This February, most of the Eastern United States has been experiencing record lows, long freezes and epic snowstorms. Cold temperatures and snow can be fun occasionally (think snowball fights, days off school and work, snow angels, etc) However, prolonged cold temperatures can leave your body drained, your car battery drained and your wallet drained from the heating bills.
Yes, keeping your home warm during weeks of below-freezing temperatures can be quite difficult. If you have a large home, or a tall but narrow town home, maintaining a comfortable temperature is next to impossible. In tall, narrow town homes, it seems that regardless of what temperature you set on the thermostat, it is perpetually 90°F on the top floor and 30°F on the bottom. In large homes, thermostat settings seem more as an inspirational, vague, utopian numbers rather than a temperature the inside of the house actually needs to be. Keeping your house warm is a tall order when a comfortable indoor temperature of 70°F to 75°F is 40 to 60 degrees higher than the bone-chilling winter air. Heating a house is a constant battle against heat loss via cracks, open windows, doors, worn-out seals and typical, inevitable static heat loss through windows and walls.
The Better Way To Keep Your House Warm
Rather than cranking up the heat and paying the monthly energy bill of a Walmart Superstore, open your shades or curtains, and let sunlight in during the day. It surely doesn’t feel like it, but the sun is still very strong in the winter. Letting in sunlight creates a mini greenhouse in your home, retaining most of that radiant heat, and raising the temperature inside. Be sure to draw the curtains at night. Darkness and low temperatures will zap all that daylight heat gain. To keep the bill low, install a programmable thermostat. Chances are, there are many hours throughout the day where your house is empty. Programming a lower temperature for those hours may save you money in the long run.
The Best Way To Keep Your House Warm
Although the aforementioned methods are great for keeping your house warm in the Winter months, without a doubt, the best way to keep your house from freezing solid with frigid winter temperatures is… (you will hate us for this one…) to buy a house somewhere where there aren’t any freezing temperatures! RealEstateAgent.com can give you access to thousands of listings in warm, tropical Florida real estate market, so you can spend next February in flip flops and sunglasses rather than knee-deep in snow!
