Enviro Girl lives in Wisconsin, a place that is really, really cold half of the year. While folks in the South spend money keeping cool, folks in the North spend money staying warm. Whether heating a house/apartment/office building with propane, natural gas, or electricity, Enviro Girl has a few tips on saving energy and money in these cold months.
1. Insulate your building. By insulating attics and all walls, you’ll keep heat IN and cold OUT. Insulation works on the same premise as igloos or ovens — thick walls retain the interior temperatures.
2. Layer up. Instead of turning up the thermostat when you’re cold, throw on a sweatshirt or sweater. This will automatically make you feel 3-5 degrees warmer without burning up natural resources.
3. Slippers. You lose a fair percent of body heat through your feet. Warm feet generally mean a warm body. Keep socks or slippers on and you’ll further reduce the need to turn up your thermostat.
4. Adjust your thermostat according to your building’s use. If you’re sleeping, you can keep the heat down a couple of degrees. If you’re gone all day or all weekend, turn down the heat to 65. A programmable thermostat will pay for itself and is easy to install — a small computer chip will raise the temperatures before you return home and automatically lower them after you’re snuggled up in bed for the night — and raise them again before you’re up for the morning.
5. Seal your drafts. Cold air gets in through doors and windows. A wide array of products are available to seal these parts of your house. A lot of people block off doors during the winter, sealing them off entirely to traffic. In Wisconsin, the energy company WE gives out free weatherizing kits that include plastic sheeting for windows and weather-stripping.
6. If you’re building a new building, explore your heating options. Enviro Girl installed radiant heating in her house. It cost five times what a forced air system costs, but it pays for itself after 7 years of use. The initial outlay for the water heater and tubing that runs through her floors means that her family can keep their thermostat lower than people living with furnaces and vented air. They use less energy and stay more comfortable. Radiant heat is often used in industrial buildings because it’s such an efficient way to heat space — instead of heating the hair, it heats the tubing which heats the floors which then rises to heat the air. The heat stays longer and distributes more evenly than heat produced with a forced air system. If you’re looking at a renovation and you’re redoing floors, Enviro Girl suggests you explore radiant heat as an option.
7. Good window coverings will keep the cold at bay, insulating your windows from blasts of arctic air. Whether you install honeycomb blinds or lined curtains, this investment will keep your house extra warm. Enviro Girl installed honeycomb blinds over 3 large windows in her living room to keep out the sun’s heat in summer and the cold temps in winter — these blinds cost a fair amount, but they’ve made life much more comfortable.
8. Storm doors add a layer of resistance to the cold air and make doors less drafty. Enviro Girl had 2 installed and felt the difference immediately — one part of her house was always a little chilly but now feels like the rest of her house.
9. Change your furnace filter. A clean filter keeps your air cleaner and helps your furnace run more efficiently, using less energy.
10. If you’re using auxiliary heat sources (fireplace, space heater, electric blanket), Enviro Girl urges caution. Be safe and follow the manufacturer’s directions and guidelines.
Stay warm this winter and save money and save the environment — this is an equation that adds up! Reader, what do you do to stay warm where you live?
Don’t forget about the Eco Women’s Holiday Giveaway, which ends TOMORROW.
When we designed our house, we sited it to take advantage of passive solar — the rooms that get the most use face East, South, and West. During the summer, we angle our miniblinds to keep the sun out, but in the winter we throw them open to welcome in the sun’s warm rays.
I’ll add: humidity. Dry air feels colder. Appropriately moist air feels more comfortable, leading us Northerners away from the thermostat and back to the couch to watch the Packer game, hot cocoa in hand, schnapps included.
Keep an extra layer of fat on you. Really. If you are too thin, you get cold. Eat that chocolate! Eat those brats! Otherwise, all your money goes to WE Energies and who wants that?
Class Factotum, I like the way you think!