With rising food and fuel prices and unpredictable weather due to climate change, it seems everyone is looking for ways to save on their home heating costs. The problem is that some things seem like logical options to drop your heating bills, and they are, in fact, not true.
Here are some home heating myths that you might have believed:
1. A Fireplace Reduces Home Heating Bills
Wrong. A fireplace draws heat away from the rest of the house and will increase your overall heating bills.
The Fireplace Guys explain it this way: “When you’re sitting next to this type of fireplace, you’ll feel the radiant heat making you warm, but if you pay attention to the corresponding temperature in the rest of your home and the energy bill that accompanies the lack of warmth in other rooms, you’ll start to realize that wood-burning fireplaces don’t heat your entire home.”
You might have noticed something like this if you have ever been sitting around a campfire. The part of you facing the fire is warm, but the rest of you — the part away from the fire—seems extra cold.
It’s a simple matter of what the fire needs to survive: Oxygen. When you light the fireplace, the fire needs a constant flow of oxygen to keep the fire lit. You are probably also opening the flue so that the smoke can escape, right?
The fire draws heated air from the room into itself, then lets most of that heat escape out the open flue, meaning your home heating system has to work harder to compensate for the heat going up the chimney.
2. Closing Vents Saves on Heating Costs
Again, this just makes sense, right? You close off the vents to the space you don’t need, meaning the heater can direct all that warm air to the space you need and doesn’t have to work as hard. But again, that’s not quite how it works.
This newscast looks at the problem with the myth.
The bottom line is that your heating system is designed to blow air through all vents. When it can’t, it works harder to try to do so anyway, potentially damaging the system over time.
Additionally, interior walls don’t have insulation most of the time, so the heat flows through doorways and walls into the unheated rooms anyway. You’re still heating them, just not as efficiently. And the damage to your HVAC system will likely cost far more to repair than any savings achieved.
3. Space Heaters are Cost-Effective
This gets complicated. To figure out how efficient this is or isn’t depends on what you are trying to do with space heaters, the space heater itself, and the overall cost of heating your home. According to CNET, space heaters on average cost about 20 cents per hour to run.
If you are using a space heater to supplement the heat in a cold office or bedroom, that added cost is likely cheaper than turning up the thermostat to more equally warm that room. However, depending on your home heating system, heating the entire home may only cost 40 to 60 cents per hour, so if you need more than one space heater, you are already significantly increasing your heating costs.
When you add in the potential dangers from space heaters, which range from minor burns to house fires and carbon monoxide poisoning, the chances are the few additional cents per hour to turn up the heat is less than the potential cost of the space heater.
4. New Homes are More Energy Efficient
In general, new homes are more energy efficient than homes built just 10 years ago because of upgraded materials and insulation. But that depends a lot on the quality of the construction, the HVAC system that was installed, and the size of the home. First Energy Corp. suggests that home builders and new home buyers check that the materials are energy efficient, but don’t assume that a new home is more energy efficient.
While the energy company didn’t specifically say it, the fact of the matter is that not all builders are created equal. If you’re buying a new home, inquire—don’t assume. Find out what type of insulation has been used and how sturdy the construction is. Some older homes that have been remodeled may be more energy efficient because they were built with better materials or better construction methods.
5. A Bigger Furnace is Always Better
There are times when bigger is always better: a bigger paycheck or a bigger smile. But a bigger furnace is not one of them. Bigger furnaces could actually increase your home heating costs.
This Old House explains it like this: if you buy a furnace that is too big for your house, it doesn’t scale down its power usage to what you need. Much like a car, the big energy expenditure in a furnace is in start-up and shutdown.
Like a car with a big engine, a bigger furnace might roar on the starting line, but like a sprint car, the bigger heater warms up fast and then shuts down. The constant on-and-off can damage your heating system as it does to a car engine. So you paid too much for the bigger engine and now you’re are going to be paying to make engine repairs.
Express C.O.D Can Help You Save On Your Home Heating Bill
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