Thanksgiving: Higher Grocery Bills & Lower Heating Costs
The holidays are here! Thanksgiving guests-to-be are likely dreaming of plates packed to the brim with delicious food and precious time shared with family and friends. In the meantime, this year’s hosts are likely sprinting to the finish line, shopping for the (potentially costliest) grocery haul of the season, cleaning the house, and game-planning oven musical chairs to somehow cook everything to perfection by dinner time.
Oh yes, the holidays are a wonderful time of year – but they can be a bit spendy! The good news? You may be able to counterbalance your hefty grocery bill with lower heating costs this Thanksgiving.
To help you achieve equilibrium, we’ve put together a list of tips that might help you maintain a balanced budget and make for happier guests:
Ensure your guests are tantalized by the smells that waft from your kitchen and not distracted by a musty, old air filter. In addition to highlighting the artistry in the oven, a new filter helps your HVAC unit to operate at peak efficiency, which means you’ll use less energy to heat a chilly house.
2. Keep the warm air in
Once you’ve gathered your friends and family indoors, keep them there with games, movies, or delegating food-prep tasks to avoid precious heat escaping into a cold afternoon.
3. Let your oven work for you
All that baking, roasting, broiling and boiling you’re doing to create Thanksgiving dinner is generating a lot of heat. You’ll feel it as you peek into the oven or lean over a hot stove, whisking and working away. Once the oven has served its purpose, keep it propped open for some bonus heat! Because you’ll be producing a fair amount of heat from your kitchen, feel empowered to…
4. Turn down the thermostat!
This might sound alarming – but fear not! Your feverous cooking coupled with the body heat produced by a house full of guests will make for a warmer home than usual. Set your thermostat accordingly and you’ll actually spend less on heating than you would have on any given Thursday.
Need a little help prepping for the holiday season? The experts at Columbia Heating and Cooling are happy to lend a hand where we can and make sure your HVAC system is ready to work almost as hard as you are for your guests. Give us a call today to schedule a routine tune-up for your HVAC!