We all want to live in more comfortable homes. While the options for optimizing home comfort may seem endless, there are certain technologies you can install and minor home adjustments that you can make to ensure optimum comfort at home – and ensure that you’re meeting your energy efficiency goals.
Here are four tips for how you can bring together Energy Efficiency and comfort in your home.
1. Smart Thermostats
Got one of those homes that always seems too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer? The smart thermostat is the first step to optimizing your home temperature settings in all seasons.
By connecting to your home internet, smart thermostats allow you to control your home temperature via smartphone apps. You’re then able to ensure that the home that you return to after a long day at work is optimized for comfort – rather than having to wait 20 minutes for the baseboard heaters to start heating the space.
Most smart thermostats come pre-programmed with systems of artificial intelligence that allow for predictive heating and cooling preferences, which adjust as the thermostat learns how your home temperature adjusts throughout the day.
2. Draftproofing
Draftproofing is old-school, analogue technology – but is nevertheless an absolute necessity in ensuring optimal energy efficiency and comfort in the cold seasons.
Gaps and cracks in windows can be difficult to spot. Draftproofing – or ‘weather stripping’ as it is sometimes known’ – is the best form of preventative maintenance against wasteful air leakage. And it’s not particularly difficult, either. Often, all it takes is trips of foam weather stripping, and measuring tape. Then, in an afternoon, you can ensure that windowsills and crevices around sliding doors aren’t unnecessarily wasting that hard-earned heat.
Want an easy way to cut down on energy cost and ensure that your home is as comfortable as possible? All it takes is a little draftproofing.
3. LED Light Bulbs
LED light bulbs have come a long way since their unreliable and gaudy early-days. Gone are the glaring, aggressively-bright hues, and here is a true revolution in home lighting and energy efficiency.
Modern LED’s are the wave of the present in home lighting. For starters, Energy-saving LED lights (like those from ENERGY STAR) are known to be at least 75% more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs. To that end, LED bulbs are proven to last up to 15 years – significantly longer than the lifespan of an incandescent bulb. With prices on LED bulbs coming down, the energy benefits pay for themselves.
To that end, we’re starting to see an abundance of LED light bulbs on the market – meaning that options for hue and colouring are in strong supply. Whether you’re looking for the comfort of a warm white, the openness of cool white, or the vibrancy of daylight bulbs, you’re going to have plenty of options. And as lighting is an often-underappreciated element of comfort in the home, the dual combination of energy efficiency and comfort options make LED light bulbs a no-brainer when you consider your next mini-renovation overhaul
4. Insulating Water Pipes
Hate waiting for the hot water in your shower to gather up? The easiest solution is the insulation of hot water pipes – an often-overlooked boost to both comfort and energy efficiency in the home.
While most homeowners largely ignore their hot water pipes until there’s an unavoidable problem, preventative maintenance in the form of insulation can be one of the most efficient ways to cut heating cost and provide enhanced comfort.
What is involved in insulating hot water pipes? It’s simple: first, identify where your piping is located, and determine how much of the piping is accessible for insulation. Then, purchase simple piping insulation from a hardware store, along with heavy-duty tape or adhesive. Wipe down the pipes to ensure they are largely free of dirt or grease, and then apply the pipe insulator. Reinforce the insulator with tape and, voila! You’ll have hot water in the shower faster.
And it’s not just in the shower that you’ll feel the benefit. A significant amount of hot water energy is lost in the distribution process, which insulation virtually eliminates. To that end, insulating pipes also prevents cracking in cold temperatures – a costly maintenance load that homeowners are seldom prepared for.
Although it might seem like a minor maintenance move, insulating your water pipes is one of the most beneficial – and minimally expensive – home improvements that you can make.
Got questions about any of these home improvement projects? Lightspark can help identify ways to optimize your energy efficiency and home comfort today. Reach out and we’ll provide you with a Lightspark Score through our Lightspark Engage system. Then, we’ll help link you up with home maintenance solutions like those we’ve shared here; solutions that are tailored to your home’s unique needs.
