Keeping your home heated properly is a personal decision. How warm should it be? How cool should it be allowed to get? There are no hard and fast rules about what temperature you should maintain in your home.
The decisions that must be made about this can often become a thermostat war. One or two people living alone would be one thing. A couple of kids joining them will require a new plan of attack as far as how warm and cool, especially at night. The elderly will have other concerns, and combined a mix of temperatures at different times, a 24-hour period can get complicated enough. Then, there are many tips and hints for saving money while heating Jacksonville, FL homes. However, some of those money-saving tips are simply myths.
Looking A Few Heating Myths for Jacksonville, Florida Homes
- MYTH: Changing all of your windows to double or triple pane glass will save a lot of money.
Fact: The use of these types of glass is always recommended; however, the amount of savings represented by the small area of these windows is not a step to take before your budget is ready. You would be better served to make sure all voids around pipes, crawlspace entries and the window frames, themselves, are covered.
- MYTH: The use of electric space heaters, used only in the rooms you occupy, is the best idea.
Fact: The electricity costs are such that these few space heaters will use more energy than your HVAC system uses to heat the entire house. This is not a good method for saving money.
- MYTH: Turning the thermostat up past the normal level will heat the house faster than allowing it to heat up regularly.
Fact: Modern heating systems are designed to attain a certain heating level, staying there until the programmed temperature is reached. Turning the thermostat up higher than it needs to be will only cause the system to stay on longer. Remembering to turn it back down, at the appropriate time, is sometimes forgotten, costing you even more money.
- MYTH: Replacing your water heater with a more energy efficient model will save a lot of money on electricity.
Fact: Most modern water heaters are fairly energy efficient. The problem might be that they are set too high to fully appreciate the energy savings that are possible. Turning the thermostat down to 120 degrees will not prevent a hot shower and will represent true savings.
- MYTH: Any fire place is a better heater.
Fact: Despite the romance that can come with a fireplace, most of the heat does go out of the chimney. This is compounded by the damper being left open all too often. While heating Jacksonville, FL homes, this is something that is easily forgotten.
- MYTH: Block the registers in seldom used rooms, so energy is not used to heat that vacant space.
Fact: Blocking the register or vent, in any room, will not reduce the energy used to heat that room, it simply goes somewhere else. Since most properly installed heating systems are balanced, that warm or cool, air is sent into another room or escapes through cracks in the ductwork because of the higher pressures forced on it. It can also provide just enough back pressure to the system to cause motors and impellers to work harder, thus causing a speed-up in the deterioration of the entire heating and cooling unit.
Keeping your heating and air conditioning systems in good repair and tuned up will create the best cost savings available. While heating Jacksonville, FL homes, it is suggested to follow a few simple, easy-to-keep guidelines:
- Do not rely on fireplaces as the main source of heat.
- Establish safe temperatures for all times of the day and night: normal temperatures during the day and lower at night. A programmable thermostat is one of the best investments to make.
- Eliminate the use of space heaters and keep the vents, both intake and outflow, clear.
- Have your heating and cooling system checked each year before it is turned on.
