With the high cost of heating and cooling, it’s important to find ways to boost energy efficiency in your home. Since your household’s overall efficiency is affected by your home’s various inter-dependent systems, it’s vital that they all work in unison. Here are some key issues that need to be addressed when syncing HVAC systems and improving energy efficiency house-wide:
Reduce Exterior Air Leakage
Controlled air exchange with the outdoors is crucial to maintain a healthy indoor environment, but uncontrolled air leaks in the exterior envelope of your home can waste your heating and cooling dollars. You can use weatherstripping, caulk and expandable foam to seal leaks/gaps around your doors and windows, and where any vents, pipes and wires that penetrate the exterior shell.
Prevent Attic Energy Losses
Air leakage between an unfinished attic and your conditioned living space and insufficient insulation on your attic floor can adversely affect your home’s energy efficiency. To maximize your energy budget, seal gaps and holes around the attic perimeter and floor penetrations, then have insulation up to R-60 installed between the floor joists.
Maintain the HVAC Equipment
Having professional preventive maintenance performed on your HVAC equipment each spring and fall can keep it running at maximum efficiency so you save energy and keep your utility bills in check.
Address Ductwork Deficiencies
If the ductwork that delivers conditioned air to the various rooms in your home is in poor condition, with disconnections, leaks and no insulation, 20 percent (or more) of the system’s output can be needlessly wasted. You can control these losses by having all the accessible ducts checked/repaired, then properly sealed and insulated.
Upgrade Lighting and Appliances
Replacing incandescent lighting with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and older appliances with Energy Star-certified models can bring you long-term energy savings. Updating these heat-generating items can also have a beneficial affect on your household efficiency by lowering your A/C or heat pump’s cooling load, and reducing its energy usage.
For more tips on how to achieve greater efficiency by syncing HVAC systems in your Indianapolis home, contact us at Mowery Heating, Cooling and Plumbing.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Brownsburg, Indiana and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).
Credit/Copyright Attribution: “OpenClipart-Vectors/Pixabay”
