The furnace is about to run nearly every day until spring. Most of us judge it by one thing, the number on the thermostat.
The thermostat only tells you what the furnace was asked to do. It says nothing about how much of that heat made it to the rooms.
Below: what leaky ducts cost and how to seal the ones you can reach, a few-dollar faucet swap, the quarter-inch rule for a chest freezer, and where to look for a rebate before your next appliance buy.
Reply and tell us: which bill surprised you most last winter? We read every one.
What Leaky Ducts Actually Cost You
Image: The Home Wire
If your home has forced-air heat, the furnace warms the air and a network of metal ducts carries it to every room. Some of that air never gets there.
Per ENERGY STAR, in a typical house about 20 to 30 percent of the air moving through the ducts is lost to leaks, holes and loose connections. It warms the attic, the crawl space or the inside of a wall, and the furnace runs longer to make up for it.
Here's the money. ENERGY STAR says almost half of a typical household's energy bill goes to heating and cooling, more than $900 a year. It also says leaky ducts can cut a system's efficiency by as much as 20 percent. Put those together and a badly leaking system can be costing you up to about $180 a year. Most homes land somewhere below that, but it adds up every winter.
The leaks you can fix yourself are on the ducts you can see: in an unfinished basement, the attic, a crawl space or the garage.
Find the joints. Look at the seams, the elbows, and where each duct meets a vent in the floor, wall or ceiling. ENERGY STAR calls those vent connections a common spot for leaks.
Turn the furnace fan on at the thermostat.
Run your hand along each seam. You'll feel air on the leaky ones.
Wipe each leaky spot clean and dry.
Seal it with foil tape or mastic, pressing the tape flat. More on the tape below.
Insulate any ducts you can reach in the attic, crawl space or garage.
Notice what's missing from that list. Cloth duct tape is the one tape ENERGY STAR says never to use on ducts, because it doesn't last.
Ducts hidden in walls are a job for a heating contractor, and most of them repair ductwork. Per ENERGY STAR, leaky ducts can also pull exhaust gases like carbon monoxide back into the house instead of out of it, so if you have a gas furnace or water heater, make sure there's a working CO alarm nearby.
The Few-Dollar Faucet Swap
Image: The Home Wire
The small screen screwed into the tip of your bathroom faucet is called an aerator. It mixes air into the stream, and it also sets how much water comes out.
A standard bathroom faucet flows at 2.2 gallons a minute. Per the EPA's WaterSense program, faucets and aerators that carry its label use 1.5 gallons a minute at most.
That swap saves the average family about 700 gallons of water a year, which is about 45 showers' worth. Because some of that is hot water, it also saves energy. The EPA puts it at enough to run a hair dryer 17 minutes a day for a year.
Unscrew the aerator from the faucet tip by hand. If it's stuck, wrap it in a rag first so you don't scratch the finish.
Take it with you to the hardware store, so you get the right size and thread.
Buy one with the WaterSense label, rated 1.5 gallons a minute or less. The EPA says they can cost as little as a few dollars.
Screw the new one on by hand.
This one's fully renter-friendly. Keep the old aerator in a drawer and put it back when you move out.
The Quarter-Inch Rule for Your Chest Freezer
Image: The Home Wire
If there's a chest freezer in your basement or garage, it's probably the manual-defrost kind. That's a good thing, with one catch.
Per ENERGY STAR, manual-defrost freezers use half the energy of automatic-defrost models. But you only get that saving if you actually defrost it. Frost on the walls acts like insulation on the wrong side, and the compressor has to work harder to keep the food cold.
ENERGY STAR's line is simple: don't let the frost get thicker than one-quarter of an inch. That's about the thickness of a pencil.
If yours is past that, do it before the freezer fills up for the holidays:
Unplug it and move the food into coolers.
Lay towels in the bottom and leave the lid open.
Let the frost melt. Don't chip at it with a knife, which can puncture the walls.
Wipe it dry, plug it back in and close the lid.
Reload once it's cold again. ENERGY STAR says to keep a freezer at 0 F.
For scale, ENERGY STAR puts a certified chest freezer at about $30 a year to run. A frosted-over one costs more than it should.
Check for a Rebate Before You Buy
Prime Day started this morning, and Black Friday is seven weeks out. If an appliance, a thermostat or a water heater is on your list, there's one search to run first.
The ENERGY STAR Rebate Finder is free. You type in your ZIP code and it lists rebates and special offers near you on certified products, from refrigerators and dishwashers to heating and cooling equipment, water heaters and lighting.
Rebates are local, which is the whole point. Two people buying the same dishwasher in different towns can pay very different prices once a rebate comes off.
Run your ZIP code through the Rebate Finder.
Check your utility's website too. Some utilities run their own offers, and some offer home energy assessments.
Read the fine print before you buy. Many rebates want the receipt, the model number and an application within a set window.
The offers it lists are for ENERGY STAR certified models, so write down the model number before you shop, not after. It takes about two minutes, and it's free.
A sale price and a rebate can stack. A rebate you never claimed is the most common way to leave money behind.
The $20 Roll That Seals the Ducts
The tape matters more than people think, because the wrong one fails right where you can't see it.
The one we'd point you to is Nashua 324A Premium Cold Weather Foil Tape, at $20.69 for a 2.5-inch by 60-yard roll.
What makes it the right tape is the UL 181 listing printed on it. It carries both UL 181A-P and UL 181B-FX.
TLDR: UL 181 is the safety standard for tapes that seal ductwork. A listed tape has been tested for things like flame, mold, heat and pressure. Cloth duct tape hasn't.
It's aluminum foil with an acrylic adhesive, rated from minus 25 F to 325 F, so it holds in a freezing garage and on a hot supply duct. That's on the product listing.
Now the math. If leaky ducts are costing you even a tenth of that $180, the roll pays for itself in a little over a year.
We haven't taped a house with this exact roll. The specs and price come from Edmondson Supply's listing.
Two things to know. It's sold by a trade supply house, not a big-box store, so check the shipping before you check out. And 60 yards is far more than most homes need, so it's a roll to split with a neighbor.
Links in this post may be affiliate links. The Home Wire may earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you.
One quick tap
Have you ever actually looked at your home's ductwork?
That's Tuesday: the air your ducts lose, a faucet swap, the freezer's quarter inch, and one search before you buy.
If you only do one thing this week, go look at the ducts in your basement with the fan on.
Forward this to whoever in your house keeps turning the thermostat up.
See you tomorrow.
The Home Wire
This post may contain affiliate links. The Home Wire may earn a commission if you purchase through our links, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products we believe earn their place in your home.
30 N. Gould St. Suite R Sheridan, WY 82801, United States