Energy Tips for Heating and Cooling Your Home – Fireplaces, Thermostats, & Landscaping
February 26, 2008
This week I’m featuring Energy Saving tips, save some money by conserving energy!
Yesterday I covered some heating and cooling tips for your home, today we’ll look at a few more.
Fireplaces
When you cozy up next to a crackling fire on a cold winter day, you probably don’t realize that your fireplace is one of the most inefficient heat sources you can possibly use. It literally sends your energy dollars right up the chimney along with volumes of warm air. A roaring fire can exhaust as much as 24,000 cubic feet of air per hour to the outside, which must be replaced by cold air coming into the house from the outside. Your heating system must warm up this air, which is then exhausted through your chimney. If you use your
conventional fireplace while your central heating system is on, these tips can help reduce energy losses.
Fireplace Tips
• If you never use your fireplace, plug and seal the chimney flue.
• Keep your fireplace damper closed unless a fire is going. Keeping the damper open is like keeping a window wide open during the winter; it allows warm air to go right up the chimney.
• When you use the fireplace, reduce heat loss by opening dampers in the bottom of the firebox (if provided) or open the nearest window slightly— approximately 1 inch—and close doors leading into the room. Lower the thermostat setting to between 50° and 55°F.
• Install tempered glass doors and a heat-air exchange system that blows warmed air back into the room.
• Check the seal on the flue damper and make it as snug as possible.
• Add caulking around the fireplace hearth.
• Use grates made of C-shaped metal tubes to draw cool room air into the fireplace and circulate warm air back into the room.
Natural Gas & Oil Heating Systems
If you plan to buy a new heating system, ask your local utility or state energy office for information about the latest technologies available to consumers. They can advise you about more efficient systems on the market today. For example, many newer models incorporate designs for burners and heat exchangers that result in higher efficiencies during operation and reduce heat loss when the equipment is off. Consider a sealed combustion furnace; they are both safer and more efficient. <
Programmable Thermostats
You can save as much as 10% a year on your heating and cooling bills by simply turning your thermostat back 10% to 15% for 8 hours. You can do this automatically without sacrificing comfort by installing an automatic setback or programmable thermostat.
Using a programmable thermostat, you can adjust the times you turn on the heating or air-conditioning according to a pre-set schedule. As a result, the equipment doesn’t operate as much when you are asleep or when the house or part of the house is not occupied. Programmable thermostats can store and repeat multiple daily settings (six or more temperature settings a day) that you can manually override without affecting the rest of the daily or weekly program.
Landscaping
Landscaping is a natural and beautiful way to keep your home cool in summer and reduce your energy bills. In addition to adding aesthetic value and environmental quality to your home, a well-placed tree, shrub, or vine can deliver effective shade, act as a windbreak, and reduce overall energy bills.
Carefully positioned trees can save up to 25% of a typical household’s energy used for heating and cooling. Computer models from DOE predict that just three trees, properly placed around the house, can save an average household between $100 and $250 in heating and cooling energy costs annually.
Studies conducted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found summer daytime air temperatures to be 3° to 6°F cooler in tree-shaded neighborhoods than in treeless areas.
The energy-conserving landscape strategies you should use for your home depend on the type of climate in which you live.
All posts by Ben Edwards
I would like to find tubular inserts for my fire place that would go into the fire champer and allow air to flow through the open area of the tubes and back out into the room. I saw one of these in operation and results were good.
No matter what kind of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system you have in your house, you can save money and increase your comfort by properly maintaining and upgrading your equipment. But remember, an energy-efficient furnace alone will not have as great an impact on your energy bills as using the whole-house approach. By combining proper equipment maintenance and upgrades with appropriate insulation, air sealing, and thermostat settings, you can cut your energy use for heating and cooling, and reduce environmental emissions, from 20% to 50%.
Programmable thermostats are a great investment. I did some research on them recently and was quite impressed with how much money they can save you. I haven’t purchased one yet because I’ve been really busy, but plan to install one as soon as I get the chance.