Baby it's cold outside

Today marked the first official snow fall of the season! It snowed overnight, through the morning, into the afternoon, and the flakes are still falling as I type this tonight. The ground is still fairly warm, so only a few inches are sticking, but still it makes for a beautiful scene outside our window. This is a view from our kitchen (note the difference a couple of months makes):


As temperatures dip into the 20s, our impending heating bill has been increasingly on our minds. We've never had a gas furnace, so we're not sure what to expect, but we're bracing for the worst. To help lower our utility costs, we're doing the following:

1. Turn down the thermostat. Most of the time you can find ours set somewhere between 68-72 degrees, depending on the time of day and whether or not we're home.
   
2. Dress in layers. Because we don't live in a sauna, we are sure to have a sweater or light blanket near by whenever we're feeling a little chilly. This prevents the urge to crank up the heat.
   
3. Close off unused rooms. We have one guest bedroom that is rarely used, so we see no point in heating it all the time. The floor vent in that room is closed off, and the door remains shut.
   
4. Insulation. We live in a brick house built in the late 1940s, so there isn't a whole lot we can do about our walls, but we can insulate our pipes. Taylor wrapped the hot water pipes in our basement in foam so that they would keep their heat longer.
   
5. Seal drafty doors and windows. We were lucky our house had all new windows when we moved in, but we recently discovered one drafty old door in our kitchen. Taylor lined the door with this clear, gel-like "Seal 'n Peel" stuff, which as its name suggests, seals the door for the winter and can easily be peeled away in the spring.
   

We'll have to let you know how well these tips work when we get our first big heating bill this month. Until then, we do have one more strategy for keeping warm this winter.

6. Keep the floor vents clear to maximize air flow. That includes all furniture, rugs, and other obstructive objects: