This post is from staff writer Sierra Black. Sierra writes about frugality, sustainable living, and getting her kids to eat kale at Childwild.com.
The chilly season is upon us. If you live in North America, you’ve probably had at least a few cold nights by now. Up in my neck of the woods — in the Boston area — we’ve had our central heat running for a few weeks. Which means we’re in full swing winterizing, with an eye to keeping the heating bills low.
Over the past few years, we’ve actually gotten pretty good at this. In New England, winter heat can eat up a big part of a family’s budget. Our heating bills used to run over $500 a month; last year, we had them down to $250 or less. This year, I’m hoping to go even lower.
No, we don’t live in a refrigerator. Our house is pretty comfortable all year round. Here’s how we keep the bills low.
Invest in Insulation and Efficiency
Small changes can have ripple effects, but big changes are worth even more. Last year, we had our walls insulated with blown cellulose insulation. We also replaced our 40-year-old oil burner with a high-efficiency natural gas system.
These home improvements aren’t cheap. Since they’re good for the environment as well as your budget, though, there are often government grants and loans available to help make them more affordable. We didn’t have the savings to do this, so we took out a 0% loan through our state’s energy-efficiency program. The loan payments are far less than the immediate savings on our heating bills. The upgrade is paying for itself already, and will continue to do so long after we’ve paid off this loan.
Of course, I used the savings from lower heating bills to accelerate paying off my higher-interest debt. I wouldn’t normally suggest taking out a loan as a step towards financial health, but in this case it clearly saved us money. It also helped shrink our whole household’s environmental footprint.
In addition to your heating system and your home insulation, you may want to think about upgrading your windows.
To find out what big-ticket investments will pay off, you can schedule a free energy audit through your utility company. They’ll send someone to your home who will walk through the house and give you a full report on ways to save energy and money. When we had ours done, the nice young man also replaced all our lightbulbs with compact fluorescents — free of charge.
Bundle Up
There’s no need to keep your house balmy enough for T-shirts all year. Make sure you and your family have good, comfortable warm clothing and don’t be afraid to use it.
When I was 21, I had a roommate who would turn the thermostat way down and walk around our chilly house wearing a winter hat and clutching a hot mug of tea. At the time, I mocked her with my friends as we lounged around their toasty living rooms. Now I’ve become that roommate. I’m always turning the thermostat down and telling the kids to put on a sweater.
I don’t want anyone here to feel cold — I hate being cold myself — but I’ve learned that wearing warm clothes is a cheap and easy way to stay cozy. Best of all, you can create your own personal heating zone. Don’t like it so warm? Take off a layer. There’s no fighting with your spouse about how warm to keep the living room.
Not that we keep it frigid. I set our thermostat in the mid-60s during the day, and turn it down at night when we’re all tucked into warm beds anyway.
If you don’t already have one, get a programmable thermostat. They make it easy to adjust the heat for different times of day automatically. You don’t have to worry about remembering to do it — it just happens.
Bundle the House Up, Too
Don’t just bundle yourself up. Adding layers to your house will make it feel warmer even if the thermostat stays at a modest temperature. I have a nice collection of Oriental rugs that I lay down this time of year, which keeps the hardwood floors warmer on little bare feet. This is essential because small kids lose their socks at an amazing rate, but it’s great just for giving the whole room a warmer feel, too.
I also put up window plastics and insulated curtains to cut down on drafts from the windows. If you haven’t done it already, spending a few hours going around your windows and doors with some draft-sealing putty or caulk will make a huge difference to how comfortable your home is in the winter.
Use Heating Zones
Chances are, you’re not using every part of your house all day long. If you live in a modern house, you probably already have several “heating zones” so you can program your thermostats to different temps in different areas.
If you live in an older house like mine, you probably have just one thermostat that controls the whole system. That means that if it’s 64 degrees in my living room, the heat kicks on. If it’s 65, the heat shuts off because it’s warm enough. Doesn’t matter what the temperature is in the rest of the house. There’s no way for the heating system to know that.
To solve this problem, I’ve created a bunch of “heat zones” in my house. By keeping the bedroom doors closed upstairs and hanging drapes in the hallway doors downstairs, I cut our drafty hallway and staircase out of the heating system entirely. Now the radiators in each room only have to heat those rooms, not those rooms plus several hundred square feet of largely unused hallway space.
