While the price of oil is at its lowest since 2004 and propane is significantly more affordable than past years, home heating costs still make people shiver. In Maine, experts say that filling your tank to the brim and kicking back is not the most cost effective way to keep your house and family warm this winter.
So what’s a homeowner to do?
“There continues to be very strong demand for efficiency projects, including energy assessments with air sealing, insulation and ductless heat pumps,” said Dana Fischer, residential program manager for Efficiency Maine Trust, an Augusta-based nonprofit organization working on affordable energy solutions.
To lower heating costs and increase year-round comfort, Fischer and a bevy of heating experts in Maine suggest upgrading heating systems, plugging holes and insulate.
“The first step is to get insulation, that’s the thermal envelop, the shell that separates you from outside,” said Tom Gocze, an energy buff, who hosts a weekly radio show, “Hot and Cold,” on WVOM. “It’s not as sexy as other advancements, but if you put a heat pump into an old drafty house, you will lose heat.”
The next step is to rethink what it means to go green.
“One can lower their carbon footprint by making decisions to use local materials and labor,” Fisher said.
In other words, heat local.
Because Maine is the most forested state in the country, an entire firewood and wood pellet manufacturing industry has sprung up.
Pellet and wood stoves, furnaces and boilers are a “stable and economical heating choice but also keep heating dollars in the local economy,” Fischer said.
Just as the buy local and eat local credo resonates, using a forestry-based fuel matters.
“That way we are not at the mercy of people from other places. I’d rather give it to someone who maybe likes me,” Gocze said.
According to Efficiency Maine, more than 500 pellet boilers were installed in Maine in the last two years, more than the rest of New England and New York combined.
Gocze, who also is the owner of American Solartechnics, a Searsport manufacturer of modular heat storage tanks for solar and wood heating systems, is always thinking outside the boiler.
“My goal is to try to do it better and less expensively, with an eye toward DIY-ers,” he said.
Many people are changing over to mini-split heat pumps, which cost about $3,000.
“It’s an elegant system that’s revolutionary,” said Gocze, who is impressed with the improved technology.
Powered electronically or via solar, the air-source pumps minimize electric consumption by exchanging energy with ambient air.
The pumps do not involve combustion, thereby reducing emissions and particulate levels in the environment.
“What makes heat pumps green and getting greener beyond efficiency has to do with the renewable mix of electricity sources in Maine and the ability of homeowners to add solar panels to their own roof or join a solar farm to offset electrical consumption over the course of the year,” Fischer said.
Another long-term heat-saving measure Gocze recommends is updating your wood burning stove if it was built before 1980.
“The newer ones are very clean, waste less energy and make for a good neighbor,” which means less smoke lingering in the area, he said.
Amid the advancements, a no-frills option remains. One of the best ways to warm up a room on the cheap can be found at the hardware store or could be lurking in your attic.
If you have a spot need, use a space heater, Gocze said.
“It’s electric heat that goes right into the room. It’s 100 percent efficient,” he said.
Purchased for as little as $30, it can quickly heat up a bathroom in an old farm house.
“Turn it on for 20 minutes, and shut it off before you get in shower,” he suggested, noting that warming up a room in such small bursts will cost you about 15 cents.
“It’s very easy to use, you plug it in, it’s all basic. And you don’t have to turn on the central heating system to heat a room for short-term use,” he said.