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With my new home, I’ve been shocked at our gas bill.  It is extremely high.  We only use gas to heat our house and hot water.  We’ve already taken care of the hot water heater.  So I’ve been going through and trying to figure out ways that I can reduce the heating costs.  There are many things I have done and plan to do, so I’m breaking this into a multiple part post.

The first thing I did was install a programmable thermostat.  When we moved in, we had that old style of themostat that is circular and you just turn the dial to the desired temperature.  These work but I wanted to change the temperature for when no one is home or while we are asleep.  I can do this manually but I rarely remember.  So a small investment in a programmable thermostat was definitely worth it.

I picked up a programmable thermostat for about $30.  Most thermostats run between $30 and $50.  Not bad for what you get for the money.  You will have to examine your weekly habbits to know what options to look for.  The popular options are 7 day, 5-2 day, and 5-1-1 day. 

• The 7 day means there is the same heating schedule 7 days a week (not common usage for most households).
• The 5-2 day means there is one heating schedule for 5 days a week and a different heating schedule for the other 2 days in the week. 
• The 5-1-1 day means that there is one heating schedule for 5 days a week and a different schedule for each of the other two days (a total of 3 schedules).

The more complex the schedule, the higher the cost of the thermostat.  I bought the 5-1-1 day model from RiteTemp.  I love having the different schedules, but I am not a fan of the layout.  I’ve had Honeywell models before and thought they were much more intuitive to use.  If you find electronics confusing, take this into account when buying a programmable thermostat.

The installation process wasn’t too bad.  Definitely read the instructions first.  This is something I don’t normally do, but glad I did this time.  The wires in the existing thermostat are labelled with letters.  You will need to know which letter each wire belongs to.  The instructions with the thermostat will tell you how the letters will match up (it is mostly self explanatory, but not always).  Transferring the wires over and screwing it into the wall is pretty much the whole process.  Don’t forget to turn off the power before working with any wires.

I have the temperature lowered during the day (while my husband is travelling) and slightly lower while we are sleeping.  This saves the furnace from running more than it has to during hours we don’t need the higher temperatures.  Not only does it save some money in my heating bills but also reduces the amount of gas being consumed.  Look for other ways I have lowered my heating bill and gas consumption in future posts.

Tags: environment, green, heating

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 11:25 am and is filed under Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.