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Heating Ottawa - Reduce Home Heating Costs!
This article was sponsored by Premier Comfort a source for all your Ottawa heating solutions! There are lots of ways you can reduce the cost of heating your home weather you live Ottawa Ontario, or anywhere else in Canada, where the winters can get mighty cold. Below you will find a few cheap and easy ways to reduce your heating bills!
A great place to start is your energy consumption.
Obviously the less heat you use the smaller your bill and the easiest way to accomplish this is keeping the temperature at a nice even comfortable heat. Turning it up and down all the time is inefficient and hard on your heating system.
You don’t have to set the thermostat so low as to have to wear a huge thick sweater around the house all day but at the same time having your home feel like a sauna in the winter wastes a lot of money and isn’t that great for your health anyway. You want a nice comfortable even heat.
Programmable Thermostats
Most homes nowadays have Programmable Thermostats, if you don’t spend the money and get one. Programmed properly, you will save a ton of money and feel comfortable all day and night long.
If you already have one, are you making good use of it? Most of us have one all ready but either don’t know how to use it properly or are not aware of the potential energy savings from formatting it properly. Heating our home is a “comfort issue” rather than a heating one. We don’t want to be cold in our own house and usually error on the side of being a bit warmer rather than feeling cold. Programming your furnace to keep your home at the temperature you want is easy and will save you hundreds of dollars a year.
Learn how to use it and program it to;
Reduce the heat at night. You’re in a nice warm bed and a bit of cooler air is healthy. It is also a great alternative to opening a window in the bedroom for that cool air – just turn down the heat! Have it increase the temperature a half hour before you get up.
Why keep the temperature of your home high when you’re at work? You can have the heat increased a half hour before you get home and you’ll have saved a ton of money. Why not reduce the heat when you at work.
Close your curtains at night open then during the day!
The still air between your window and the inside of the curtain acts like insulation. If you aren’t doing, why not give it a try. During the day open them up to allow the heat from the suns rays to heat the room.
Weather Strip Your Windows & Doors
Put your hand down in front of your doors that lead in from the outside. If you can feel a strong draft, replace the weather stripping – it’s easy and inexpensive to do and will save you money. If you don’t want to do, that put a towel down at the very least! Check your windows for drafts, there are a ton of products out there that are inexpensive and easy to use to reduce heat loss around your windows.
Keep Your Furnace Filter Clean
Something as simple as a dirty air filter can add lots of money to your heating (And Cooling) bill. Why? Because a dirty or plugged air filter reduces air flow which in turn makes your furnace work harder and longer. You don’t need an expensive filter, just keep it clean. There are some good washable furnace filters out there that will last for years and do the job.
Fireplaces
Keep fireplace damper closed when not in use. Every room in your home has a negative or positive air pressure. This means that air is either trying to leave the room or come into the room. If there is a negative air pressure in the room where your fire place is then when the fireplace is not on – the cold air from the out side will rush down the chimney and into your house. If there is a positive air pressure in that room your warm air is gong to be sucked d out of the room.
Hot Water Heaters.
Heating water accounts for approx. 20-30% of your energy bill every month! Many homeowners have the temperature set too high. If you have kids or are taking care of an elderly person and you are worried about “scalding” then I would suggest a temperature setting of around 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature should not exceed 120 for optimal savings.
In conclusion there are lots of easy ways to save to save on your heating costs that we have not mentioned here but we feel the ones we have mentioned are easily done with a very small investment. If you are looking for heating services in Ottawa, why not give Premier Comfort a call.
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