10. Make sure the vents in all rooms are clear of dust and obstructions. None of the vents in your home should be covered or blocked by anything – doing that makes your heating and cooling work overtime. You should also peek into all of your vents and make sure they’re as dust-free as possible, and brush them out if you see any dust bunnies. This improves air flow into the room, reducing the amount of blowing that needs to happen.
11. Install CFL and LED light bulbs in some locations. CFL and LED bulbs can save you a lot of money on energy use over the long haul, plus they have much longer lives than normal incandescent bulbs. Consider installing some in various places – we usually use CFLs for hall lighting and LED bulbs for closet lighting (though LED bulbs are improving all the time…).
12. Choose energy efficient appliances, even if you have to pay more up front. Unless you were lucky enough to buy a fully-furnished home, you’ll likely have to do some appliance shopping. Focus on reliability and energy efficiency above all, even if that seriously increases the cost you have to pay up front. A refrigerator that uses little energy and lasts twenty years is far, far cheaper over the long run than a fridge that runs for seven years and guzzles electricity. (If you’re worried about the up-front cost, check out tip #16.)
13. Set up your home electronics with a SmartStrip or two. Looking forward to getting your television, cable box, DVD player, sound system, and video game console set up? When you do it, set things up with proper surge protection (to protect your equipment). You might also want to consider a SmartStrip, which allows the on-off status of one device (say, the television) to control whether or not there’s power flowing to other devices (say, the DVD player or the video game console). Having the power cut automatically from such auxiliary devices can save a lot of money over time, especially since many such devices eat quite a bit of power as they sit there in standby mode, constantly draining your money.
14. Air-seal your home. Look for any places where air may be leaking directly into or out of your home. These aren’t just air leaks – they’re money leaks. Thankfully, fixing small air leaks is pretty easy – here’s a great Department of Energy guide to caulking and weatherstripping, which will keep such air leaks from costing you.
15. Plant shade trees near your house. Shade trees naturally cool your home during those warm summer months, reducing the amount of direct rays that hit your house. Lowering the external temperature of your home saves significantly on your cooling bills during the summer, plus it increases your property value. Plant them now, so they’ll grow and shade your house sooner.
16. Take advantage of tax benefits for any improvements you make. For starters, there’s the first time home buyer tax credit, which is essentially an interest-free $7,500 loan from the federal government for new homeowners. This is perfect money to help you with fixes you may need to make when you move in, like buying good appliances or putting in shade trees. Similarly, if you make energy-based improvements to your home in 2009, you can receive up to $500 in tax credit for that purchase, essentially making things like insulation tax free. Your state may have even more benefits, so be aware of all of these when you invest money improving the efficiency of your home.
17. Develop a home maintenance checklist – and run through it for the first time. One final tip – create a home maintenance checklist. This list should include regular home maintenance tasks that you’d want to do on a monthly or quarterly or annual basis. Then, make it a habit to run through the items on this list each month. Doing so will extend the life of almost everything in your home, saving you buckets of money over time.
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