If you’re looking to reduce your heating and cooling costs, you are certainly not alone. After all, heating and cooling systems, as necessary as they might be, can be hugely expensive as well. For a matter of fact, it is not uncommon to spend up to half of your energy bill (if not even more than this) on matters of heating and cooling alone. For the typical person, this can amount to a lot of money indeed – and is certainly something to be lowered if at all possible.
For starters, the addition of insulation to your home can be quite widely successful. In fact, simply adding insulation (such as spray foam insulation, for instance) to your attic space alone has been found to reduce total heating costs by as much as 20%, if not even more than that. In addition to this, replacing your current roof with a metal roof (when the time comes for it, as it ultimately will with any asphalt roof out there, no matter how well cared for) can drop your energy costs in total by as much as a full 25%. And while such measures might seem to be a bit expensive up front, they are steps that can be considered investments – and ones that will certainly more than pay off at the end of the day.
Of course, smaller steps can also be taken. For instance, simply buying and installing a programmable thermostat of some kind can have a bigger impact than many people realize it could. In many cases, this is something that will drop heating costs alone by as much as a full 10%. Over the course of time, such savings are likely to become even more impressive. Therefore, this is again a step that is more than worth taking, a cost that is more than worth paying for the pay off that it will ultimately give.
In addition to this, cleaning out your ducted heating and cooling systems is an absolute must, with vent cleaning in particular taking place on a regular basis. Ideally, this vent cleaning and other such maintenance and servicing will take place at least twice throughout the year. In some cases, vent cleaning might even be recommended more frequently even than this. And on top of vent cleaning, filters must be changed even more frequently – at least once every three months, sometimes even more often depending on the HVAC system that is being used and is in place.
If you neglect vent cleaning, you will likely end up with a number of contaminants built up in your HVAC system. This means that a lack of vent cleaning can actually end up reducing the overall efficiency of your HVAC system by as much as a full 40% – and typically by no less than 25%. To avoid this, regular vent cleaning should be conducted often and a more thorough air duct cleaning at least once every five years, if not more frequently (such as once every three years).
If you avoid vent cleaning and hiring vent cleaning services even, you can even put your health and the health of your family members at stake. The contaminants that end up in your HVAC system can vary immensely, ranging from pet dander to chemicals to various types of dust. And all of these chemicals will circulate through your air at least five times throughout the course of a single day. In homes where vent cleaning has been avoided for a particularly long time, the circulation of such contaminants and irritants and chemicals can end up circulating throughout the home as many as seven times in total.
And there is no denying that this can exacerbate existing health problems and even cause new ones. In fact, asthma is commonly worsened when vent cleaning is avoided and such contaminants are able to build up at will. In addition to asthma, already an often debilitating condition, allergies also become more common in such homes. Fortunately, performing vent cleaning on a regular basis can avoid all such problems just about entirely.