Conserve Energy and Save Money
Are your energy bills too high?
Is your home not as comfortable as you want it to be? Do you want to do more to protect the environment? Do you have teenagers at home giving your hot water bill a beating? Whatever your situation, this article will help you to find a solution that’s right for you and your family. This guide is primarily aimed at homeowners who are thinking of upgrading or replacing their home’s existing heating or cooling systems. It also contains useful information for people who are having a home built for them, and for those who want to reduce their energy consumption in general.
While builders generally offer a standard heating or heating/cooling package, upgrades to more efficient equipment might be available. Familiarity with the different systems, fuel options, their comparative prices and operating costs will help you to review upgrade options with your builder. Remember to also ask your builder about other energy efficiency upgrades, which can range from extra insulation to a complete R-2000-certified home. Before being R-2000-certified, each home is evaluated and tested to ensure a high level of energy efficiency has been designed and built into it. There are both financial and environmental benefits to conserving energy and using it wisely. To help you conserve even more, this will also direct you to resources that can help you reduce energy consumed for purposes beyond heating and cooling your home.
Before You Start
Putting an energy-efficient heating system into a drafty, poorly insulated house will reduce your energy bills. But you’ll notice a more dramatic saving, and even make yourself more comfortable, if you also make your entire house more energy efficient. How? Here are some ideas…
Weatherstrip and caulk to seal air leaks. You may have to replace uncontrolled sources of air with designed sources to ensure proper ventilation. Increase insulation levels where appropriate (such as in the attic or walls) to reduce heat loss in winter and heat gain in summer.
Open drapes on south-facing windows on sunny winter days so that the sun’s energy can help heat your home, and close them in summer to help keep your home cool.
Choose energy-efficient products when replacing windows and doors.
By making your house more energy-efficient, your heating and cooling systems will work less, and you may reduce the capacity needed when you replace your systems, which means more savings for you.
Why Energy Efficiency Matters
It’s good for your budget, your comfort and our environment. Each year you spend hundreds of dollars to heat and cool your home and to heat your hot water. By installing energy-efficient equipment, which gives you the same comfort for less energy, you can lower these costs. Furthermore, the lower you can make your energy costs now, the better off you will be should energy prices go up – and conservation reduces upward pressure on energy prices.
Whenever fuels are burned – in your home, in a generating station to produce electricity, in vehicles or elsewhere – carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide are released. These emissions contribute to environmental concerns including smog, acid rain and climate change. Reducing energy use lowers the amounts of these emissions and their impact on the environment. You can help by practicing energy efficiency and conservation not only in heating and cooling your home, but everywhere at home, in the workplace and in your transportation choices. Many factors can affect your annual energy bill such as size and location of your home, yearly variations in weather, efficiency of your furnace and other appliances,
thermostat settings, number of occupants, and the local cost of energy.
Are you serious about how to go about cutting your heating and cooling costs?
Follow these steps:
Where appropriate, improve the insulation and air sealing in your home.
Use this guide to help you decide what kinds of changes to your heating and cooling systems will be right for you.
Consult with a registered heating/cooling contractor and your fuel supplier before making a final decision.
Heating Units and Controls
There are four common types of heating units:
A furnace provides heat through a forced air distribution system.
A boiler provides heat through a hydronic distribution system. (Hydronic systems are also referred to as hot water systems.)
A space heater supplies heat directly to the room where it is located.
A heat pump extracts heat from the air, ground or water outside the house and usually delivers it through a forced air distribution system.
Most heating systems need air for combustion. Furnaces, boilers and space heaters that burn fuels need a supply of air to be able to burn properly, and a vent to the outdoors so that combustion gases can escape from the house. Electric heaters do not need to be vented. Combustion is a two-step process: air in, and gases out.
Air in
In the past, there was usually plenty of air leaking into a house to keep the furnace, boiler or stove burning well. Modern homes, however, are better sealed and use controlled ventilation, rather than uncontrolled leakage, to provide greater comfort and energy efficiency. Vents that supply air for heating units should never be blocked. It is important to ensure that there is an adequate supply of combustion air available, even when other air exhausting equipment is in use.
Gases out
Venting used to be done through a chimney. Today, however, many models of natural gas, oil and propane equipment can be vented by pipe directly through the wall, which greatly simplifies
installation. Remember that combustion gases cannot escape from your home unless you provide air to replace them. That’s why venting problems can often be traced to air supply problems.
Controls
The indoor temperature is automatically controlled by a thermostat. Two important considerations are location and type. Central systems are normally controlled by a single thermostat. To achieve proper temperature control, the thermostat must be located in an area where it will sense the “average” indoor temperature. Locations exposed to localized temperature extremes (outside walls, drafts, sunlight, hot ducts or pipes, etc.) should be avoided.
Different types of thermostats are available. Basic types maintain a fixed indoor temperature. However, you can reduce your heating costs by installing a set-back thermostat which can be programmed to automatically lower the temperature when no one is home or everyone is in bed, and then warm up the house before you get home or wake up. Savings will vary, but a set-back of 3ºC for eight hours daily could reduce your heating costs by about 5%.
Where space heaters are used, each unit will likely be individually controlled by its own thermostat – which is usually the basic type. This allows you to keep unused areas at a lower temperature than those areas you do use.
