Maintaining a comfortable temperature in your home during the winter doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. With a few simple tips to conserve heat and make your more home energy efficient, you can maintain a comfortable temperature and save on your utility bills to give yourself a little extra holiday spending money. And speaking of the holiday season, we also have a few helpful heating tips for when you’re entertaining family members or guests in your home on these special occasions.
With decades of experience providing residential heating repairs and other services to homeowners in the greater Bloomington, MN, area, we know the benefits that cost-effective heating can have in your home. From all of us at Bloomington Heating & Air, we hope these heating tips help make your holidays even more special.
How to Keep Your Home Cozy Yet Comfortable
When it comes to maintaining a comfortable temperature in your home, there are a variety of tips that can prove useful. We’ve broken these home-heating tips into two categories.
Tasks for Better Home Heating
You don’t need to be a handyman to accomplish a few energy-saving tasks around your home. Start by making sure all heating registers and vents in your home are clear. Occasionally, furniture, toys and other items can obstruct a heating vent, especially floor vents, but moving these items a few inches can make a world of difference.
Another task for saving energy in the winter is to check for and seal up any drafts around your home. You can locate drafts by moving a candle around the edges of a potential opening like a window or a door and watching for outside air to blow on the flame. If you find a draft, caulking is a good solution for non-movable areas like windows, while weather-stripping works on movable surfaces like a doggy door.
Other energy-saving tasks require almost no physical work. During the daytime, keeping the shades pulled on windows facing south and west can keep your house warmer by letting in natural sunlight. Additionally, switching the setting on your ceiling fans so they force warm air back down can help keep valuable heat from escaping.
Heating System Maintenance
Perhaps the most beneficial task to keep your home warm in winter is proper maintenance of your home’s heating system. In our many years of providing heating maintenance in Bloomington, we’ve seen how regular maintenance of a heating system can boost its efficiency. Poorly maintained heating units or unclean exhaust filters can make heating inefficient, but regular maintenance is a cost-effective way to ensure a warm and comfortable winter.
Going a step further, some homes can benefit from changing or upgrading their heating systems. Gas fireplaces, for example, are inefficient producers of heat based on the cost of operating them, and even though wood fireplaces produce more heat, they can be messy and labor intensive. A central heating system is thus a great alternative, however, innovations in the technology of thermostats mean newer units can have even more advantages.
At our Bloomington HVAC company, we’ve noticed the rising popularity of digital and programmable thermostats. These newer units can be maximally efficient for heating your home because you can automatically set the temperature based on the time of day, which relieves the worry of forgetting to adjust the thermostat when you leave for work or go to bed.
Heating in The Holiday Season
Get-togethers with family and friends during the holiday season can be among the most rewarding occasions in winter. During these happy times, there are some smart heating habits you can adopt to boost your energy efficiency, maintain a comfortable temperature in your home, and make your holidays all the more enjoyable.
For starters, cooking is a big part of the holiday season, so when you use the oven in your kitchen, make sure to conserve that heat. Keep the oven turned on only while you are using it, and when you’re finished cooking, leave the oven door open so that warm air can help heat your home. Additionally, the fans and ventilation in your kitchen and bathrooms can let warm air escape the house. If you can cook without using the fan, try doing it. Meanwhile, if family or friends are visiting, try making sure everyone is turning the bathroom fans off when they’re not in use.
Residential Heating Repairs in Bloomington, MN
A final home-heating tip to remember is that keeping your thermostat at a constant temperature is more efficient than adjusting it several times during the day. However, if your home heating system isn’t working properly, it can be challenging to achieve and maintain that comfortable temperature. Should you find that your home requires heating repairs in Bloomington, please remember that you can contact Bloomington Heating & Air for all your heating needs. Especially during the holiday season, we want to make sure you have a comfortable temperature in your home for you and your loved ones.