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One of the biggest energy guzzlers in your home (besides, most likely, your thermal envelope, which lets expensive conditioned air escape through air leaks and poorly insulated walls) is the refrigerator. Upgrading it, believe it or not, can save you a bundle of money in the long run, as long as you don't simply put your old fridge down…

What got me going on making changes to my house was last year's oil prices. I had this terrible sense of insecurity when prices shot up, and I was dependent upon oil for heat. For me, homeland security is a big pile of wood in the back. I looked into the most likely culprits for heat loss, and had a professional energy audit done. Some of what…

Winter's coming. It's already heating season. So how do you save money on heating costs? You've got to own your heat. Simple as that. You've paid for all that warm air already, so it doesn't make much sense to waste it now.

A simple enough premise - it's the application that gets complicated. We (and most building science experts)…

At EnergyCircle we're repeatedly extolling the virtues of LED lighting.  Eons more efficient than anything else on the market, it looks good, and is what everyone will be doing.  There is still a lot of uncertainty regarding what's available right now, and rightly so.  LEDs are on the cutting edge of lighting technology, and they're being…

On cold winter days, a ray of sun streaming into your house can be most welcome - a free source of heat. But what about in the summer, when those rays of sun and other, less-evident solar heat, seep into our already too-hot houses and become a costly nuisance? Well, what happens is that you lose money. But using landscaping (namely by planting…

We're always on the lookout for clever, easy ways to make your home more comfortable, less drafty and more energy efficient. A chimney balloon is one of these. 

Here's the scoop: a lot of homes have chimneys that are rarely used. Maybe you have a fire in the fireplace once in a while, but typically it's reserved for special occasions.…