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With the cold weather now here, and the current issues surrounding the economy, keeping homes warm is becoming a costly concern.
KSMU’s Ryan Farmer took a trip to a local hardware store to find out easy tips to better insulate a home, and to help save on heating bills.
Peter Deschane is a customer sales representative at Lowes Home Improvement here in Springfield.
Walking through the aisles of windows, doors and insulation, he told me that there are several small things that people can do to help keep their homes warm in the winter.Deschane-"There's liners that they have for curtains now that you can put on the inside of your curtains that help keep the drafts out. Glass conducts hot and cold. If you put insulated blankets inside on the back of your cutains, its less likely that cold draft can come inside and add to the heat bill to the house."He added that since warm air rises, using ceiling fans can actually move the warm air back down to the lower part of a room.Deschane says one thing that people don’t often pay attention to is the effect their garage door has on heating the house.Deschane-"Even weatherizing the bottom edge of your garage door (helps). Most garage doors have a rubber weather strip on them, and that weather strip basically keeps any moisture and or draft coming in from underneath. People don't think well I don't heat my garage, what do I need to weatherize it? It's just like a storm door. If you got a door inside your garage, that goes inside your house, that draft coming through under that door could still get into your house into that inside door."This expert says in his home, if he’s not using a particular room, he closes off the vent to that room and makes use of space heaters.He also recommended applying weather tape stripping to windows, and he said even the simple task of throwing a towel in front of the door can help prevent heat from escaping.Though it sounds obvious, Deschane says one of the most common ways homes lose heat—and thus money-- is by keeping the outside door open unnecessarily.
For KSMU News, I’m Ryan Farmer.