How To Reduce Your Energy Costs This Winter
Written on: January 17, 2022
5 Tips for taming your heating bills
Winter brings a lot of extra hits to most budgets. The biggest for most is Christmas and the added expense of buying gifts and travelling for vacation or to visit family. You want to keep your Hudson Valley home as comfortable as possible, but you also don’t want to break the bank. Don’t worry, you can do both. Keep reading to find out how.
Cost-Saving Tips
Here are some tips for making your home more energy efficient and saving money during the winter months. Don’t worry, you’ll still be comfortable—especially when you see your bill.
- Use a programmable thermostat: With a programmable thermostat, you get complete control over your family’s comfort right at your fingertips. Programmable thermostats are quite easy to use. You can make some small adjustments that will add up to significant savings. For example, set your thermostat to lower the temperature in your Hudson Valley home by about 6 degrees during the time that your family is out for the day and during sleeping hours. That could save you as much as 10% on your heating bills. Similarly, you should lower your thermostat whenever your home is empty for days at a time because you and your family are travelling.
- Address any drafts in your home: A drafty house can lose up to 20% of its heated air through the small gaps around its windows and doors, chimney, ductwork, etc. By caulking your windows and adding door sweeps and weather stripping, you can help keep the warm air you’re paying for inside where you want it and can enjoy it. Addressing drafts now will also benefit your bottom line during the summer months because your air conditioner won’t have to work as hard to keep your home cool.
- Add insulation: This step goes hand in hand with addressing any drafts in your home. Insulation helps your home maintain the desired temperature with a smaller expenditure of energy. Your heating system doesn’t have to work as hard when your house is efficient at retaining heat. Most people don’t have an insulated attic, and heat rises. Start there.
- Use the sun: The sun is a free source of energy that you can tap into by opening any sun-facing curtains during the day to let in as much heat as possible. Close your curtains at night to help your home retain heat.
- Sign up for price protection or a budget program: Downey Energy offers a range of pricing and payment options that will help tame your budget during the winter months. One is bound to be just right for you.
- Pre-buy Plan: Buy your fuel supply before heating season and benefit from paying preseason prices.
- Price Cap Plan: Set a maximum per gallon price before heating season begins. You’ll never pay more, but you will pay less if the daily market rate drops.
- Budget Plan: Pay the same price every month for your fuel. Your yearly costs will be equally spread out over 10 or 12 months. Instead of having your heating costs jump up during the winter months when your usage increases, your bill will look the same all year long.
Trust Downey Energy for quality installation, maintenance, and repairs. We also provide heating oil delivery and propane delivery you can count on. Downey Energy has been serving residential and commercial clients in the Hudson Valley for more than a century. We have earned the loyalty of our customers through our dedication to service and reliability. Let us deliver for you as well.
Downey Energy operates in Dutchess County, Orange County, Putnam County, and northern Westchester County, New York. Click here to view our service area.
Contact us today to learn more or become a customer!
