3 Tips for Improving Heating Efficiency in Older Homes
When winter comes through each year, do you find yourself shivering even with the heat on in your older home? Do you dread leaving the covers and heading into a drafty living room or bathroom in the morning, feel the cold wafting off your front door before you even reach it, or face increasingly outrageous heating bills through the cold season? Today, we’ll look at why your home might feel so cold and a few of your options for keeping an older home affordably warm.
Why Do Older Homes Get So Cold?
To put it simply, the average old home will inevitably be less airtight than the average modern home. Even before accounting for countless improvements in building materials, weatherproofing techniques, and best practices, an older home sags, loosens, and eventually develops countless cracks and crevices. Some of these shortcomings can be resolved, but there will always be limits.
Upgrade Your Insulation
Many older homes were built before modern insulation practices became widespread — indeed, many homes lack insulation at all in some or all areas where you might expect it or have insulation so old and worn that it might as well not exist.
Even a small improvement on a poor base can have dramatic effects for your comfort and energy efficiency — you might not even need to replace existing insulation, instead being able to add to it.
Seal Leaks
One of the easiest and simplest ways to improve heating efficiency, even before you invest in proper insulation upgrades, is to track down and seal cracks and gaps around doors, windows, baseboards, etc. You can use weatherstripping materials, spray insulation, or even just tape in some situations.
Pay close attention to anywhere in your home that you can feel a draft, hear the outdoors particularly well, smell smells from outside, or simply feel the cold air radiating from a surface or gap. You might be surprised how easily you can track your discomfort to a fairly small number of leaks in your home.
Upgrade Your Heating System
A modern heating system can be a dramatic improvement in your energy efficiency. Even just going from an older furnace to a newer furnace might have a substantial impact on your comfort and your monthly energy costs, but there are even better ways to save if you’re looking to invest in the future:
Heat pumps offer heating and cooling through a variation of the technology that powers traditional air conditioning. Where a normal air conditioner condenses heat inside into refrigerant and then moves that heat to the exterior unit where it can be vented, leaving cold air inside to be blown around, a heat pump can also reverse this process, condensing heat from the air outside and bringing it inside to be released.
Ductless mini-splits use the same technology as a heat pump but forgo a central indoor unit and air handler in favor of running refrigerant lines to multiple smaller interior units. Each of these can supply a room or section of your home with highly efficient and room-specific heating and cooling.
Under the right circumstances, heat pump technology can be as much as 5 times as efficient as a furnace because moving heat is far more efficient than creating it from gas or electricity. It’s a great way to control costs in an older building.
Depend On Dominion To Keep Your Older Home Cozy
When you’re ready to make upgrades to keep your older home comfortable through the cold of winter, let the experienced HVAC technicians at Dominion Service Company assist you in the process. We’ll assess your home’s heating needs and help you find the right system or changes to stay cozy and comfortable without driving up your bills.
Contact our team today to learn more about your options or to schedule a visit anywhere in Southeast Michigan.
