Brrrr.....winter is coming.

So with November here and the weather getting colder each day, we are all breaking down and turning on the furnace. With fuel costs as high as they have been we are also all looking for ways to save money on our home heating costs again this year. Some of the things I do in our very energy inefficient home are:

Put plastic over all the windows and patio doors in the house. The kits are a bit expensive, however the payback in comfort and energy savings is huge. I also take the plastic down carefully in the spring and reuse the pieces from the big windows and patio doors on the smaller windows the next year. I have used both Ace Hardware brand and 3M brand and both were excellent, user friendly products.

Use draft dodgers on any exterior doors with leaky sills. You can make a very simple one from a long tube of fabric sewn and filled with rice or kitty litter. You then put it at the bottom of the door to block drafts from coming in. Until you get around to making or purchasing one, you can make do with a tightly rolled bath towel.

Make sure your thermostat is set at the lowest possible temperature for comfort. And really think about this one and discuss it with your spouse. It is WINTER, do you really need to be comfortable in bare feet, shorts, and a t-shirt while lounging on the couch watching tv? Well, be prepared for heating bills rivaling the national debt. But, if you are willing to wear socks and shoes (or slippers), long pants, and a sweatshirt over a turtleneck you may just be able to lower the thermostat by as much as 10 degrees. I keep our home at 66 during the day and 63 at night. The kids often complain when they first come home from school but once they adjust (put on shoes and socks and sweatshirts) they are fine.

Speaking of thermostats, if you do not already have one, get a programmable one! They are not super expensive and they save a lot of hassle and forgetting to turn down the temp. before going to bed. They are simple to install yourself and I'd suggest getting one even if you are renting. Maybe your landlord would let you subtract the cost from your rent payment. It is always worth asking for.

Change as many of your light bulbs to CFL's (compact fluorescent) as possible. They are much more expensive 'upfront' but last up to 5 years each. I changed mine out one or two at a time as they went bad. We now have them in all the lights; lamps, overheads, and exteriors, in our house except the two lights on dimmer switches. I can't say definitively how much this saves per month as I replaced them gradually over the course of a year. I do know that my bill shows that we used less electricity in October 08 than in October 07.

Unplug any appliance that is not in use including computers, tv's, and stereo equipment. Anything with a light or lighted display is always using electricity even when "off". This is something that I don't do at home but am planning to start soon. My plan is to purchase powerstrips for the areas that don't currently have them. Plug everything into the powerstrip then I can simply turn off and unplug the powerstrip when the items are not in use. I have read that this can save a significant amount of electricity per year.

Make sure that your heat source is working efficiently by vacuuming out the vents (both cold and hot air runs). We have hot water heat and every couple of years we take the covers off our heat runs and vacuum out the fins. I could not believe how filthy they were (it was a miracle we felt any heat!) when we first bought this house. I honestly do not think they had ever been cleaned. The first time around was difficult and time consuming, but maintenance is done with just the soft brush on my canister vacuum. We also put the foam insulation on all of our pipes in the crawl space. Our heat has to travel up to 25 feet to reach a register so the hotter you can keep that water the warmer your house will be. The insulation was pretty inexpensive and comes in a long tube with a slit down one side. I found it easy to trim and install. If you have forced air heat, and have access via your basement or attic, check that the seams of your runs are not leaking warm air out into unused spaces. In our old house, we used duct tape to tape up all the seams and while the basement was much colder (a good thing) we were definitely warmer upstairs.

A great resource for lots of good information on saving energy (thus saving money) is:

http://www.doe.gov/yourhome.htm

So, take a few minutes out this week and see what you can do to save some money keeping warm this winter.