3 Home Hacks To Conserve Energy & Crank Up the Heat This Winter

Winter’s arrival means that homeowners are now going to make the switch in their energy bills from paying for electricity to keep the AC running to paying for gas for the home furnace.

This can often mean a rise in the monthly bills, but if for people who want to keep their utilities a little lower during the winter season, there are some cost-effective hacks you can do yourself to start saving more every month.

Put Insulation Film on Your Windows

In a perfect world, everyone would have the finances they need to put their home in the best shape possible, including energy efficiency. They’d get brand new windows with modern frame materials like vinyl, triple paned glass, and layers of gas insulation like argon.

But of course, that kind of expenditure, while guaranteed to increase energy efficiency, is quite a large investment, especially for homes with many windows. People who still want to make their windows more energy efficient don’t have to go out and upgrade, however. While not perfect, an effective, low-cost alternative is film insulation.

You can buy it at any hardware store, apply it to your windows and tighten it with hot air, such as from a hairdryer. It creates a layer of air between your home and your glass that keeps warm air from making direct contact with cold glass and radiating out.

Put Caulk on Your Window Frames

The window glass isn’t the only weak spot on windows. Frames, especially older ones made of wood, can also be trouble spots where warm air from the house gets “sucked in” and starts leaking out into the cold.

This can be because of cracks, breaks, and, in more severe cases, rot, or even weakness in the wood due to insects tunneling through. This doesn’t mean you have to get new window frames, you still have a DIY solution for this too, though it will require a bit of work, and a good eye.

Get some good quality, weather resistant caulk from your hardware store, go outside, and closely inspect your window frames. If you find any breaks, cracks or other small, structural defects, they can be sealed up with the caulk. It might not seem like much, but seal up enough of these defects and you’ll be lowering your heating bills.

Using Your Ceiling Fan During the Winter

This is a very uncommon hack, especially since not every home has ceiling fans installed. But for those that do, your ceiling fans are not confined to use just during the summer. You can use them to keep bills down during the winter as well.

Most people know how it works in the summer. A fan set to high speed, rotating counter-clockwise pushes air down, creating wind chill that feels like a pleasant breeze.

In the winter, you reverse this process. Setting your fan to low speed then rotating clockwise, it now draws air up, then recirculates it throughout the room. This means that air is no longer sitting still and getting drawn to windows to radiate that warm air out.

A fan keeps your air warm and in the home for longer periods of time. With these simple, low-cost hacks, your winter in Reading, PA can be warmer, without necessarily causing your bills to take a big bump upwards.