i just recently bought an older home; it was recently remodeled; it has 15ft ceilings in every room. I am having trouble keeping it cool in summer but I died when I saw my heating bills in the winter; $450+ electricity bills! any tips will be greatly appreciated
Edited 4/19/2007 2:41 pm ET by eli1978
Replies
Congratulations on your new home!
Rather than spend a lot of time and money guessing about why your utility bills are so high, you might want to start by having a home energy audit -- it's always easier to fix a problem when you know what it is!
You can start by checking with your utility company -- many of them do simple energy audits at little or no charge. For a more thorough job, you'd probably have to hire an independent professional, but I think it would be well worth it. It will help you pinpoint the major problems (poor insulation? leaky windows?) so that you can put your money where it counts and hopefully bring those bills down.
To get you started, here's a few resources.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/energy_audits/index.cfm/mytopic=11160
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_improvement.hm_improvement_audits
Hope this helps!!
Deb
One more energy-audit resource to check out -- if you want to do it yourself:
http://hes.lbl.gov/
Good luck! Let us know how it all works out...