I was shocked at the difference this made to how warm the house felt. Hanging the drapes to keep the heat in the rooms and out of the hallway is new this year: I just did it a few weeks ago. I won’t know for months yet whether it pays off in reduced heating bills or not. But the comfort factor was immediate and obvious.
The other heating zone change I made was to my workspace. I’m the only person home most of the day, and I spend most of the day in my office. Rather than keep the whole house toasty, I’ve lowered the temp on the main thermostat and set up a space heater in my office. This way, I can be as warm as I like without wasting a lot of energy warming up empty rooms.
What do you do to keep your heating bills low in the winter?
Photo by Net_Efekt.
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Replacement windows are not the way to go if you are solely interested in payback.
If all you want is payback, invest in teh plastic window wrap.
And you didn’t include maximizing passive solar. I open & close my blinds & insulated curtains depending on what I’m looking for: in winter they are open when sun is shining in to warm the floor & furniture, closed up tight at night to keep the cold out. During the summer I close them in the daytime, which keeps my home approx. 10 degrees cooler than exterior temps.
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I went from freezing at night with the temp at 68 to being comfortable with it at 65 all just by getting a down alternative microfiber comforter for 20 bucks as a door buster at the mall. Ironically, the ineffective comforter it replaced cost over a hundred bucks.
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North of 49th parallel: we wear slippers over our socks, over our area rugs. And storm windows over our old, single-glazed windows work wonders! The quiet! The lack of infiltration, when properly weatherstripped! In our coldest room we have an insulated curtain, but on the rest, just a single layer of fabric, gathered in generous French pleats adds another layer of still air to insulate the house.
I bet Sierra finds that the heat zone concept works well for her. Wish she’d report back later on this!
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How do you go about keeping the lap dog warm when not in your lap?
My boyfriend has been keeping the winter thermostat up at 70 degrees (will dip as low as 65) because he doesn’t want the lap dogs to get cold at night or during the day.
I tend to think that the lap dogs can stand somewhat lower temperatures…but don’t really have proof that they wouldn’t be uncomfortable.
I could bundle them, but they can’t remove the coat/sweater if it gets too warm.
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Our favorite trick is we use an electric mattress pad. It is similar to an electric blanket, but it goes underneath the fitted sheet on your mattress. We turn it on for about 15 minutes prior to getting into bed and then unplug it. This will usually get us through even the coldest nights while keeping our bedroom thermostat very low.
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One that I haven’t seen mentioned so far: downsize into a smaller space. We moved from 3600 square feet into 1000 square feet partly because we were tired of all of the maintenance costs, including heating and cooling a giant old house. I’ve been amazed already at the difference it has made in our heating bill.
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Renting an apartment, we can’t do a lot of the energy things stated here. But, we benefit a LOT from the shared walls: we only have one wall that is an exterior, and we often don’t even need the heat on at all to stay warm. (Our neighbors are all keeping us warm!)
One more thing to do are the plastic window insulators that look like saran wrap and you seal with a hairdryer. They do make a surprising difference. So do socks, which I always wear around the house, so I can keep it a little cooler.
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Wow, thanks for your post today. I thought I was the only one who advocated turning down heating at night! Coming from the UK we never ran our heating at night – like you said we’re all in bed snug and warm with an extra blanket or quilt. A winter living in a draft old wooden house, as a student on a restricted income, in Newfoundland taught me about using drapes to retain heat and section off huge hallways that no body lives in! Even in Sunny Southern California I still turn off the heating at night and suggest my boys wear a sweatshirt if they are chilly and I do have a drape over the “doorway/gap” into our sitting room – the room gets toastie. NO I have to find a way to insulate/warm my studio so I can work up there. I like your idea of a space heater and then I don’t have to heat the room just where I’m working. Thanks.
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I think even organizations can learn from this post to reduce heating bills.
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Like Mom of five, I wish I hadn’t spent so much on replacing all the windows with top of the line energy efficient ones. Only last year I found that my 1950 brick bungalow has NO insulation in the walls (!!!) when I had some work done in the kitchen. The contractor explained that was standard practice when the house was built, and there really isn’t enough room in the walls to put in the amount of insulation currently recommended. Lesson learned!
