The summer is finally here. Goodbye cold weather & heating bills! Hello shorts & air conditioning bills. You can almost hear the electric bill rising over the gentle hum of your home’s two air conditioners. Do you sometimes feel that you can never get ahead?

A recent study showed that the average household spends $1,400 annually on energy. A very good deal of that, say energy conservationists, is money wasted. Cutting back on energy use does not mean you really need to be living in a cave, trying to read by the light of the fire. These days, you can assist the environment & your pocketbook without any major sacrifices.

According to the pages of popular science magazines such as National Geographic & Popular Science, there a number of things you can do this summer to cut your home energy costs while helping the environment. By taking some of these relatively simple steps, you can cut your energy bills by one-third or more.

  1. Upgrade Your Thermostat ? You can cut your energy costs by investing in a programmable thermostat. These allow you to cool 8) your home at different temperatures for specific times of the day. By example, you can program your AC to turn down, during the day, when no one is home & then crank it up again thirty minutes before you return. Installing a programmable thermostat costs around $100 to $150 but the energy savings can be substantial. You can easily cut your heating & cooling bills by ten percent annually just by turning your thermostat back ten percent to fifteen percent for 8 hours a day.

  2. Go Green ?Planting just three shady trees around your house not just can cut $100 to $250 off your annual heating & cooling costs, but will also make your yard kook more attractive, too. Leafy trees shield the house from direct sunlight, keeping temperatures down, while still permitting sun light to hit your house during the winter months.

  3. Keep It Clean – Keeping your air-conditioning unit clean & in peak performance is another big money saver. It can sometimes be a good idea :idea: to bring your AC unit in for a professional tune up. Air-conditioning filters should generally be checked every month or so to see if they need to be cleaned or replaced. This is pretty easy & easily can be done on your own. Another help-ful tip is to dust off your refrigerator condenser coils. This will make it run more efficiently.

  4. Buy a Better Bulb – Compact fluorescent light bulbs require 75% less energy than traditional, incandescent light bulbs, & they last up to ten times longer. These bulbs now come in smaller sizes that can fit into any lamp, & a wider color spectrum than they used to. By replacing just four well-used 100-watt incandescent bulbs with equivalent 23-watt fluorescents will save you $108 over three years.

  5. Be a Fan of Energy – As many as 73% of homes have ceiling fans, but not virtually everyone uses theirs. You should start. A ceiling fan can balance out a room’s temperature, allowing you to turn down the AC & still feel cool.

  6. Get Unplugged – Even if all of your home electronics are turned off, many continue to use energy. The main culprits are your televisions, VCRs, DVD players, stereos, phones & microwave ovens. Pretty much anything that has a clock, a remote control or an on/off light falls into this category. In actual fact, idle TVs & VCRs cost consumers $1 billion annually, or $30 per household.

  7. Fight Leaks ? That cooled air you are already paying for may be leaking right out of your house. Leaky windows & ducts are two ways that cool 8) air can be lost, which makes your air conditioner work even harder. Having your ducts properly sealed & insulated could save you as much as ten percent in energy costs. So if you think your duct system is faulty, attempt to have it checked out by an HVAC, heating- ventilation & air-conditioning, technician.

  8. Be a Savvy Shopper – By far the biggest way to save is to invest in energy-efficient appliances. Right. When shopping around, look for the Energy Star label. There’re more than 35 product categories that qualify.

For more information on topics such as this, check out Magsforless at www.magsforless.com. They sell a variety of magazine subscriptions on home improvement with hundreds of other cheap magazines on any subject you choose. With an extensive list of magazine titles to select from & the cheapest prices available, they stand out from the competition.