Time Is Energy

Lower home heating bills

Just like the expert advice to eat healthy and exercise, we've been told at least a hundred times that one way to lower home heating bills is to plug leaks around windows and doors. While not very sexy in the abstract, plugging air leaks and filling gaps offers an insanely high return on investment (ROI) in the hundreds (possibly thousands--depending on heating costs) of percent per year.

Well this Thanksgiving I got a couple of my brothers to help seal my parents house. We put new weather stripping on all the doors and windows and caulked all the other gaps where their home energy audit indicated the house loses heat/energy. For $30 worth of weather stripping and caulk (the house has 20 floor to ceiling doors & windows!) we noticeably reduced the amount of cold air seeping into the house. If we use just 1% less energy to heat the house each month, we will more than recover our costs this winter. Considering that some gaps we found and plugged were 1/4" wide, I think we will save much more.

Hopefully a review of our energy bills this spring will show these savings.

posted by Daniel @ 2:17 PM