During winter, you not only have to be indoors most of the time, but you also have to keep your house warm and toasty. As much as this keeps you comfortable, it often affects your heating bill.

You don’t want to continue spending thousands of dollars every month heating your home, do you? To ensure this doesn’t happen, you need to devise measures to keep your bills as low as possible. These measures, as given by heating service repair professionals, include:

Take good care of your heating unit

If you want your HVAC system to work as well as possible, it needs basic care and maintenance. First, ensure your system’s intake vents are free of dust and other things that could get in the way. Also, change your filters often.

Your HVAC filter is always working to eliminate pollutants in the air. The pollutants will keep building up if you don’t clean or replace your filter every 30 to 90 days. This will make your system work harder than it needs to move air, which will cause your energy bills to go up.

You should also have a local HVAC expert tune up your system once a year. During this appointment, the technician will check your system’s controls, connections, and fluid levels.

For the best outcome, have your unit tuned up before the heating season starts.

Check your door and windows.

Your home’s windows and doors are another way to save money on heating costs.

These are the main area where bad weather and drafts get into your home, so investing time in them is a sure way to save energy.

First, look for holes or gaps around the doors and windows where air could get in. You can also check places where pipes come into your house.

You should note that even small gaps and cracks in windows and doors can cause a lot of energy to get lost, so always use Caulk or weatherstripping to seal even the smallest cracks and holes in the door and window frames. You also should fill in the spaces around pipes with expanding foam insulation.

If your house is old, consider getting all new doors and windows. When making the purchase, look for products with a high R-value, which means a high level of insulation.

Change the fan on your ceiling.

Turning on your ceiling fans in the winter seems counterintuitive, but it has been shown to help keep your home warmer.

You need to flip the switch so that the fan blades turn clockwise and run the fans slowly in rooms where people are present. This will make an updraft that gently moves the warmest air near the ceiling.

Just because the fans effectively save you money doesn’t mean you should have them running all the time. To conserve energy, turn them off when going out of the house. Remember that leaving them on will only cause your utility bills to go up, and you don’t want this, do you?

Let the light shine

Getting as much natural light as possible can reduce heating costs. To do this, write down when the sun hits each side of your house during the day.

Even in the winter, the sun gives away free heat that you can take advantage of. So when the sun is shining on your house, open the curtains and blinds on windows that face the sun to let the warmth in.

You should then close the drapes when the sun goes down or when it moves away from that side of the house.

Change to Smart Systems

Installing a smart thermostat will go a long way toward saving you a lot of money. The beauty of these systems is they allow you to easily set your desired temperatures. When you aren’t in the house, you set it to a lower temperature, saving you a lot of money.

When connected, you can even control lights, locks, and a number of other smart home appliances.

Some thermostats learn your habits and automatically change the temperature to save the most energy and be as efficient as possible.

Do an energy audit.

Lastly, you should have an energy audit done on your home. These are professional assessments of how much energy your home uses. They can help you figure out where you can make changes.

You may have to hire a furnace service Huntington to fix your unit and replace your old appliance.