Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons via Halfrain

When a home leaks energy, the result is typically higher energy costs and causing your central heat and air to work harder than it should. For this reason, many homeowners actively seek for practical ways to improve the energy efficiency of their home. Keeping more of your home's heat and air inside will lead to lower energy costs. In the interest of helping homeowners make their home more energy efficient, here are four excellent tips on how to keep energy leaks from eating into your wallet:

Create a Draft Snake

The area at the base of a door leading outside the home is a major issue for a lot of home owners. This is more noticeable in the winter time, when a stream of cold air is pouring in through the open space between the door and the floor. One action a homeowner can take is to create a draft-snake to place in front of the base of their front or back door to prevent air flow. Making a draft-snake is relatively easy and fun. Simply sew up a long tunnel shaped piece of material, fill it with some type of cloth or foam padding, and sew up the end. The draft-snake should be long enough by measure to cover the entire base of the door it will be blocking. Some people even go an extra step and make their draft-snake look like a stuffed snake or other type of stuffed animal for decorative purposes.

Energy Loss through Sliding Glass Doors

Another major source of massive energy loss is energy loss that occurs through a sliding glass door. Because the outside of the home is usually at a different temperature than the inside of the home, the glass becomes an effective medium of energy transfer. Since the surface of the glass is relatively large by area, this allows for more energy transfer than a small window. When the frame of a sliding glass door is metal, this will allow heat loss through conduction during the winter months. One action a home owner can take to remedy this problem is to switch out the aluminum frame for a fiberglass frame, thus eliminating a significant amount of conductive heat loss. To prevent even further thermal loss, another step a home owner can take is to use a thicker insulated curtain to cover the sliding glass door with. Using a reflective material to reflect incoming sunlight back outside during the summer months will help prevent external heating from making your home too warm as well.

Sealing Cracks and Replacing Old Windows

It is inevitable that cracks will form around aging window frames and sills. To prevent energy from leaking through these cracks, it is possible to purchase calking agents to help fill and cover any cracks around a window. Installing seals at closing points on an old window is another action a home owner can take to help keep leaks from being a problem. If a home owner wants to update their home, installing quality energy efficient windows is another way to improve your homes energy efficiency. Newer frames and seals around the closure points of windows will prevent energy leakage for years to come. Installing double pained glazed windows will allow for a thermal gap between the two pains that prevents energy loss from occurring. Professionals who offer Winter Park, FL shutters suggest that you use lighter window treatments as well, in order to keep the home cool and energy efficient.

Insulation

Insulation is an important key to preventing a home from experiencing energy loss. Poorly insulated areas, such as walls, the attic and a crawl space will inevitably create situations for major energy loss to occur. In fact, since heat rises, an attic that is not well insulated will allow heat to escape through the roof at an alarming rate; consequently, applying a layer of insulation in an attic is one of the most cost effective methods for preventing heat energy loss in winter.

Energy has numerous opportunities to leak out of your home; however, by taking a few simple steps, you can significantly reduce the amount of energy loss your home is experiencing. By reducing energy loss, you will begin to see that your heating and cooling bills will reduce significantly. If you have difficulty identifying ways energy is leaking from your home, it may be necessary to contact a professional who specializes in inspecting and troubleshooting energy leak issues associated with residential homes.