CHEAP ALTERNATIVES TO HEATING YOUR HOME

This holiday season, you might find yourself hosting a party or two or a hundred. And while you might want your party to be one that you’ll remember, you’ll want to make sure that it’ll be remembered for the right reasons. You should consider the ways you heat your home to ensure that your guests experience the party for what you’ve put together, not what nature has in mind. If you’re looking for the cheapest way to heat your home, look no further. We’ll explore home heating systems as well as alternative ways to heat your home.

Alternative Heating Systems For Your Home

If you’re looking at heating systems as a whole, a few alternative options to heat your home include solar heating, heat pumps, and hybrid furnace.

Solar Heating. Solar Heating systems are, while seemingly an expensive investment, is one of the cheapest options out there in the long run. Given that the average return on investments for a nuclear family is 3-6 years, there are some serious savings to be earned from such a great investment. And it’s a popular one too, with more solar heating systems installed between 2010 – now than before. When we talk about new technology influencing the ways you can heat your home, solar heating is one of the biggest influences changing homes today. Especially as residents of Arizona, the savings are astronomical, making the potential return on investment much higher than national averages.

Heat Pumps. In terms of efficiency, the heat pump as an alternative source of heating and cooling will vastly exceed that of the gas furnace. Even when it is cool indoors and cool outdoors, heat pumps operate by extracting the heat within cool air and pumps it inside. Due to its efficiency to extract heat even from cool air, heat pumps are able to maximize their performance to meet your home’s heating needs, making it a cheap alternative to heating your home compared to traditional means. If you do secondary research, you’ll see mixed feelings from people who live in areas where the temperature drops below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. And albeit, one of the heat pumps faults is that it’s not optimized for frigid (literally freezing temperatures), but here in Arizona, that isn’t a problem. As such, this is a great alternative to heating your home.

Hybrid Furnaces. Typically the alternative to heat pumps, hybrid furnaces use electric sources to heat homes throughout the year. When the temperatures drop to below 30 degrees Fahrenheit however, hybrid furnaces switch from electric to natural gas as a secondary fuel source. Again, the heat pump may be enough for you, given that temperatures in Arizona (save north Arizona) rarely (if ever) drop below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. If you do have concerns, however, this is always a great alternative choice, if only a slightly expensive product.

If you are in the market for alternative heating systems for your home, our comfort heroes are ready to help save the day (and your wallet) from discomfort disasters. Feel free to contact us here or call at 602-787-3956!

Cheap Ways To Heat Your Home

If you are happy with the current system you have in place, here are some options you can take in your home to optimize the performance of your heating system.

Programmable Thermostat: Quickly becoming a popular option in homes today, programmable thermostats have the ability to provide smart alternatives to conventional and traditional ways of heating and cooling homes. These devices are one of many products aimed at making homes smarter and, in the process, saving you money. With average savings ranging in $170-$180/year as compared to traditional methods, programmable thermostats more than pay for themselves in 2 years. They operate by getting to know what temperatures you are comfortable with, and select times in the day (and night) to either raise or lower the temperature based on your home’s needs.

Invest In Thick Curtains: This is a simple solution at night when the temperatures start to drop. This cheap trick can protect the warm air from interacting with cold surfaces near windows and even doors that are letting cold air in. With that said, know when to use them.

Use Sunlight When You Can: When the sun is seeping in, let it. Closing curtains should be used when night starts to fall. A simple trick you can employ is simply feeling a window in your home. The moment it’s a bit cooler than you’d like, you might want to start literally wrapping your house up back in its curtains.

Layer Up Wood Or Tile Floors: This is optimized for homes with uninsulated floors. Clearly, if your home has insulated floors, this option is neither recommended or beneficial. With that said, uninsulated floors can account for 10% of heat loss in a home. If you are not interested in a radiant floor heating installation, simply getting carpet and draping them over your tile and wood floors can prevent heat loss. This is one of the cheapest ways to heat your home easily.

Get a Chimney Balloon: This is mostly only for homes with an unused, or rarely used-chimney. If you are using your chimneys, you want to make sure your chimney balloon isn’t getting in the way of fumes that may be released. This is a fairly cheap product you can buy online that is inflatable in your chimney until it literally clogs up your chimney pipe. This preserves hot air in your home and keeps cold air out. This is again only for chimneys that are unused as putting one in place while lighting your chimney is not safe.