There is no doubt about it that energy is an incredibly important thing here in the United States, from heating and cooling services and beyond. In fact, many parts of the country would be quite dangerous indeed if heating and cooling services were not present in any way. But heating and cooling systems can oftentimes (more frequently than not) be quite expensive indeed, making up as much as half of the typical energy bill that any given family sustains.
Fortunately, there are a number of steps that just about any home owner will be able to take to lower this energy bill back down again. For starters, routine and regular inspections of the heating and cooling systems in place is a must, and is recommended to happen at least twice throughout the year (but more frequently if problems arise). HVAC service companies can do these inspections, and having a professional take a look at your heating and cooling systems alike, as well as performing whatever maintenance might be necessary, can have a tremendously positive impact on the overall efficiency – and energy usage – of your systems, something that can be quite effective to lower utility bills.
There are a number of other unfortunate effects to a lack of regular maintenance as well. For instance, homes where regular HVAC maintenance is not provided are likely to have various contaminants building up in the ductwork of these systems. These contaminants will not only reduce the efficiency of the heating and cooling systems in place, but will also lower the air quality of the home as well, as they will circulate throughout the air as many as five times in just one single day – and sometimes even as frequently as seven times in a day.
Heating systems can also be impacted in a negative way when regular maintenance is forgone. In fact, sometimes heating systems will simply stop working at all. It has even been estimated that as many as three quarters of all no heat calls that are received by various HVAC companies over the course of winter months can be directly attributed to a lack of maintenance of the system, causing a reduction in efficiency until, well, the system just stopped working entirely. And while this is something that is certainly ideal to avoid, it is also a problem that is, at the end of the day, very much avoidable indeed. After all, regular maintenance just a mere two times throughout the year can prevent such a thing from happening ever in the first place.
A home energy audit can also be conducted, though many people might not even know that something like a home energy audit is even available to them. But a home energy audit can be incredibly helpful at understanding how much of your home’s energy is actually being wasted, something that you are not likely to know without some kind of home energy audit taking place. And the results of the typical home energy audit can be quite staggering.
In fact, various home energy audits throughout the country have led to data that shows that as much as 40% of all energy produced from and for heating and cooling systems actually ends up being wasted. Even in homes where the home energy audit shows a higher level of efficiency, as much as 25% of all the energy produced by these systems can still end up being wasted. And once a home energy audit has produced these findings, the HVAC companies in question can then go and try to find the source of the problem and rectify it, such as in cases of contaminants building up in ductwork, something that can happen when regular maintenance isn’t as commonplace as it should be (the importance of which has been discussed more thoroughly above).
From the home energy audit to regular maintenance to even simply being more mindful of the thermostat, there are a wide number of ways that home energy usage and energy efficiency can be improved upon here in the United States. For many people, such changes are quite simple to make.