Another lesson learned: before you start playing with the programmable thermostat make sure you understand your heating system. I grew up with forced air and thought that it was *always* most efficient to program the heat much lower at night and when away during the day. Wrong!
My house has a boiler and radiant heat in the basement and first floor (second floor has radiators). I set the temp to 60F at night and found that in the evenings the boiler was continuously running and that it could never make it up to the “at home” programmed temp of 68F. I thought there was something wrong with the boiler. The serviceman checked the boiler and explained to me that with this type of system I could not vary the temp by more than 3-4 degrees; the concrete basement floor (which is part of the heating zone and has the heating pipes embedded in it) was always going to take a very long time to heat up, so I really couldn’t drop the temp dramatically at night or when I wasn’t at home.
My main way of keeping the gas bill manageable is to never set the thermostat above 68F, dress in warm layers, wear socks and slippers, and drape myself with throws if I’m chilly while sitting still. A warm dog helps keep me toasty at night, too.
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If you rent but don’t pay for utilities separately, isn’t it safe to assume that the landlord already considered the cost of utilities when setting the rent? I pay for my use of heat and a/c (electric) so it can be awkward when having friends over who are used to blasting it. I’ve been lucky that the “natural” temperature of my place is usually within tolerable range (I’m sure it helps to be a 1st floor, middle unit in a row of townhouses). This season in the northeast I’ve only turned on the heat once to check that it works. So far I’m okay down to 64F but we’ll see what happens when winter really hits…
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Another important thing is home orientation. Growing up in Minnesota, my father was very particular about the house facing south, because it captured a lot of heat and helped to melt the driveway. In TX, where I live now, facing east/west is pretty important, because it blocks direct sun exposure. to keep the house cool. Also, planting leafy shrubs in front of windows helps to block cold winds.
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I live in Houston, so right now our utilities are the opposite – $500 in the summer, $200 in the winter. But I hail from Colorado and I have a few tips:
Humid air feels warmer. Turn off your humidifier, set a kettle on the woodstove, or use plants to add moisture to the air. Hang clothes to dry indoors. Some people even unhitch their dryer hoses to add warm moisture to the air (that can be controversial, and I’ve never personally tried it.)
Winter is the time to use your oven. It will heat up the kitchen, at least! While in the summer I make pot roasts in a slow cooker on the porch, in the winter I make it the traditional way and use the oven to help heat the ambient air.
Drink hot things. Even changing your water from ice water to lukewarm will help you feel warmer.
Pay attention to your feet. If your toes are cold, you’ll feel cold too no matter what the temp is. You might even need to change your socks if your old ones get sweaty and wet.
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@25 (Erika) – Have you guys ever considered staggering out the replacements? Doing 10 or even 5 at a time?
I wonder if wrapping your hot water heater in a blanket is a fire hazard?
One last point about electric blankets and mattress pads – they have been linked to infertility in women. I am not sure if the studies are conclusive or peer reviewed. It has been recommended that if you use those, use them to knock the chill off the bed but do not sleep in the bed with them on. For couples considering starting a family this may be of grave concern.
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My favorite cold weather trick: rice sack!
Basically fill a cotton bag with dry uncooked (not instant) rice (or corn, or probably most other grains, but rice smells the least, I’ve found) and microwave for ~2-3 mins. Cuddle!
And if anyone has any recommendations for stopping up door gaps in rentals, I’d love to hear it. I definitely have some spots around the door that leak air like no other, but I’m not sure how to fix that.
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How about just don’t use the heater.
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i’m amazed by how much your paying for your gas bill. We lived in minnesota but we’re only paying around $100 per month and i’m wearing shorts and shirt all the time.I think our house is set up to save energy. Here’s our set up: From the main floor in the living room there’s a door to go upstairs and a door to go downstairs. I always make it sure that these doors are always closed. Plus I made a thing where I put underneath the door so the cold from upstairs won’t get in the living room.
