Wow, it has been in the 20’s and 30’s at night lately and all of us in Atlanta are running our furnace or heat pump constantly to keep warm and cozy.
However, your home may be losing tons of that heat you’re paying for. So your furnace has to work longer to keep your home warm.
That means higher heating bills for your family.
That’s no good, right? Here are 3 common reasons your home is losing heat every day, and what you can do about it.
- Heat escapes through your windows’ glass
Your heated air loses its heat when it comes into contact with the glass in your windows. This is known as convective heat transfer.
What you can do about it
Learn how to use your drapes to reduce heat loss: - At night, close all your drapes; during the day, close drapes that don’t receive sunlight. This reduces heat loss from a warm room up to 10%, according to energy.gov.
- Make sure your closed drapes hug close to the windows and fall all the way to the ground. Attaching Velcro or magnetic tape to the drape’s bottom and sides can help form a tight seal. This can reduce heat loss in a room up to 25% according to energy.gov.
- Your attic does not have enough insulation
If you have an older home, you may have one of the 46 million under-insulated homes in the U.S., according to the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association (NAIMA).
This means your home may be losing more heat in the winter through the attic than it should, increasing your heating bills and leaving you chilly.
What you can do about it
Follow these steps: - Check to see if your attic has enough insulation. (If your insulation is even with or below your attic’s floor joists, you need more.)
- If your attic is lacking, find out how much insulation you need to add. (The depth of the insulation should be at least 10-14 inches, or R-38.)
- Get an estimate for how much it will cost to add more insulation.
- Calculate how long it will take for the insulation to pay for itself to see if the project is worth doing.
Read our article, How to Know if Your Atlanta Home’s Attic has Enough Insulation to learn more.
- Heat escapes through gaps around doors and windows
“Shut the door; you’re letting all the cold air in!” is something you may have shouted at someone.
But guess what? That cold air may be coming in even if the door is shut!
Yep, air can seep through small gaps around the edges of your doors and windows.
What you can do about it
Add weather stripping to your doors and windows to prevent cold air from getting in and hot air from getting out. Doing so will save you up to 30% on your heating and cooling bills, according to Consumerreports.org.
That’s about $152 to $306 off your annual energy costs!
Check out this article on energy.gov on the different types of weather stripping you need to seal different areas of your home.
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Coolray is your Atlanta-area home comfort expert with specialists in heating, air conditioning, air quality and plumbing. Have more questions? We’d be happy to help – just contact us online.
