8 Steps to Take to Create an Energy-Saving Home This Fall

Want to save money, stay comfortable, and shrink your carbon footprint this fall? Discover how programming your thermostat, getting smarter with your home lighting, replacing inefficient appliances, and other strategies can help you create a more energy-saving Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home.

Program Your Thermostat

Give your heating system a rest when you’re away from home, even if it’s only for a few hours. Set your programmable thermostat to activate your heating system before you return home. Adjusting the thermostat to reach sauna-like temperatures when you step inside the door won’t heat your home any faster, since your furnace will be forced to work harder until a set temperature is reached.

Unplug Your Appliances When Possible

Give your small appliances an energy break when they’re not in use. Computers, phone chargers, and other types of electronics tend to use power and give off heat even when they are turned off, but still plugged in. You can make your life easier and avoid having to unplug multiple appliances by using a power strip as a master switch.

Upgrade Your Lighting

Incandescent light bulbs generate more heat than light. Replacing these types of bulbs with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) or LEDs can help you save energy on your home-lighting expenses, something you’ll appreciate with savings on your home energy bills.

Get a Heating System Checkup

Whether you have a furnace or heat pump, you don’t want to ignore annual servicing of your home’s heating system by our professionals at Cook’s Comfort Systems. Repairs and tuneups to your furnace or heat pump increase the unit’s efficiency, and, over time, these maintenance service visits pay for themselves.

If you have an older heating unit that was installed in your home during the 1990s, you stand to earn significant savings by replacing that unit. Older units can eat up more energy than modern energy-efficient home comfort solutions available on the market today.

Situate Your Appliances Properly in Your Home

If you keep an extra refrigerator or freezer in your home to store meats and other food products that won’t fit into your kitchen’s main refrigerator, be sure to situate these appliances properly in your home. Don’t keep these appliances in unconditioned spaces, such as garages. You can also save more energy by using a chest freezer, which loses a lot less cold air when it’s opened. For maximum energy efficiency, keep freezers relatively full.

Do Portions of Your Laundry in Cold Water

Did you know that close to 90 percent of the energy used to wash a load of laundry goes to heating the water itself (according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)? While some items require hot water for laundering, such as bed linens to kill dust mites, you can generally use cold water to wash articles of clothing.

Replace Inefficient Windows

Do you feel drafts or cool breezes entering into the rooms of your home? Inefficient windows in your home may be to blame. Single and even some double-pane glass windows could be forcing your home’s HVAC system to work harder than necessary. Consider replacing inefficient windows with Energy Star–qualified windows that contain features such as insulating glazes and better window-framing materials. To keep in the warmth, use heavy window coverings on your windows to better retain heat inside your home.

Put Ceiling Fans to Good Use

You may think that ceiling fans are only useful during the summer to circulate the air conditioning inside your living spaces. But ceiling fans can also help out during the fall and winter seasons of the year. When set to turn clockwise, ceiling fans help pull cool air up while pushing the warmer air that generally rises to the ceiling down along the walls and back to the floor.

By putting into place the strategies above, you can boost your home’s energy savings this season. Let our HVAC service technicians at Cook’s Comfort Systems, Inc. help you make sure your home heating system is operating at peak efficiency so that you won’t have to stress over your heating bills this season. Call us today at 865-238-4835.

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