Posts Tagged ‘Webster’s Corners’

Sealing Your Home Can Bring Big Rewards

Monday, May 9th, 2011

You use a lot of energy – and money! – keeping your house at a comfortable temperature. But if there are holes in the “envelope” or “shell” of your home, air from the outside can get into your home and drive up your energy costs.

Sealing the envelope of your home is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve energy efficiency and comfort. Energy Star estimates that appropriate sealing can save up to 20% on heating and cooling costs.

There are three ways to seal the envelope of your home:

  • Sealing air leaks to stop drafts
  • Adding insulation
  • Installing Energy Star windows when replacing windows

Sealing leaks. It may be easy to find some of the leaks in your home, because you can feel and sometimes even see them (for example, around windows and doors). You can seal these leaks with caulk, foam, and weather stripping.

Other leaks may be hidden in attics, basements, and crawl spaces. Common leak spots include:

  • Recessed lights
  • Outdoor faucets
  • Dryer vents
  • Attic hatches
  • Around light switches and cable, phone, or power outlets
  • Chimneys and furnace flues
  • The tops of walls that lead up to attic space

To find and seal these hidden leaks, it may be advisable to hire a contractor who can use special diagnostic tools. The expense is often quickly paid back in increased comfort and reduced utility bills.

Adding insulation. There are several common types of insulation — fiberglass (in both batt and blown forms), cellulose, rigid foam board, and spray foam. Different types are appropriate for different places in your home.

The strength of insulation is measured by “R-value” – its ability to resist heat flow. The higher the R-value, the more insulating power. Different R-values are recommended for different parts of your house, depending upon where you live.

Insulating your attic may offer significant savings, and can be a good DIY project if you are handy. To see if your attic can benefit from more insulation, look across your uncovered attic floor. If your insulation is level with or below the attic floor joints, more would probably be helpful.

Remember, however, that even well-insulated attics need appropriate ventilation to prevent mold growth in the summer and ice buildup in the winter.

Installing Energy Star windows and doors. Replacing windows and doors is a big project and may not generate enough energy savings to justify the cost. However, if you are remodeling or building a new home, be sure to choose Energy Star windows and doors. Energy Star windows and doors will not only help seal and insulate your home – they will also act as a sunscreen to protect your pictures, furniture, and carpets.

After Sealing Your Home: Check Air Quality!

After any sealing or insulating project it’s very important to have a professional perform a Combustion Safety Test on your gas and oil burning appliances to ensure that they are still operating safely.

It’s rare that homeowners seal their homes too tightly – especially if it’s an older house. However, if you are concerned, you can hire a contractor to test your home’s ventilation. If your home is too tightly sealed, he or she may recommend that you install a fresh air ventilation system.

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What Is the Most Efficient Way to Heat My Home?

Friday, April 1st, 2011

When it comes to home heating, efficiency is one of the main factors most people take into consideration. There are quite a few different options in terms of home heating, including oil, gas and electric furnaces, heat pumps, and boilers, and each of these have their own set of advantages and disadvantages depending on your own particular situation.

For better or worse, there is no one system that is universally more energy efficient and effective than the others. The one that will turn out to be the best choice for you is the one that fits best with your specific heating needs, the climate you live in and the relative price of the fuel sources available to you.

For instance, if you live in a relatively moderate climate, a heat pump may very well be a good option for you. These systems are able to operate much more efficiently than furnaces because they extract heat from the air rather than generating it themselves. That means that in the winter, a heat pump can take heat from the outdoor air and pump it indoors to heat your home. In the summer, the heat pump can actually do the opposite, taking the excess heat from indoors and transferring it out to provide you with a yearlong temperature control solution.

Heat pumps generally run on electricity which can be expensive, but since they use so much less energy than something like an electric furnace, they can still be a very energy efficient home heating option. However, these systems are not as effective in areas with harsh, long winters, and so would likely require a supplemental heating system as well. Also, the lower the outside temperature, the less efficient a heat pump is going to be.

Furnaces, on the other hand, are quite effective at heating homes no matter how harsh or cold the climate. Gas furnaces are generally the most popular of the models available now, mostly because the cost of natural gas is lower in most areas compared to the cost of other potential fuels.

However, it may be worth considering an oil or electric furnace if these types of energy sources are relatively inexpensive in your area. No matter what type of furnace you get, you’ll be able to choose how energy efficient you want it to be as well, with lower efficiency 80% AFUE furnaces costing substantially less than those with an AFUE of 90% or more.

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Water Filtering Faucets

Monday, March 28th, 2011

The last thing you want is to be drinking or cooking with contaminated water. Of course, you can always opt for a full house water filtration system, but these are often expensive to install and maintain. If you are not prepared to make this kind of investment, you may want to consider purchasing a water filtering faucet instead.

Unlike large point of entry water filtration systems, a water filtering faucet treats the water at one particular sink or other outlet. These types of faucets typically employ carbon filters that effectively remove many gasses and particles suspended in the water as it moves through the filter.

Just like any other type of water filtration system, there are various types of water filtering faucets and they are not all equally effective at removing contaminants. Before you purchase anything like this, however, you should make sure you know exactly what contaminants are present in your water. This is the only way to ensure that you purchase a product designed to treat exactly the problem that you have.

If you do decide to go with a water filtering faucet, make sure you know how often to replace the filters inside it and what type of replacements to get. Your water filter will only work properly when it is correctly maintained, and there is no point in using it if you have not been able to keep up with proper filter maintenance and replacement.

