Winter will soon be upon us and temperatures are starting to plunge for most of us. Unless you're living in California or Florida, you'll soon be getting ready to see some snow, if you haven't already. With everyone trying to save money, there are a couple of cheap ways to keep your place warm...
Cheap & Energy Efficient Ways to Winterize Your Apartment
One of the easiest ways of saving money during winter is to use an energy efficient space-heater. The Vornado Vortex is one of those. The Vortex has a thermostatic remote control, meaning that it can sense the ambient temperature. It then relays this info the space-heater, which will heat the room accordingly. Pretty cool! It's available for $187. Most electrical space-heaters convert 100% of the electricity that they consume into heat. Keeping your heating at a baseline, let's say 50°F, then using a space-heater to heat specific parts of different rooms will save you a bundle of money, as you aren't wasting heating. If you have central heating, this would be the way to do. If you have thermostats in each room, they you can manage which rooms to heat and which not to.
Installing a high-tech programmable thermostats will also cut down on your power bill significantly, as you can make sure that you aren't heating your place when no one is around. The programmable ones make it easy to save on power. The Honeywell 5+2 enables you to have a program for the week and one for the weekend. If you have a house with a fireplace, you know that having a roaring fire going is one of the cheaper ways of keeping your home warm.
Lastly, most apartments and homes lose heat through the windows. These are the main culprits in losing heat from your home. Applying some window insulation wrap to the windows is an easy way of insulating them. This works especially well in older apartments. We recommend double-sided tape. The last part involves using a hair dryer at his hottest setting. You need to blow air all over the wrap so that wrinkles will disappear. It will also make it almost invisible. If you've never done this before and need further instructions, check out this Instructable which is a great primer on how to do it well. These plastic wraps will cost you about $10 a roll.
MORE ON THERMOSTATS
• Use A Thermostat to Control A Space Heater
• Installing A Programmable Thermostat
[images by Torque63, Vornado, and Shannon Stanley]
Posted originally from: Unplggd
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Umm... last time I checked, parts of California get a lot of snow.
California homes need this type of winterizing more than a Mid-west home because thy are built so crappily. Many homes have no insulation at all.
view slobound's profile
I've read that there's a minimum you should keep your house at, even if no one is home. Might be 62 degrees or something. Part of it is ensuring pipes don't freeze, but there was also something about the amount of energy needed to kick-start a system that's heating up a very cold space.
view M. L.'s profile