Better Home Club

Want to put more money in your pocket? You can up to 10% or more on your energy bill by eliminating as many the air leaks in your home as possible. During the summer warm air leaks into your home and during the winter leaks out of your home, wasting a good portion of your energy dollars. One of the fastest and highest payback dollar-saving jobs you can do around the house is to caulk, seal, and weather-strip all seams, cracks, and openings to the outside air.

Here are a few tips to help you get started:

1. Check your home for air tightness. On a windy day, hold a lit incense stick next to locations of potential air paths to the outside, like windows, doors, electrical boxes, plumbing fixtures, electrical outlets, and ceiling fixtures. If the smoke blows horizontally, you have found an air leak that can use weatherstripping, sealing, or caulking.

2. Caulk and seal gaps where plumbing, ducting, or electrical wiring penetrate through exterior walls, floors and ceilings.

3. Install rubber gaskets in back of exterior wall outlets and switch plates.

4. Dirty, grimy spots on your insulation can indicate holes where air leaks into and out of your house. Look underneath the insulation batting for holes and gaps and seal them by stapling sheets of plastic over the holes, then caulk the edges of the plastic.

5. In winter, when the fireplace is not being used, keep the flue damper closed tightly. Chimneys are created to allow smoky air to escape, so unless the flue is closed, warm air escapes, and with it, your heating budget.

6. Installing storm windows over single-pane windows or replacing them with double-pane windows is a major savings not to be overlooked. Windows can make up 10% to 25% of your heating bill. Adding storm windows can cut the heat loss in half.

How do you find cheap homes? There are too many ways to list here, but there are five basic principles to learn. Understand these, and you can save thousands of dollars on your next home.

Cheap Homes Are In Cheap Towns

Yes, there are still beautiful towns in this country where you can see a good movie, put the kids in a good school, go shopping, enjoy nearby natural beauty, and buy homes for under fifty thousand dollars. My wife and I bought a beautiful little home with hardwood floors, a full carpeted basement, and a garage, in a pretty mountain town, for $17,500, in 2002. You can still get homes for under $35,000 there.

What you can’t get very easily there, is a good job. These towns with the cheapest homes usually have a bad job situation. They are great places to retire to, or to move to if you have a business or profession that isn’t location-dependent. Writers and internet entrepreneurs are beginning to discover them. Of course, if you’ve already determined where you’ll be living, or need a town with high-paying jobs, you can skip this idea.

Some Homes Are Just Cheaper

Another way to save when buying a home is to find a less expensive alternative that still fits your needs. This can mean buying in the inexpensive parts of town, or buying the inexpensive types of homes. Don’t set your mind on one type of home or one neighborhood before you know what all the alternatives are.

This doesn’t mean buying a cheap dump to save money, or buying in a dangerous part of town. It is more about a philosophy of defining your true needs so you can find the least expensive way to meet them. You may be surprised at what is available for less.

You Can Offer Less

No matter what you buy, you can save a lot if you know a few basic negotiating techniques. Is it worth a few minutes reading and an hour or two of practice to save thousands of dollars? Anyone can learn a few simple negotiating techniques that are used by the masters of negotiation. Somewhere, every day, people get cheap homes come through good negotiating.

Financing Can Make Homes Cheaper

You can pay the full asking price on a home and still spend thousands less than another person might. It isn’t just price, but financing too that makes a home affordable. Pay a lower interest rate, and you can save many thousands of dollars. You can pay low or no loan fees, avoid mortgage insurance, save on appraisals, and more.

Save Money On Everything Else

Start learning the insider secrets to saving money at each step in the home buying process. You can learn tricks like how to use a walk-through inspection list to present with your low offer. You can learn ways to get cheaper inspections, pay lower taxes, pay less for homeowners insurance, and save on closing costs. I even financed a home without an appraisal once. There is more to buying cheap homes than just getting a low price.

