Lowering Your Heating Bills with Energy-Efficient Ideas

Winters are long and cold in Canada and heating you home can get very expensive over the winter months. When building a home there are a variety of things you can do to ensure energy efficiency and cost savings for the future. Using these simple tips also helps to preserve the environment because less energy is needed to heat your home.

Although it's standard to build your home with one-foot exterior walls, consider building with two-foot exterior walls instead. Why? Because by doubling the walls' thickness and using extensive insulation in between, you can have better climate control inside your house. And in addition, before you build your inside wall, you build the vapor barrier over the insulation. This means that electrical plugs and wiring won't pierce the vapor barrier -- and that means you won't have cold air leaking in through your electrical outlets even on the coldest winter days.

Having thicker double walls also allows you to eliminate any thermal bridges from the outside of your home. A thermal bridge is anywhere cold from the outside is transmitted through the walls to the inside, for example when the studs in the outer wall touch the studs in the inner wall. A simple way to eliminate thermal bridges is to make sure that the inner and outer wall studs are offset from each other and touch insulation not the other wall.

Even as you invest so much into the walls of your home so as to be more energy-efficient, you also want to make sure you're not going to lose heat through your windows. There are many energy-efficient windows on the market today, and all are very competitively priced. Make sure the windows you use are well insulated, because the edges of window can be weak spots where heat can easily pass through miniscule cracks, thereby causing energy loss and greater energy costs for you.

When you're building, this is the time you should pay attention to installing new windows properly. Before you put up the inner wall, surround the window you're going to install and any gaps with a lot of insulation. One of the ways to fill in the gaps very effectively is to rip the insulation into smaller pieces. Make sure to properly fill in the gaps and holes, or you'll have leaks that will cost you energy efficiency and comfort in the future. You'll need to have a vapor barrier for best energy efficiency, and therefore an airtight seal. Caulking can also be used to get this if insulation doesn't do the job all by itself.

Whether or not you want a house with a furnace, why not take advantage of passive solar heat? Large windows that face the sun are stylish and allow the suns heat to fill your home. Free heating! On the hot days using a simple window covering will prevent any excess heat from entering your home. Large windows facing towards the winter sun in conjunction with thick walls give you substantial control over the heat in your home cost-free. In the winter a warm home will stay warm and in the summer you can keep your house cool.

Besides solar and other "passive" energy sources for heat, you'll likely also need another heat source. One of the means by which you can do this is through a furnace. Even if you do install a furnace, though, you'll likely run it much less frequently than you would in a non-energy-efficient home. You'll see that having an energy-efficient home is going to save quite a lot of money in this way. If you're particularly adventurous, you may not want to install a furnace at all and instead may wish to go with a wood-burning stove. As long as your home as well insulated and has 2-foot walls, and as long as your windows are properly installed, a wood burning stove should comfortably heat your home for about the same cost over an entire winter as a single month's heating bill would be in a traditional, non-energy-efficient home. You may also wish to consider geothermal heating or in floor heating instead of a furnace installation.

Using these few simple ideas when building your home can add up to substantial savings over the life of your home as well as make a big difference to the environment.