How Taking a Closer Look at My Thermostat Reduced My Heating Bills

I live in a northern state (Wisconsin) and, as a result of that, when winter rolls around, I have to find room in my budget for our monthly heating bill.

In the past, this wasn’t that big of a deal. I have a furnace that uses natural gas and I just set myself up for our utility company’s budget program; keeping my bill the same regardless of how much I used. However, the company recently did away with that program and, as a result, I found it necessary to reduce my usage in an effort to avoid a huge bill.

I’m not a home improvement expert. In fact, I’m really not that handy with tools at all. But, I did take some steps such as covering my windows with plastic, putting something in front of the gap under my door, etc. However, even with these steps, I really did not see much of a usage reduction. That is, until I took a closer look at my thermostat.

To be honest with you, this pretty much happened by accident. I have someone come in every year to service my furnace and, when they do that, they always check out the thermostat. So, figuring they are the expert, I pretty much just took their word for it when they said everything was operating just fine. What ended up changing my indifference was my kids. I’m not sure what they did exactly. But, they somehow managed to break the old dial thermostat. It still worked. But, it wouldn’t stay in one spot. We would turn it down to 70 at night, for example. And, when we woke up, it would be at 78.

Since I’m not handy enough to fix something like that and I didn’t want to pay someone to do it, I decided to simply replace the existing thermostat with a new digital one (something I was able to do with a little help from my brother). And, when I did that, I discovered why my usage was so high.

First of all, and I should have realized this before, the old thermostat simply was not accurate. I’m not exactly sure when that started (and I think it was before my kids broke it). But, when we were replacing it, my brother mentioned it seemed to be much hotter than the thermostat was saying it was. And, sure enough, when we took a break and left a thermometer there for a bit, we discovered it was off by about 6 degrees. So, when we had it set on 72, it was really set on 78.

I’m sure putting in a more accurate thermostat helped. But, what really made a difference on our bill was what we did next; moved it to a different room.

I have a one-story town house with no basement and it is essentially split into two different parts. The front part of the house consists of our kitchen, living room and a utility room (currently being turned into a playroom for the kids). The back part of the house has the three bedrooms and the bathroom. The furnace is in the middle.

One thing my wife and I have always noticed is the front part of the house is typically colder than the back part. In fact, on any given winter’s day, it is as much as a 4 or 5 degree difference.

Prior to the change, the thermostat was in the back part of the house. This was OK at night, when we turned the temperature down before going to bed. But, during the day and evening, when we were spending most of our time in the living room and kitchen, we were usually cold and, just to get a comfortable temperature, we would have to set the thermostat higher; 74 or 75 degrees to get it to 70 in the living room.

Since we were replacing the thermostat anyway and realized it wouldn’t be too much of a headache to swing the wire (since the furnace was in the middle of the house), we moved it to the front part of the house. Now the temperature can be set at and left at 70 during the day and evening and we are comfortable in the living room without it being extremely hot in the bedrooms.

As a result of these moves, my heating costs are significantly less; by as much as $50 and even less than they were when I was on a budget plan.

If you are a homeowner who constantly has high heating bills and can’t seem to reduce them, I recommend doing what I did and taking a close look at your thermostat; both making sure it is accurate and determining if it is in the best location in your house. This simple step could save you a fortune.


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