$aving Money on HVAC-the WRONG way !!

When most homeowners think about reducing their heating costs, they look for "free" heat. Some of them find seemingly ingenious ways to seal sources of cold drafts. But in the process, they forget to think about oxygen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, indoor air contaminants, what they are breathing and where it came from (or didn't come from), and the overall cause and effect of their action.

"Lets close the registers in unoccupied rooms"

This reduces air volume through the furnace, elevates heat exchanger temperatures, reduces heat transfer into the home, elevates vent temperatures and increases heat losses up the chimney, causes furnace short cycling and shortens component life. There are no savings here, only additional losses and costs. Better to add a zoning system, or use the lowest fan speed for continuous fan operation to keep the temperature more evenly distributed. This may allow for a one or two degree reduction in the thermostat setting. For older furnaces a relay may be needed to operate low speed on a "G" demand, but bring on high speed for a "Y" demand.

"Lets shut off some radiators"

Now we're looking at some possible broken pipes, boiler short cycling, more frequent hot surface igniter failures, and possible increased maintenance schedules. Again we can add some zoning fir more effective temperature control.An old trick with cast iron radiation and large water content boilers was to use two stage heat thermostats . Stage one started the circulator, stage two started the burner. This was particularly effective with zoned systems.

"I stopped up those pipes to the outdoors on my furnace room"

Serious health hazard. Furnaces, boilers, water heaters, gas driers need a constant supply of fresh air. Vent systems need a constant supply of ventilation air. There are codes to comply with, and there are also the laws pf physics to work with. What if we connected that combustion air supply to the return and added a small supply register in the supply trunk in the equipment room and latched on the lowest fan speed for continuous fan operation? We just provided a continuous (pre-heated during the heat cycle) air supply to the furnace room. And don't forget the balancing damper (locked in place) in the outdoor air supply duct. Wouldn't this satisfy NFGC ANSI Z223.1-5.3.4 "Specially Engineered Systems"? (Allow a liberal 50 cfm for combustion air supply and venting in the equipment room for every 100,000 BTU'S input.)

"I use my fireplace to heat the family room"

And that old fireplace just sucks the heat out of the house right up that big ole masonry chimney so the furnace runs longer. Then when it's bedtime and there are still glowing embers in the fireplace and we lose draft, the house can suddenly breath again and suck make up air down the chimney, right across that bed of glowing embers. That bed of embers produces phenomenal amounts of CO. Serious health hazard. Fireplace inserts and free-standing stoves that are sealed from the living space and get all of their combustion air from outdoors are OK.