Winter is a bad time to try and save money. That’s because if you’re suffering through the worst winter your city has seen in a decade, you probably aren’t going to be thinking about things like the price of your electric or gas bill. You’re going to be thinking about how you can stop the shivering. You’re going to be wondering if your feet will ever be warm again. No, your electricity usage definitely won’t be at the forefront of your mind.
At least until your monthly bill arrives, at which point your blood pressure will probably skyrocket. This may make you feel warmer, actually, but not in a good way. There’s got to be a happy medium, right? You have to be able to find a way to keep your house warm without spending half of your paycheck on heating bills.
Make sure nothing’s wrong
If your electric bill has doubled since last month, it’s not a bad idea to call your electric company and (politely) ask if there’s been a mistake. It’s possible that your city went through a major ice storm that really sent your electric meter soaring, but if there haven’t been any extreme weather events, then someone may have goofed up. Companies are a lot like consumers: obsessed with efficiency. More and more businesses are using devices like the Abest Meter to test things like flow and energy, thus ensuring they’re getting the most bang for their buck. Electric companies are also trying to cut back on sending out metermen in favor of having meters report usage numbers automatically, but that doesn’t mean the system is perfect. Mistakes can and will happen as long as humans are involved with any stage of the process.
Don’t be rude or accuse your utility company of trying to screw you over. That won’t get you anywhere. If you want to ask them to recheck your usage levels, that’s fine. But if the numbers come back the same, you’ll have to explore other avenues.
Check your home heating system
It’s possible that your home heating system is the problem here. Your boiler or furnace may be having issues operating properly. If the equipment has to run twice as hard as normal just to provide you with the same level of heat, then that’s something you need to get checked out as soon as possible. Ask around for recommendations (because the search for residential heating services in Morris County, NJ, is going to look different than the search for residential heating services in Morris County, KS).
The problem could also lie with your house. If there’s a door that won’t quite close or a window that’s always open a crack, that means you may be losing heat to the outdoors, which in turn means your heating system will have to work even harder to keep your house at a comfortable temperature. The sooner you identify the issue, the sooner you can get it fixed, and that means more time to sip hot cocoa while you relax under a pile of blankets on the couch.
