–Home Heating - Energy Saving Tips for Winter
Wherever you are in the world, as the autumn makes way for the winter temperatures staying warm and comfortable at home becomes a priority. Depending on your location, it’s true that some houses will require more powerful heating solutions than others, but one thing that we all have in common is finding the right balance between our comfort and keeping costs down. Luckily, there are numerous energy-saving tips for the winter months that most households can use to keep the cold and damp at bay.
If you’re keen to learn the best winter savings tips and efficient heating tricks while staying as comfortable as possible, read on.
Keeping Warm Goes Beyond Comfort
No one likes to feel chilly when relaxing at home, let alone feel cold, but there is more than your comfort at stake.
Prolonged exposure to low indoor temperatures and damp can impact our health in numerous ways: Conditions that affect the respiratory system including the common cold, increased susceptibility to depression and anxiety, and increased circulatory issues like blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes, among others. Source CSE.org.uk
A cold home is also an enemy to itself; as we attempt to keep the cold air out and the warm air in, this creates the perfect conditions for damp to thrive. This can cause damage to your home and personal belongings.
So, with reasons beyond your comfort to keep your home warm during winter, the next question is ‘how can you do it and keep bills low at the same time?’
Energy Saving Tips for Winter
Below, we’ve compiled the top tips and tricks to help you keep the chill away whilst helping you keep costs down. From practical ideas that most households can use to specialized solutions by Hitachi Cooling & Heating, here are our energy-saving tips for winter.
Practical Tips for Every Household
1. Turn down the thermostat
Keeping the thermostat at a lower temperature during winter is one of the simplest ways to heat the home efficiently. Some say to wear layers and set the thermostat to the lowest temperature you can possibly stand, but if you’re looking for the sweet spot then aim for 20°C (68°F) during waking hours and lower it when asleep or away.
2. Program your heating
If you can, program the use of your heating and temperature depending on the day and the hour. By going automatic, you can be confident that the heating system operates more efficiently without the worry of having to manage it daily.
3. Adjust the humidity
As the degrees drop outside, so should the amount of humidity you have in your home. As a rule, if the outside temperature is between 10°C and 20°C, humidity indoors should not be more than 35%. Any lower and the indoor air will feel dry and even bitter. It’s recommended to maintain humidity at 30% - 40%. If your home is prone to dry rapidly, houseplants, humidifiers and, if you’re being economic, bowls of water can be used.
4. Keep heat sources free of obstacles
Do you have a sofa or tall cupboard sitting right in front of your heating source? Then we suggest you to move your furniture around to maximise the distribution of heat. Even homes with limited space can benefit from moving their large pieces of furniture a few inches away, leaving space for improved airflow.
5. Vacuum to reduce dust build-up
Speaking of blocking airflows, be sure to clean the most commonly used spaces in your house regularly to avoid an unnecessary build-up of dust and other home debris in vents and filters. Not only will this help your heating maintain efficiency, but it will also improve the air quality by minimizing dust in the air.
6. Use curtains to trap heat in
Just like ill-placed furniture can prevent efficient heating of the space, the use of curtains, particularly those with heavier fabrics, can stop your room from losing heat to exposed window panes. During the day, benefit from the sun’s heat and open the curtains, and then as the evening approaches, close the curtains and window blinds too, to keep the heat in for longer.
7. Close doors
A bad habit that can lead to energy being wasted. When at home in the winter, it’s best to close the doors of the rooms being heated and those that are not in use. This is to avoid cold air creeping out of vacant rooms and affecting the temperatures of others. On another note, if you can, make sure to turn off or reduce the heating being supplied to empty rooms. It’s a common and easy mistake but one that consumes more energy than needed.
8. Find and seal unwanted leaks and drafts
Perhaps one of the more time-consuming tips on our list, foam or fabric draft snake kits on windows and doors stop air leaks and drafts ruining your efforts. Then, for cracks and other fractures utilize silicone caulking and weatherstripping to seal them off effectively. You’ll be surprised just how much heat is being lost but also by how easy it is to seal off unwanted leaks.
Hitachi Cooling & Heating Solutions
We invest a lot of time in developing technologies and functions to improve the efficiency of our line up in summer just as we do for the winter months. We want to create products that maximize the comfort in your home without you having to worry about increased running costs.
Hailed as one of the most efficient technologies for heating and cooling your home, our S series of heat pumps offers one of the highest efficiencies on the market.
A heat pump extracts heat from the air outside, even from temperatures as low as -15°C, which it passes to a liquid called refrigeration coolant. The coolant is then compressed to increase its temperature and then passed indoors to be used to heat water or air. There are heat pumps which heat air, those that heat water, and models that combine the two. Because they extract heat from the environment, the heat they produce is greater than the energy they consume, reducing the carbon footprint that heating can create.
Our latest suite of smart air conditioner apps, includes airCloud Go, giving you the power to control your home’s climate from wherever you are. For air conditioners and heat pumps, use the app to program and control your system in real-time and learn how to operate it more efficiently. It’s the perfect tool if you have an ever-changing schedule because you can adjust the settings on the move and even turn it on when you’re almost home so that you step into a warm environment.
Hitachi Cooling & Heating users will benefit from an array of specialized modes and functions that are designed to support winter comfort and cost. If you’re interested to know more about Hitachi Heating & Cooling products and our solutions that will help your comfort cost less, then visit our main website here.
Of course there are lots of other ways of keeping costs down. Have you got any energy-saving tips for winter comfort that you would add to our list?
by Hitachi
