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Five intermediate tips to help reduce energy costs year-round
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Whether it's winter or summer, it's important to make sure your home is properly sealed, insulated and shaded to help control your energy costs. In a previous article I provided three easy, inexpensive weatherization tips. This article will advance to slightly more difficult and/or initially expensive ideas for reducing energy costs at home.
1. Seal all heating and cooling ducts with duct wrap or mastic sealant. According to Jim O'Neil, General Manager of Mr. Handyman, a new business based in Lake Oswego, Oregon, this single step can save up to 25% on a home's heating and cooling bills.
2. Insulate your water heater and pipes. According to O'Neil an easy way to tell how much heat you're losing is simply to carefully touch your water heater's surface. The hotter it gets the more you need to insulate. Remember to insulate hot water pipes too, this will allow you to conserve on heating and water costs as you won't need to let the water run as long before it heats up.
3. Use low-VOC caulk or foam around windows and doors. You can also add door sweeps and/or door shoe gaskets. Even an 1/8" space around doors can leak considerably. An oft-forgotten site of leaks is around light-switches. Installing simple foam gaskets can help seal them.
4. Replace old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs with low-energy CFLs or (much more expensive and efficient) LED lighting. The cost of CFLs, which last around ten times longer than incandescents, has dramatically decreased in recent years. According to O'Neil, replacing just five bulbs can cut annual lighting costs by as much as 50%! The major drawback of CFLs is that they contain mercury, a highly toxic metal that is liquid at room temperature. The best option is LED lighting which is far more efficient but also considerably more expensive to install.
5. Always remember our good friends, the three Rs: reduce, reuse and recycle. Old cupboards and building materials can often be donated to places like Habitat for Humanity or Scrap here in Portland. Remember to turn heat down at night and reuse and recycle anything you possibly can.
Whether you're concerned with the environment or just your pocket book, these tips are proven to help save energy. With some initial investment, long-term bills can be reduced dramatically over the lifetime of a home using these steps.
I'd like to thank Jim O'Neil of Mr. Handyman in Lake Oswego and Patrick Roach for providing many of the tips in this article. Look for an article on more advanced tips in the coming weeks.
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