There’s one sure way to keep warm during the winter: just spike the thermostat whenever you start to feel cold. That assumes, of course, that you don’t mind paying sky-high utility bills.

For people who do mind, they sometimes wrack their brains trying to come up with new and creative ways to keep warm without raising the thermostat.

Our advice? Stop “wracking” for just a few minutes and see if any of the following tips for reducing your home heating costs apply to you:

  • Wear multiple layers of clothes – When you’re trying to reduce your heating bills, walking around the house with a tee-shirt and no footwear probably isn’t your best move. Instead, not only dress for the cold, but wear multiple layers to block out the cold and internalize the heat.
  • Run a ceiling fan in reverse – How many people do you know who run their ceiling fans in the winter? Well, we respectfully suggest you become one of them. That’s because, a ceiling fan running counter-clockwise will push rising heat back down where it does you the most good. You might even want to install an extra fan or two for more of a whole-house effect.
  • Cover bare floors with area rugs – This may seem counter-intuitive but, even though heat rises, try placing your bare feet on a wood or tiled floor and what are you going to feel? Cold! The simple cure is to cover one or more of those areas with a posh area rug, even if it’s just for the winter.
  • Add an extra zone – If your indoor temperatures are controlled by a single thermostat but you tend to spend most of your time in one or two areas of your home, you’re wasting money by also fully heating unoccupied rooms. And that’s all the reason you need to consider adding one or more zones – it’s a move sure to save you money.

Of course, just because you relieve your furnace of some of the burden for keeping you warm, that doesn’t mean its efficiency can’t be improved. That’s why we urge you to contact Burton today to schedule our furnace preventive maintenance service. The cleaner and better maintained, your furnace, the less you’ll pay to heat your home.