Ceiling Fans – A Money Saving Way To Cool Your Home

Ceiling fans first originated in hot, tropical countries with somewhat poor economies. While more wealthy countries have removed ceiling fans with the advent of air conditioning, the ceiling fan of yesteryear is making an important comeback. This is no doubt due to the continuing escalating cost of utilities and the expense of maintaining a full house air conditioning system. People are finally understanding that comfort doesn’t need to mean cold and in the process they’re able to save significantly on the monthly electric bills. How much savings of course depends on local utility cost and the amount of time an air conditioning system is in operation. Typically though, a 2-3 dollar per DAY savings is not unreasonable if a household can use ceiling fans a major part of the day instead of running the air conditioning system.

Although ceiling fans were in widespread use in the early 1900’s, they gave way to the air conditioning systems of today. A ceiling fan however is much more than an air movement machine. They’re beautiful and can be ordered to perfectly fit into any decor or room of your home. Ceiling fans have a central motor with three to five blades attached. this unit is then mounted to the ceiling. Depending on the height of the ceiling, the unit can be close mounted, with the motor almost touching the ceiling or on a matching decorator bar to allow the unit to hang down into the room a little more if the ceiling height is greater than the typical 8 feet. The motor drives the blades of the ceiling fans which move the air around. Air movement naturally cools people and makes them comfortable without resorting to the brute force of removing moisture and cooling through a compressor air conditioning unit.

Many people wrongly assume that a ceiling fan is only good in the summer. Actually most fans built today have a reverse switch installed. This allows the fan to either pull air from the floor area or push air from the ceiling. So in summer, you would want air movement from low to high but in winter, with hot air rising, you would naturally want the warmer air at the ceiling to be pushed down to warm the whole room. Ceiling fans also are a great to use anywhere there’s people or living spaces including bedrooms, living and family rooms and even out on the backyard patio or deck.

So in the end, a ceiling fan can be a great way to add a nice decorating touch to your home while saving big dollars on that monthly electric bill. It’s not unusual to save the price of the ceiling fan in the first month, just on the electric bill alone. With your home more open, natural ventilation will make it more pleasant and enjoyable both inside and out.

With too many brands powered with each ones aggressive marketing strategies conquering the market, the hapless consumer is terribly confused in his selection of a new energy efficient home appliance. If you are more concerned about your hard earned money, then the choice becomes a difficult task indeed. Ultimately, quite often, you end up buying the cheapest item available in the market.

The cost of owning a home appliance has three basic components viz, the initial purchase price, the cost of repairs & maintenance and the cost involved in operating it. To determine how much one will spend over the lifetime of the home appliance, one has to necessarily take cognizance of all these costs. The appliance with the lowest initial purchase price, or even the one with the best repair record, need not necessarily be the one that costs the least to operate.

The more energy efficient an appliance is, the less it costs to run, and the lower your utility bills. Using less energy is good for the environment too and you can reduce air pollution and help conserve natural resources. Even if two models look the same from the outside, less-obvious inside features can mean a big difference in your monthly utility bills. Most of the differences are on the inside – in the motors, compressors, pumps, valves, gaskets and seals, or in electronic sensors that make appliances “smarter.”

Tips for shopping

1. Know where to shop.

Appliance outlets, electronics stores and local retailers stock different brands and models of home appliances. Dealers also sell appliances through print catalogs and the Internet. Do a little bit of market research first before resorting to real shopping.

2. Select the size and style.

Take the measurement of the appliance to make sure that your new purchase will fit into the available space with you. Make sure that you have enough room to open the door or lid fully and enough clearance for ventilation. This will help you in narrowing down your choices as you settle on the best capacity and style.

3. Compare the performance of different brands and models.

Glance through the manufacturer’s product literature. Decide which features are important to you. Do not hesitate to ask questions about how the different models operate, their repair history, safety features, extent of energy consumption etc. Manufacturers are expected to use standard test procedures to prove the energy use and efficiency of their products.

4. Estimate how much the appliance will cost to operate.

The more energy an appliance uses, the more it will cost to run. The difference on your monthly utility bill can be significant, especially when the life of the appliance runs over 10 years. Even if the purchase price is higher, you could save money over the long run by choosing a model that’s more energy efficient.

5. Ask about special energy efficiency offers.

Enquire with the salesperson about the availability of cash rebates, low-interest loans or other incentive programs for energy-efficient product purchases and explore the possibility of qualifying for such incentives.