Another nice feature of water filtering faucets is that you can usually switch them on and off. When you need water for cooking or drinking, you can send it through the filter, and when you are using water for other things, you do not need to use the filter at all. This can cause the filter to last longer and it is also more convenient on models that have a reduced water pressure when the filter is employed.

You may initially balk at the cost of a water filtering faucet, preferring to purchase bottled water for drinking instead. But you have to take into account the fact that once you purchase a water filtering faucet, you will not have to spend the money on bottled drinking water any more. This will translate into a significant savings over time, making the initial investment well worth it in the end.

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Maintenance Really Does Save Money

Monday, March 21st, 2011

When it comes to your home heating and cooling systems, you really cannot go wrong with proper annual maintenance. While it may seem like an unnecessary expense, especially if your systems are relatively new, you will save a lot in the long run if you pay that small fee once a year for each system.

During a maintenance visit, a technician can thoroughly clean out your heating or cooling system and check all parts to make sure they are not showing signs of excessive wear and tear. If they do find a problem or a part that needs to be replaced, they will be able to make the necessary repairs quickly and you will not have to worry about calling someone out later for an emergency visit.

Also, catching problems early like this means that repairs will likely involve fewer parts and cost much less than they would if you let the problem go and it became more widespread. The truth is that your heating or cooling system can continue to work when one or another of its parts is not working correctly, but that means that other parts of the system have to work overtime to create the same result.

Your heating or cooling system will also be much more energy efficient if it receives regular tune ups and attention from a professional. Even the best new systems lose a small percentage of their efficiency each year that they are in operation. While this is not much from year to year, the cumulative effect will soon cause your energy bills to climb higher than necessary.

Paying for regular maintenance, then, can actually save you money because it will mean you pay less each month to run your system. And it is never too late to start. Even if your heating or cooling system is not new, it will benefit from a thorough cleaning and tune up. You may be quite surprised how much your energy bills go down after this type of service has been performed.

Annual maintenance can also help you to get more for your money by extending the useful life of the heating or cooling system. Many systems that are properly maintained can last even beyond their expected life span, meaning that you will not have to replace it as soon as you would have otherwise. For all of these reasons, the minimal cost of an annual maintenance visit is well worth paying over the long term.

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How a Circulating Fan Can Save You Money and Help Your AC Keep You Cool

Monday, January 31st, 2011

If you already have a central air conditioning unit, you probably have not though much about having some ceiling fans put in as well. After all, why would you need a fan when your air conditioner can keep you as cool as you want all year long?

Well, the truth is that a ceiling fan can actually contribute a lot to your household even when you do already have the central air in place. It can also save you quite a bit of money when it comes to your monthly cooling costs, so there is really no reason not to look into getting a ceiling fan of your own.

Certainly the air that air conditioners distribute throughout your house is quite cool. But a ceiling fan will help to circulate it much more effectively. In fact, a good ceiling fan can make a room feel up to eight degrees cooler than it actually is just because of the cooling affect that moving air has on your body.

This means that you could set the thermostat on your air conditioner higher and still enjoy the same level of comfort that you are used to. You may already know that for every degree you raise your thermostat in the summer you will be saving up to 3% off of your regular energy bill. So if you can turn the air conditioning down by more than five degrees, you will surely be seeing some substantial savings.

Of course, you are still running the ceiling fan in place of the air conditioner, but the fan will use only a very small fraction of the energy that the air conditioner does. This all means that having a ceiling fan and using it wisely can help you cut your annual cooling costs dramatically.

And a ceiling fan will be useful in the winter as well. Since heat rises, you can turn your fan on backwards and it will push the heat that has risen to the top of your room back out along the walls and down. This means that you will be getting more for the heat you are paying for as well, making the ceiling fan a great money saver all year long.

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WaterSense Labels

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Many people know about the EPA’s EnergyStar certification, which is a third-party certification system that verifies manufacturers’ claims about the energy efficiency of home appliances. The EnergyStar label has helped hundreds of thousands of consumers choose high-efficiency, cost-effective appliances for their homes.

The EPA has also developed a certification for plumbing fixtures, called WaterSense. WaterSense labels can be found on a variety of products, including:

  • Bathroom sink faucets and accessories
  • Showerheads
  • Toilets

While there are specific guidelines for each category of plumbing fixture, in general, the WaterSense label indicates that the product is at least 20% more efficient than conventional products in its category, without sacrificing performance or comfort.

The goal of the WaterSense guidelines is to make a real difference in the amount of water consumed in the U.S. – and the numbers bear this out. Let’s take a look at what would happen if every household in the US installed WaterSense products in their bathrooms.

If every household in the U.S. installed WaterSense bathroom sink faucets, it would save 60 billion gallons of water and $600 million in water heating costs. If every U.S. household put in WaterSense showerheads, the US would use 250 fewer billion gallons of water annually and save $2.5 billion in water heating costs. And if every household in the US upgraded to a new, efficient WaterSense toilet, it would save 640 billion gallons of water a year.

More realistically, even if only 1 in 10 U.S. households upgraded to WaterSense products, we would save about 74 billion gallons of water a year and $1.5 billion on our water heating bills.

Like EPA EnergyStar products, WaterSense products can be found at most plumbing retailers.

The WaterSense label can also be applied to entire homes. Homes that have the WaterSense label have:

  • Efficient hot water systems that deliver hot water quickly to minimize waste and waiting
  • WaterSense plumbing fixtures
  • EnergyStar dishwashers and clothes washers
  • Regionally appropriate outdoor landscaping that requires minimal maintenance and watering

In addition, landscaping professionals can apply for WaterSense certification to show that they have training in water-efficient irrigation system design, installation, maintenance, and auditing.

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