If you’re looking to save money on furnace repair, you’ve come to the right place. There are lots of ways to save on repairing your furnace, and here are a few of them:
1. Have it Serviced Regularly
This is the one thing that you absolutely must do if you want to save on repairing your furnace. It’s like with your car; if you fail to change the oil, check the alignment, and replace the timing belt, you could end up with a very expensive mess when you would have simply had to pay a little bit to stay on top of those things in the first place.
The same thing goes with your furnace. As a general rule, you should bring in a professional to clean and tune up your furnace at least once a year – if not every six months. This will keep you from having to pay for more expensive repairs down the road, and it has the advantage of having a second set of eyes to tell you when you may need to replace your furnace in a few months or years. This way, you can save up money for a new furnace and installation instead of getting stuck with a sudden $2,500 bill when your old gas furnace finally kicks the bucket.
2. Don’t Make it Work So Hard
When you don’t take steps to save energy, you lose money because you’re paying more for your electricity bill or gas bill, but you also waste money by causing your furnace to work harder than it needs to. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t put a decent furnace to good use, but you will save on furnace repair if your furnace isn’t running at top level twenty-four hours a day.
3. Check Before You Call
Before you call the repairman, be sure that you check a few basic things so that you aren’t wasting someone’s time or paying for a needless visit. First off, be sure that your pilot light is on; if it’s gone off for some reason, you’ll have instructions – likely pasted on the side of your furnace – for lighting the pilot light. Be sure, too, that your thermostat is clean and is reading the temperature correctly, as a faulty thermostat could fool you into thinking there’s something wrong with the furnace. Another basic thing is to be sure the circuit breaker for the furnace is set to the on position.
4. Call a Professional
Once you’ve checked all that basic stuff, don’t attempt to do anything further on your own. You’re likely to mess up your furnace more, which will end up costing you more in the end. You could also seriously injure yourself, as furnaces run on very flammable elements.
5. Buy a New One
This doesn’t seem like much of a way to save, but it can actually help you out a lot if you have an older furnace. If your furnace is more than fifteen years old, as your repairman at the next yearly check-up how everything looks and whether it is likely to break down any time soon. Buying a newer high-efficiency model before your old furnace croaks gives you time to save up some cash and costs less in repairs later on.
There’s no doubt about it: air conditioning is expensive. Paying to keep your home environment cool all summer can take major chunks out of your bank account, but there are ways that you can alleviate this problem by using your energy more efficiently. Energy-efficient air conditioning isn’t just about buying a whole new system; it is also about learning to use the system that you have efficiently.
1. Set the Thermostat High
It may seem uncomfortable to walk into a house that is only a few degrees cooler than the outside world, but running your air conditioner to shreds by setting your thermostat at seventy degrees all summer is ridiculous. Then you just end up needing to put on long sleeves and pull out blankets when you’re in the house, as your light, short summer clothes are uncomfortable then. Instead of having a freezing home, simply set your thermostat high and leave it up higher when no one is home during the day.
2. Use a Dehumidifier
Most people know that dry heat is way easier to endure than humid heat, which is why many people in sunny, dry Arizona will walk around in the summer quite comfortable in long sleeves while people in Florida take off all the clothes they decently can, even when it’s ten degrees cooler than Phoenix. If you want to avoid running your air conditioner simply to pull humidity out of the air, get a couple of dehumidifiers for your home, which can seriously help the problem.
3. Pull Out Hot Air
Trying to cool your home while firing up the stove and the oven can be a major annoyance. Using an exhaust fan can help this problem, but if you don’t have one of these over your stove, you can help cool your kitchen simply by setting up a fan on the floor. In conjunction with your air conditioner, this will help your kitchen stay comfortable even as you slave away.
4. Shade When It’s Needed
You may already be aware that pulling the curtains over your south-facing windows on those hot summer days can make your home more comfortable by several degrees, but did you know that shading your air-conditioning unit can help it run more efficiently? If you get to choose where to put your A/C unit, you should place it on the shady north side of your home. If not, plant trees or tall grass around the unit, which can help it stay cooler, working more efficiently. Besides this, the plants will shade your home, keeping it naturally cooler, and hide the air conditioning unit from sight.
5. Buy an Energy-Efficient Unit
If you’re really struggling to keep up with the electricity bills during the summer, it may be that you need a new air conditioning unit. Energy-efficient air conditioning when used in conjunction with all these other energy-saving ideas could help you cool your home more efficiently, and buying a new unit could very well save you hundreds of dollars a year.
Currently, the government is so interested in economic rehabilitation and environmental issues that it is offering tax credits to homeowners who install energy efficient appliances, windows, and even insulation. Besides saving money by getting a bigger tax rebate – or, at least, paying less in taxes – this year, you can save money over the long term on your overall energy costs.
What is Eligible for the Tax Credit
Until the end of next year, you can spend money replacing your windows, insulation, roof, doors, and heating and cooling equipment with better, more efficient models, and the government will refund thirty percent of your costs up to $1,500. This can add up to a lot of savings, especially if you need to replace both your furnace and your air conditioning unit.
What’s more, if you replace your old heating and cooling system with a geothermal heat pump, which actually uses the earth’s heat in the winter and dumps heat out of the home into the earth in the summer, you can save 30% of the total cost without any limits. Combine this with specials that many heating and cooling companies are already running, and you can save some major cash.
How does it Work?
Basically, you’ll need to keep your receipts. At the end of the year when you’re itemizing your tax breaks, you’ll file for this rebate. The best part about a tax credit – as opposed to the normal tax deduction that you’ll get for charitable giving and the like – is that it’s a dollar-for-dollar deal.
This means that if you spend $5,000 on a new heating and cooling system for your home, you can apply for the full $1,500 tax credit. If you end up getting a tax rebate, the government will send you an extra $1,500, and if you owed the government, say, $2,000 at the end of the year, you would only have to pay $500 of that because your tax credit would offset the rest.
Not the Only Way to Save
Besides the tax credit, though, installing a new energy-efficient heating and cooling system in your home can save you money in repair costs and energy costs. If you current system is more than a decade old, chances are likely that it’s going to start having some major problems within the next few years, and paying to fix these issues can take a huge chunk of change. Newer systems will need fewer repairs, and they’ll probably be covered by warranties for a while, making them a safe investment.
Today’s technology in heating and cooling can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year in heating and cooling costs. If you live in a very cold area, a 90% efficient furnace could save you an average of $1,600 per year, and a very efficient air conditioning system in a hot area can do the same. You really can’t go wrong with this deal.
