As a heating contractor, we know that winter is the time when people rely on their home heating system in order to stay warm. At the same time, being a heating contractor, we know if we all kept our homes as warm as we would like them to be, the overall heating bill of heating America's houses would roughly be a billion dollars. No matter how little people use their heaters, the reality is that heating a home can be extremely expensive. This is even more expensive if the equipment you are using has not been properly serviced by a heating contractor.
HVAC Servicing
If you are settling in for the winter, and have not done so already, you need to strongly consider having a heating contractor come out and give your HVAC unit a full servicing. Many people find that once they have had our crew come out, and properly service their HVAC unit, that the cost of keeping the house nice and toasty actually goes down. It is any number of small things that we will find and repair, that can actually lead to the heating bills increasing over time in your house. In addition to fixing your HVAC unit, we also know that there are certain small techniques that you can use which will help you keep the house warmer for a lower-cost heating bill.
Techniques to Help You Save
You may never hear another heating contractor tell you this, but one of the best ways to heat your house in the winter is to use the sun's natural heat. What this means is that when the sun is out, strongly consider opening all the curtains in your house, particularly those that are facing the sun. This allows the natural heat of the sun to flow into your house and has been proven to help keep the house warmer. In addition, as further natural heating advice from a heating contractor, once the sun starts to set, or go away, you want to close those curtains so as to keep the heat inside the house.
Doing these simple techniques will help you to keep heat in the house, gather natural heat, and not have to worry about a rising electric bill. You will also find that doing things like allowing natural sunlight into the house for heat will allow you to run your HVAC at a lower level and hence reduce the heating bill, as well as not needing to get it serviced by your heating contractor until the end of winter.
One of the things that we always tell our customers, as a heating contractor, is to plug the fireplace if it is not in use. A fireplace plug is a device that fits into the fireplace and prevents the warm air, being generated by an HVAC heating system, from flowing out through the leaky fireplace. This, in turn, will help your HVAC unit to not work as hard, to heat the outside, and keep the house more toasty. Doing so will help the life cycle of the HVAC unit, and save you money because your heating contractor will only need to come by seasonally for required maintenance.
