Even though we made it through November without snow, that doesn’t mean it’s not right around the corner – and with it, freezing cold temperatures. Our heater installation company has heard plenty of heating myths over the years, so we thought we’d bust some of them:
1. A fire is a good way to warm your home
While we can’t argue that a fire is a great way to stay warm, it’s actually not a very efficient way to warm your whole house. When you open the flue in your fireplace, you essentially open up a vacuum for air to escape. While this escape is great for smoke and gasses, it’s not great for the rest of the warm air in your home. Many people find that when they have a fire, the other rooms in their home are colder, and that’s because the flue is sending all of your heat up and out of the chimney.
2. Ceiling fans are only good in the summer
Ceiling fans are a great way to cool down in the heat of the summer, but they can also be used in the winter to circulate warm air. Warm air rises, and if you have an adjustment switch on your fan that reverses the way the blades spin, you can reverse them in the winter. They’ll push the warm air that’s collected on the ceiling down to the rest of the room.
3. Space heaters are better than a gas heating system
Instead of heating their whole house with a gas heating system, some homeowners opt to heat certain rooms with space heaters instead. While the idea is that heating less space means costing less money, that’s not always the case. Electricity can actually cost anywhere from three to five times more than natural gas, so it’s often more efficient to simply use your gas heating system to warm your home instead of space heaters.
4. Keeping your home the same temperature is better than adjusting it
At Oliver, we love programmable thermostats because they can lower the temperature of your home when you’re not there and raise it back up when you are. Some people don’t believe that this helps save energy, however, and instead, keep their home at one temperature all day. When your heater clicks on less often, you’ll use less energy, which means keeping your home cooler for long periods of time can help save you money.
5. Closing off vents will lower your energy bill
Many homeowners believe that if they close off HVAC vents in rooms they don’t use, they’ll use less heat and lower their energy bill. However, your heater doesn’t adjust the amount of heat it pumps out based on closed vents. If you close off certain “release” areas in your home, you’ll throw the pressure load off balance and actually make your heater work harder. This, in turn, will cost you more money.
6. Cranking the heat will warm your home faster
If you come back from a trip and your home is cold, your first thought may be to crank up the heat to 85 in order to warm it up faster. However, heaters don’t work like that. Instead of having “high” and “low” settings, they really only have an “on” and “off” setting. Once you turn your heat on, it will take just as long to reach 78 if you set it to 85 than it would if you just set it to 78.
