Save Money By Turning Down The Heat

As the chillier nights are coming, you can save money by turning down the heat when you don’t need it. If you plan to be away from home for 4 hours or more and you normally keep you heat set at 65 degrees, you can turn it down to 55 to 60 degrees. Keeping within 10 degrees is a much better alternative to turning off your heat. You don’t want the furnace to have to catch up from a 20-degree difference. That will make it work too hard and all the money you were saving will be spent on your system trying to catch back up. Another reason to not shut it off entirely is for some reason you can’t make it home and you don’t want your pipes freezing.

You can also consider turning the heat down to 60 before you go to bed. Of course, a programmable thermostat can be set to specific times of day when you want to lower the temperature. For example, on weekdays you could set the thermostat to go down to 60 at 11 p.m., then turn up to 68 at 6 a.m. so when you get out of bed in the morning your home will feel comfortable. Then it could go back to 60 around 8 a.m. then at 5 p.m. back up to 68. On the weekends, it would only turn down at night, making the entire process automatic. Following these recommendations, you should be able to cut 10-15% off your monthly utility bill. The general rule is for every degree you lower your thermostat; you could potentially save 1-3% of your heating costs.

The one negative to this situation is if your home is drafty, having older windows and doors that are not sealed properly, or walls that are not insulated. The best way to test for window or door drafts is to light a candle around the area to see if it causes the flame to flicker. So as you see, you can save money by turning down the heat!