Though these energy saving tips havebeenwritten in partnership with Homeselfie, all opinions are my own. Thanks for supporting the brands that support me!
Owning a home can be rather costly. In fact, when I hear that something needs updated or replaced, I cringe because I know a hefty price tag comes along with that. And the truth is, I’d much rather spend my money elsewhere! A week long family vacation sure would be nice!
As many of you know, this house was almost completely gutted when we got it. We’ve done an awful lot of work over the years but I’ve always been really curious about how efficient our home really is. So I did a?Homeselfie?and found out that it’s not as bad as I’d thought it might be.
Homeselfie is a really great tool that provides a free evaluation of your home, based on the data that you provide. It shows you where your home is insufficient energy wise and shares some solutions with you. A professional energy auditing service can cost you hundreds of dollars, so this really is a great tool, especially from a starting point. Once your homeselfie report is complete, Homeselfi can hook you up with contractors, rebates and more.
Homeselfie can help you save money on your electric bill by suggesting things that may need upgrading or problems within your home. I took the test and found that the energy efficiency of our home is Good – which the scale runs from Needs Work, Needs Some Work, Average, Good and Very Good. So as you can see, we could use some improvements. Based on their calculations, we could potentially save $930 each year and $20,330 over the lifetime by doing some routine maintenance and updates. Homeselfie suggested we do things like replace the older windows in our home and make sure that all of our windows and doors are sealed properly. We should also have our air ducts looked at.
Energy Saving Tips
Here are some tips that I learned to keep our energy costs down.
- Seal or replace drafty windows and doors
- Replace your old furnace
- Make sure your attic is insulated
- Upgrade to?ENERGY STAR? appliances
- Use ENERGY STAR? certified light bulbs
- Turn off power strips when not in use
Now that last tip is a doozy and one that my family really needs to learn. I’m constantly turning electronics?off and flipping light switches because everyone leaves things on, constantly. With 7 people in our house, that makes for a pretty hefty electric bill each month – $400 on average! So that’s definitely where we’ll start and during the spring and summer, we’ll work on some of the other things on the list.
I encourage you to sign up (it’s free) and take the Homeselfie to see which things could use updated in your home and what kind of energy savings you can anticipate.