Thermostats

Thermostats are the controls that tell your heating and cooling equipment when to turn on and off.  Slight changes to their settings can mean some of the quickest and easiest savings to be found in many homes.  As a rule-of-thumb, you can save about 2 percent of your heating costs for every degree you reduce your temperature.  So you'd save about 4 percent by going from 72 to 70°F.  Try to set it back a few degrees when you are home by dressing warmly, then push it back 5-10 degrees at night when it is practically unnoticeable and easily done by an automatic setback thermostat. A 10-degree setback for 8 hours should produce around a 7 percent savings on your heating costs.  Clock thermostats are readily available in home improvement stores and usually don't require much more than a screwdriver to install. They'll produce more savings if you program them to set the temperature back if you are out of the home at predictable times each day.