If you’re looking at buying a new heating and cooling system for your home, you need to find ways to save money. If you’re like most consumers, you want to buy a high quality, high efficiency system that will help you pay less to keep your home comfortable over the next several years. Saving money and getting the best in HVAC systems may seem contradictory, but you actually can do both, especially right now!
Look for Special Deals
You can get systems like these on special deals from some companies, and you should always be on the lookout for specials on heating and cooling systems if you’re looking to replace yours anytime in the next year or two. These specials can really save you a ton of cash.
Get the Right Size
Buying the right size furnace or air conditioner is vital to saving money on your heating and cooling bills and on the actual equipment. Getting a bigger size isn’t always a better idea, as it can leave you with not only a more expensive system but also more expensive bills, since furnaces and air conditioners that are too large for the area they’re heating are generally much less efficient than furnaces and air conditioners of the right size.
Apply for the Tax Credit
This is probably your biggest and best way to save on heating and cooling between now and the end of 2010. You can actually get a tax credit from the government when you buy new, energy-efficient appliances like furnaces and central air conditioners. Basically, this means that if you buy the right sort of HVAC equipment over the next year or so, you will be able to save a whole lot of money.
In order to get the credit, though, you have to buy the right kind of system. The kind you have to buy, though, is just the kind of energy-efficient system that will keep your heating and cooling bills as low as possible. The system that you’ll need to get will have to be at least 90% efficient, but this extra efficiency will save you money both now and later.
When you buy your new furnace or air conditioner – air source heat pumps and hot water boilers count, too – simply save both your receipt and the manufacturer’s certification for the appliance. Then, when you do your taxes – or have someone else do them – at the end of the year, you can take that receipt in and apply for the tax credit.
This credit, though, doesn’t work like a tax deduction, which only takes away a certain percentage of your taxable income. Instead, it’s basically like the government writes you a check; if you owe them money, they simply take the amount of the check away from the payment you owe, and if they owe you money, they’ll put that check in with the rest of your tax rebate.
You can get a rebate for 30% of the cost of your new appliances up to $15,000. The only time this doesn’t hold true is if you’re putting in super-efficient appliances that don’t need fossil fuels or natural gas to run. Geo-thermal heat pumps, for instance, have no dollar-amount limit, and the government will write you a check for 30% of the cost, no matter what it is.
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.
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.
