I’ve talked about this a lot lately. The weather has been amazing this winter. I don’t like snow, cold, winter, driving in snow and all the other bad things that come with snow. The only thing I like about winter is cute clothes and boots (which has nothing to do with a heating bills, but oh well).
I’m sorry that I’m such a downer. I live for the summer, beaches and dresses.
Anyways, it’s been pretty warm, and I think it’s probably only dipped below freezing less than 5 times (if that even). It’s usually really cold here starting in November, and we get blizzards and all of that other good stuff all throughout the winter season. However, it’s not like that right now. The other day I was able to go out in just pants and a short sleeve shirt because it was 72 degrees. That was just last week!
Our heat bills during the winter time can range from $150 (at the lowest) to sometimes $300. Right now it’s around$50 to $60, which is amazing! All of this extra money is going towards our vacations.
When the BF and I first moved in together, around 4 to 5 years ago, we first rented a small house (we’re talking like 500 square feet total).
At first, we never paid attention to the amount of heat that we would use, and our first (and second and third) bill was around $400 for a super tiny house. So obviously there are ways that you can save and watch your heat spending. Now we have a house around 2,500 square feet and our bill is extremely smaller, even when it is cold out.
There are numerous ways that we cut back on our heat bill:
The weather definitely helps
There are a lot of unused rooms in our house. We have a 4 bedroom house, and we really only use 1 (ours of course), so we usually close the vents in the 3 three other rooms to redirect the air. I’ve always heard that you shouldn’t close more than 15% to 20% of your vents or it’s bad, but I’m not sure if that’s true. Does anyone know?
This is going to sound crazy, but we always make sure our back doors are completely closed when we let the dogs out. If we just let them out really quick and don’t shut the door, our little dog tends to open the door wide open to come back in, and most of the time we won’t notice for quite awhile, and this wastes a ton of heat
I bundle up. I would say we, but the BF insists that he’s always hot. I like to be bundled regardless if it’s hot or warm, but when I’m at home I tend to wear pants, layered tank tops and a sweater
Someone is usually always home, since the BF and I have completely different schedules. I start work at 8 am, and he starts work around 4pm. However, we do try and lower the heat when no one is home, not too low though, just to around 70
We keep the temperature at 73 degrees. I’m not sure if this is low or high, but it seems to be perfect for us
We have new windows in our house that don’t have a crazy cold draft. This helps a lot
What we need to do in order to help our heat bill lower even further:
We could lower the temperature more, but right now since it’s a decent temperature out, we’re not too worried with saving a ton of money on the heat bill. What does everyone else set their thermostat at?
Our doors have a horrible draft, we need something to block the draft underneath
We could buy space heaters, but for some reason these scare me because I’m afraid of a house fire
Could get special block out curtains. We’ve thought about this, but haven’t gotten around to it. How much do these usually cost?
What else could we do?Are there any other things that you’re doing to save money?
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