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We keep our house at 65 degrees in winter, which feels uncomfortably cold to me because my polar bear of a husband requires a fan to be blowing on him at all times. When the air is moving, I experience it as colder. For about $25, I bought a space blanket, one of those thin mylar blankets that you find in emergency kits that reflects your body heat back to you. Eventually it gets clammy, but it’s powerfully warm for something so lightweight.
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@DreamChaser57–there are special ‘water heater blankets’ you buy at the hardware store to wrap your water heater in to insulate it.
I’ve combined many of these suggestions. I wear my fluffy robe over my clothes when I’m at home. When I get chilly, I move around–vacuuming will work up a sweat in no time! My living room is full of blankets and throws to wrap up in. My two cats are happy to curl up on your lap and keep us both warm.
Heat zones have worked best for me, though. When I’m in the bathroom changing for bed, I have the space heater on in there. When I’m sitting in the office, I move the heater in there. When I’m in the living room, I turn on the gas fireplace and the ceiling fan. While I’m getting ready for bed, I put a heating pad at the foot of my bed to warm up the blankets, then turn it off before I go to sleep.
What saves me the most is working evenings. When the sun goes down and temps drop, I’m in a brightly lit, toasty warm workplace! May not work for everyone, though.
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We set the thermostat to 58 degrees at night and it is programmed to come on at 5:30 a.m. for two hours and again at 5:30 p.m. for two hours up to 68 degrees. I work at home, so during the day I run the wood pellet stove we got a few years ago and set up my laptop in the family room where the stove is located. We have been burning two tons of pellets (about $500.00) per year and one tank of oil (250 gallons) for the forced hot air every two years on average.
Some extra blankets and sweaters seem to do the trick pretty well here. If I get cold, I do the dishes by hand to help warm up my fingers!
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Sweet little kitty
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I live in Ohio and my parents live in Michigan, and I just lowered both our gas bills by calling our companies and negotiating a lower fixed rate based on the competitive pricing of alternative gas suppliers. Every bit helps!
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Wow great tips, I am going to put some of these into place as soon as I get home!
I do have a question though…when you talk about heating zones are you just closing the doors or actually closing the vents in the room? I heard that closing the vents in the rooms can cause stress to the furnace because of the size change… any truth to that?
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We’re considering an electric mattress pad. My gramma has one which we tried out while we were visiting – genius! Warm up the bed before you get in & then turn it off.
Hubby likes to wear t-shirts in winter so we fight over the thermostat occasionally. Whereas I found I don’t get uncomfortable until it gets below 64. (lower at night of course.)
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For home owners, definitely contact your state and your utility company. I believe that you can have an energy audit performed for free. It’s similar to home inspection when you buy a house. A worker from the company comes out to your home and walks throughout and around the home with you, pointing out areas where you can improve energy efficiency. I was able to get my walls and garage ceiling (my living room is above the garage and the living room floor was always very cold) for $1800. The normal cost was $3800 but there was a $2000 credit. Then I found out about a 0% interest loan that was available. Even though I had the money available, I took the loan. That way I can earn interest on that money until the loan is paid off. Also consider insulating pipes in your basement. It’s cheap and easy to do.
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@Thomas 50: Our programmable thermostat allows you to set a password for it. We just got it at either Lowes or Home Depot, and it was around $65. It was a Luxe brand, and we got a $50 rebate from our utility company.
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Sierra – Please do a cost analysis of how you decided to switch from your oil heater to gas. We too live in New England and have a 40 year old oil heating system, and we’re trying to decide whether to replace it, and with what. We are considering gas, electric, (new) oil, and possibly wood…I’d love to read your cost-estimates and what pushed you to natural gas. Nat gas is cheap now, but the price is quite volatile (from $3/mmBtu to $14/mmBtu and back in the past decade) and we’re wary…
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I’m another brick bungalow (1925) owner. Like others, we were surprised to find that many homes built during this time were not insulated in the walls. This year we blew in insulation into our attic and noticed an immediate improvement.
