Weatherizing Your Home For Electricity Savings in Texas

Electricity Articles

Weatherizing Your Home For Electricity Savings in Texas Whether you're keeping your home warm during a Vermont winter or keeping your home cool during a Dallas summer, climate control represents a big portion of your monthly utility bills. Over the past few decades, appliance manufacturers have increased the efficiency of furnaces and air conditioners. When you're shopping for new equipment, the ENERGY STAR ratings help you make an educated decision with respect to energy cost. Unfortunately, you have to go the extra mile to reduce your energy bills. When you weatherize your home, you plug up all of the drafts that let the comfortable air out. This also reduces the stress on your climate control system and keeps more money in your pocket, as well.

Weatherizing your home incorporates a wide range of activities, each with their own level of difficulty and effectiveness. Here are some chores you can add to your own list to increase the energy efficiency of your home:

Add weatherstripping to your home's windows and doors. Weatherstripping is a rubber barrier that fills the gaps between, say, the door and the jamb. This is easy to install; you simply press the adhesive side of the rubber against the door or window and cut it to fit.
Caulk shut any air leaks in your home. The Federal Citizen Information Center points out some common locations of leaks: dryer vents, outdoor water faucets, cable TV access holes and door and window frames.
Roll out another layer of insulation in your home's attic. Fiberglass insulation is relatively inexpensive and is easy to work with. It is also soft and thick, preventing the outside elements from changing the climate inside your living space.
Install double-pane windows that are filled with a stable gas that prevents heat transfer from the outside to the inside. (And vice versa.) If you can't afford these kind of windows, keep your storm windows closed whenever possible.
Wrap insulation around the hot water pipes running from your water heater. If they're not insulated, the heat in the water goes into the pipes, and it is then released into the air if there isn't a blanket to keep it in.
Insulate the floor between the first floor and the basement. The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that the chill of the basement can easily reduce the temperature of your nice and toasty living room if the barrier between them is porous.

If you're too busy to do all of this work on your own, there are companies that provide energy auditing services. A technician brings a thermal imaging camera to your home to figure out where the hot or cool air in your home is escaping. After assessing your unique situation, you and the company work out a weatherization plan in which you choose which kinds of weatherization you want done to your home. CNET's Green Tech division points out another big advantage of this kind of work: weatherization is a growing industry that is good for the environment, and whose workers cannot be outsourced.

Homeowners may also find help from the government when attempting to reduce their monthly energy bills. The United States Department of Energy offers a Weatherization Assistance Program that provides low-income family with services that reduce their monthly energy use. The DOE claims to have helped 6.2 million families, which has saved countless tons of fossil fuels in turn. Part of this funding comes courtesy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. (That's the Stimulus Bill we've all heard so much about.)

State governments have gotten in on the act, too. The Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs offers their own Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). The Texas WAP receives $13 million in funding from the federal government, and saves each new weatherized household an average of $413 each year in utility costs. Best of all, that insulation and weatherstripping increases the efficiency of the home for fifteen to twenty years. As always, there are challenges; the Dallas News makes notes of difficulties the state has had in spending money from the Stimulus Bill and other federal sources. One assumes that the situation will improve in time.

Even though some aspects of weatherizing your home can be somewhat unpleasant, they are a necessary part of home ownership. (Indeed, no one wants to crawl around in the attic.) In addition to the satisfaction of a job well done, however, you get to open up the monthly utility bill and imagine what you'll do with the money you've saved.