Your mortgage, property tax, and homeowner’s insurance aren’t the only ongoing costs you’ll incur when you leap into homeownership. Aside from regular maintenance and repairs, you’ll also be responsible for electric, gas, and water bills.
Depending on the size of your home, you may be in for a real surprise during hot summers or frigid winters when your first heating or cooling bill arrives. If you’d like to avoid forking over thousands of dollars per year on your utilities, it’s essential to ensure the house you’re purchasing is energy efficient. Here’s what to look for.
Must-Haves for Energy Efficiency
While some things, like energy-efficient appliances, are nice to have and can save you a few dollars on your utility bills, your windows, insulation, HVAC system, and roof are non-negotiable if you want an energy-efficient home.
1. Properly Fitting Double or Triple-Pane Windows
According to the Department of Energy, your windows are responsible for as much as 30% of your heating loss and gain. When windows aren’t airtight or lack proper insulative benefits, they can allow heat to escape during winter and hot air to enter during summer, making your HVAC system work extra hard.
You should be able to run your hand around the window frame and not feel any type of draft. Double-pane windows further aid efficiency since they have two panes of glass separated by a spacer and sometimes filled with an insulating gas. Triple pane windows take things a step further, featuring three sheets of glass separated by spacers and optionally filled with an insulative gas like argon or another thermal window filling.
2. Adequate Insulation
Insulation prevents the air in your home from escaping. So, if your HVAC system is working hard to pump out heat, but you don’t have insulation, the hot air will escape through the…