Lower Energy Bills: The Perfect Gift

If you’re like a lot of homeowners, you pay your utility/energy bills every month without thinking about it. Like you have any choice? Well, you have an opportunity to be rewarded with lower energy bills this holiday season and winter by taking a easy steps to conserve energy in your home.

Following are several easy ways to get lower energy bills:

• Enjoy free heat by opening curtains, blinds and shutters on sunny days. It might be 10 degrees outside, but those rays of sunshine pouring through your windows can still warm a room by several degrees. Close curtains once the sun goes down to provide another layer of protection from the cold.
• Adjust setbacks in your programmable thermostat to account for the heating season. Lower the temperature when you’re at work or school by as much as 10 to 12 degrees, as well as several degrees when home occupants are asleep at night. Time the temperatures to return to your comfort level when you expect to arrive home or awaken.
• If your home isn’t properly weatherized, take steps to seal air leaks in its outer perimeter and upgrade insulation where necessary. While you can visually detect some of the leaks, a professional energy assessment will do so comprehensively. In addition to finding air leaks, it will show where insulation is missing or insufficient.
• Adjust the blade rotation on your ceiling fans to clockwise (wintertime mode). Instead of blowing air downward as happens during the summer, the winter adjustment will push air upward. This forces the warm air that concentrates near the ceiling down into the room where enhanced warmth is desired. If there’s a thermostat in the room, it will detect the warmer air and delay turning on the furnace, saving energy and money.
• Replace old incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs, both in regular household applications and holiday lighting.
• Schedule a seasonal preventative maintenance tune-up for your heating system if you haven’t already done so.

For more tips on managing lower energy bills in your Orlando-area home this winter, please contact us at Rinaldi’s Energy Solutions.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Orlando, Florida and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).

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