run it, so you won't run it as often. The dishwasher is about 2% of your overall energy bill. Don't ever run partial loads. Wait until it is as full as possible before turning it on.

Use a low-flow showerhead. You will save water and additionally it will save the energy used in heating that water. You can buy one for just a few dollars. Installation is nothing more complicated than opening and reclosing the lid on a jar.

Don't leave the fireplace damper open. When you don't have a fire in your fireplace, make sure the damper is closed. This will keep warm air from escaping out the chimney.

Run vent fans only when necessary to use them. Your bathroom's vent fan can replace your home's entire volume of air in as short a time as an hour. Letting exhaust fan run for long periods of time will suck your cool or warm air from your house and replace it with outdoor air at your expense. This will increase your cooling and heating costs by a large amount.

Keep your refrigerator coils clean. If the coils are dirty, your refrigerator will build up excess heat. Pull your fridge out from the wall twice a year and check the coils and clean them. The refrigerator can use 6 percent or moreover 6 percent of the energy usage, so keep it running at its best efficiency to keep costs lower.

Fix dripping faucets. A dripping faucet can waste huge amounts of water over the course of a year. Added to that, if the leak is hot water you are sending more money down the drain. Heating your water usually accounts for about 10 to 15% of household energy costs. Those constant drips can add up to a big cost and they are easy to avoid.

Lower your temperature control to 68 in wintertime. You can save up to 5% on each heating bill by lowering your thermostat from 72 to 68.



This information was provided by Automated Homefinder, Colorado's best Boulder real estate experts.

Get Going on Your Energy Conservation Plan

Before you can possibly start to make informed choices about your home use of energy, you need to give it some thought and start from a solid foundation of applicable knowledge, and then do a few calculations. Being informed on how you use energy in your home will let you make the best choices about replacing your appliances or changing your heating and cooling systems.

To get started, the first step is finding out what your baseload energy consumption is. Your baseload consumption includes those systems and appliances in your home that run the whole year. It includes things like the gas grills, refrigerator, computers, ovens, lights, entertainment centers, and any other regularly used appliances. If your home uses both natural gas and electricity, then you will have to figure your electricity and gas baseloads in separate calculations. It's not too hard.

You will need about a year's worth of electric and gas statements. If you don't have them on hand, contact the company and have them send you the last year's collection of bills. Next, you'll want to take a look at how your energy usage changes during the year. Mark the numbers on a graph. The usage curve will be defined by your climate. If you live in a cold region, your highest expenses will be for heat; conversely in a hot climate your air conditioning costs will be the larger share. Find the lowest energy usage months. These months are the months that consist of mostly your baseload consumption. The idea is to identify the months for which there is little or no seasonal usage. If there happen to be a number of months that fit this pattern, use the average monthly level as your baseload figure. Measure the actual energy usage, not the dollar amount you pay. Energy prices change over time and are subject to long-term and seasonal cycles of world energy commodities like natural gas, coal, and oil. Your electricity is billed in kilowatt hours and gas is measured in therms, which is a unit of heat energy, or less commonly, in hundred cubic feet segments. Record the amount of your usage in the actual units used rather than the dollar amount of the bill so that you will have a good picture of your energy consumption at the commodity level over the years.

Now that you have found what your baseload energy usage is, it is simple to determine what your seasonal demands are. Simply subtract the baseload usage from each month to determine how much of each month's bill is due to heating or cooling usage. Add up the amount for each month and this will give you your annual cooling and heating needs. Multiply the average baseload usage by 12 to get the yearly baseload numbers. As an extra step, to put the figures in context, you can confirm the figures by checking them against the amounts you actually paid, which can be found right on the statements. Then to find the amount of your annual costs, check the bills to see the price you pay for each kWh of electric power and each therm (or whatever metering unit your utility utilizes to bill gas usage) of gas. Multiply the annual usage and the unit price and you can see what your annual cost is. Finally, check your work against the dollar totals, and you will have the amounts exceeding baseload for reference.

So what?

Here's where this all pays off. You can use the information you put together to put your energy efficiency projects in an order of priority. Should you buy a new, more efficient heating unit or replace your inefficient refrigerator? If you know your baseload energy usage in comparison with the seasonal, the decision will be easier to make. You will know which project will be worth investing in.


Content presented by Automated Homefinder, your Colorado Boulder real estate specialists.