I’m in St. Louis and am at home all day with twin 2-year-olds and a dog. At some time perhaps we’ll turn down the programmable thermostat, but it’s usually set around 70 or 71 degrees in the daytime and 68 at night. My husband doesn’t like to have the house cold at night. In the winter we add plastic to some windows, use blinds and thicker curtains, and keep doors closed when rooms are not in use. And for years we have taken advantage of our utilities’ budget billing option. Most utilities offer this to customers with good credit records. I know a lot of people don’t want to go this route because they want to overpay at any time… then they complain about sticker shock. Our rates stay basically the same from month to month and rarely go up or down by more than $10/month from year to year. We’ve never been hit with an end-of-year “make-up” bill exceeding $150, and often we’ve received refunds as rates are adjusted twice yearly.
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along with home orientation (which way the house faces), home owners should also consider planting of trees around their homes (this also applies to homeowners who live in the south – perhaps even more than it applies to homeowners in the north). Large trees can offer protection from the wind in cold months and protection from the sun in hot months. Of course, you have to consider clean-up of fallen leaves, their proximity to water lines (you don’t want the tree roots to break through a sewer line) and other scenarios. Consult a landscape company or local city resources.
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Sierra, if I turned my heat down to mid-60′s, I’d be freezing, and I live in NJ which is probably “balmy” compared to Boston in the winter. I keep the thermostat at 70 degrees when we’re in the house, have it programmed to go down during the day and at night when we’re in bed (58 degrees), up again in the morning. We both work long hours, so no need to heat an empty house. Our bedroom seems to be chillier than the rest of the house, so we bought a small electric heater, which heats the room nicely. Our heat bills run a little over $100/month for a two bedroom (three floor) townhouse. We also have a gas fireplace for extra warmth. We use that all winter and haven’t had our bills go up at all, in fact they’ve gone down three years in a row. Three years ago we had to replace our furnace and air conditioner (ouch!) to the tune of $8,000. We are definitely saving a lot of money with the energy efficiency of the new unit. Our windows are old and drafty but we can’t afford to replace them right now. When we do, I think our bill will go down even more.
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In years past we have kept the heat to around 68 degrees but this year we are going to keep it lower – around 65 or 66 – and just put on sweaters or sweatshirts. I’ll be interested to see how much of a difference it makes in our gas bill this winter.
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Anyone have suggestions on how to convince a husband that 73 degrees is too warm? He loves to sit around our house in shorts without a shirt year round. His argument is that it’s much more comfortable for him and adds little to the cost of utilities (we live in a well-insulated condo).
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We use balanced billing, which means that the utility company figures out our annual average cost for gas and then divides that into 12 payments. Sometimes we have a balance, sometimes a deficit, sometimes the cost varies a bit, but it is SO MUCH EASIER to work into the budget.
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I’m a renter with no interest in becoming a house owner. I rented a house for three years, and then a townhouse for two. Last year, I moved into a one-bedroom apartment in a three-story building, and specifically chose a middle floor apartment. Thankfully, it’s a complex of mostly young professionals and few noisy animals, so it’s fairly quiet. What I’ve traded away in privacy I’ve gained in cost savings. My electric and gas bills dropped to a fraction of what I spent on the much larger (and less insulated) previous residences. Now I can keep my thermostat at a reasonable 70-72 nearly year-round without busting my budget.
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My Wife and I used the emergency blankets to line our curtains in our house. Our house with no heat on gets pretty cold and with electric heat, the bill gets very expensive ($500-$700 per month)! Most mornings our kitchen,dinning room and children’s classroom/playroom (which are the coldest rooms in the house) normally have temps ranging from 45 to 57 degrees with the heat off and a max of 73 with heat on and the weather at zero or below. We lined the dining room and children’s playroom curtains with emergency blankets and this morning the outdoor temp is 20 degrees and the temp with the heat off was 64 degrees. This was also with placing the window film on as well. The beautiful part of these emergency blankets is that you can find them for around 2-4 bucks in the camping aisle. My wife and I are estimating that we should be able to heat the house (and this house is old, built in the 1950′s) for around $250-$300 per month this winter. I would recommend lining your curtains.
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Make sure you really know how your heat works. Last year my fiance and I thought we were lowering out heat bill by keeping our heat low and bundling up, low and behold b/c our apartment is heated is by hot water going through pipes and we get charged just for having the heat on, so it actually pays to turn the heat all the way up let it get uncomfortably hot and then shut it off until it gets too cold.
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