Saving Money, Conserving Energy and Lowering Your Carbon Footprint Too

Home heating prices are lower than they were in 2007 but we cannot be sure how long that will continue. I had to investigate ways to use less home heating oil. I could not continue to put home heating oil on my credit cards. A few of my home heating oil bills in the winter of 2007 were over $900.00 each. In my research I found that saving money by conserving energy was much easier than I thought it would be. I used one less tank of oil last winter.

I credit these 5 items with saving the majority of that tank of oil. I did many other things too but I believe that these made the most difference.

Cover your hot water heater with a blanket. It helps to keep your water hotter. This really does help to keep the heat in the system. To save more energy lower the temperature on the hot water heater to 120 degrees before you cover it.

Wrap your hot water pipes. This also helps to keep the heat in your system and not escaping into the air. If you live where it gets consistently below freezing during the winter you should be wrapping your cold water pipes too.

Buy a programmable thermostat. I find myself not touching the thermostat anymore now that it's programmable. It used to be too easy to turn up the heat before. So much so that I would hardly realize I was doing it. I would turn it up, get sidetracked and forget that I did it until I wondered why I was getting so warm. That was all wasted energy.

Lower your thermostat at night. The house does not have to be toasty warm when you are sleeping. As long as it's comfortable when you're falling asleep it doesn't matter if the temperature drops a little while your sleeping. You can always throw on another blanket if you get cold during the night.

Now to address the fact that the windows are cold even if you have curtains. The cold windows do lower your room temperature. For those of you that have nice thick thermal curtains you are one step ahead of the game. I do not like to shrink wrap my windows even if it will help me to retain heat. I want to be able to open my windows on the nicer fall and winter days to let fresh air in. My answer to that was bubble wrap.

In the course of my research, I came across a few different sources that mentioned bubble wrap. I thought I would give it a try. You just cut it to the exact measurements of the glass. You lightly spritz the flat side of the wrap with water and place it on the glass. No caulk, no glue. no mess.

The heat in your room is not being canceled out by the cold air coming off of the windows.

These changes helped to make my home heating system more energy efficient because the heat was not escaping into thin air. It was helping to keep my hot water warmer and and to keep the heat available to my baseboard heating system. You don't have to replace your old system to have your home be more energy efficient.

You don't have to buy solar panels or a solar hot water system in order to make your home more energy efficient.  There are a lot of things you can do to make the home heating system you currently have more energy efficient.

It's a win win situation. You are saving money by conserving energy and lowering your carbon footprint at the same time.  That's good for you and good for the environment.

There are many things that you can do yourself. The most expensive part of this was the programmable thermostat. I bought all of my supplies a little bit at a time. Believe me, you'll enjoy seeing those home heating costs going down with each and every delivery. I don't cringe when I get those bills anymore.