About half of the energy consumed by the average household is due to heating and cooling.
Temperature control makes a sizable impact on the environment and budget.
Which is why living in an area with extremely chilly wintertime weather and painful sweltering summers, minimizing the cost of heating and cooling is a priority! I’m constantly searching for ways to tighten up the house and prevent energy waste. I’ve gradually substituted every single window in the house with a thermal pane, Energy Star rated window. Also, every year, I caulk and weatherstrip around doors and windows. I’ve also installed ceiling fans to help push the heat down toward the floor in wintertime and encourage it up and out in the summer. Unfortunately, I realized that I needed to replace the insulation in the attic, although my partner and I insulated when we first moved into the home, that was nearly seventeen years ago.It seems that over time, moisture, rodents and settling had compromised the integrity of the insulation. It was no longer giving an effective barrier against the weather. This caused ice dams building up on the roof and icicles hanging off the edges. My partner and I debated over handling this project ourselves, but ended up hiring a licensed heating and air conditioning supplier to finish the job. The cost of materials and labor was not too high-priced and neither one of us was interested in crawling around in the sweaty attic. The HVAC techs completed the attic insulation in a matter of hours. There was no sizable mess or disruption. The improvement in comfort and efficiency of the house was very visible. We noticed that although the cooling system wasn’t running as long or genuinely working as hard, we all benefited from more even temperatures from room to room. When winter arrived, the cost of running the furnace was considerably lower.