Improving your home energy efficiency is a worthy and admirable goal. You can help reduce your impact on the environment while saving money with savvy decision making. However, the up-front investment for some efficiency upgrades is substantial, so always do your due diligence before you find electrician services and commit to buy. Read on to clear up some misconceptions about home efficiency and make sure your money is being put to good use.

You Don't Have to Sacrifice Your Comfort: It's true that the best way to conserve energy is to use less of it with strategies like turning off the lights or keeping the temperature lower in the winter. But that doesn't mean you have to sit shivering in the dark. The key to efficiency is to get the same amount of utility for less energy input. That means replacing old incandescent bulbs with LED versions, or investing in better HVAC technology like a smart thermostat. That way, you can keep your home environment tuned to your comfort while reducing consumption at the same time.

Don't Rush into a Big Ticket Item: The most dramatic way you can upgrade your efficiency is with a brand new heating or cooling system. Equipment efficiency has improved drastically in recent years, and new technologies like geothermal heat pumps, biomass boilers and solar panels can all reduce your bills dramatically. However, they aren't risk free. You’ll often face a significant up-front investment when you find electrician services for these installations, and the actual savings that you will realize can vary widely based on factors like the price of fuel. You could also see a loss if you make a big purchase and decide to sell your home soon after; there’s no guarantee you’ll recoup the cost in the selling price.

That's not to say you should avoid large efficiency investments – just look before your leap. You will get the best return from these items if you already need to replace outdated equipment anyway, and if you plan to stay in your home for many years. To reduce some of the upfront costs, you can also look for federal tax credits that refund up to one third of what you spend, as well as options to lease solar panels so you don't have to put any money down at all.

Don't Forget the Insulation: On the other side of the coin, new HVAC technologies won't do you much good if all that treated air just leaks into the outdoors. One of the biggest ways you can improve your efficiency is by plugging leaks and upgrading your insulation, which is typically a much cheaper fix. With a leak detector, some caulk and spray foam insulation, you can seal up your house with minimal investment, saving you money in the short term as well as preparing the house to get greater efficiency out of newer technologies.

For more straight shooting about how to get the most value for your efficiency investments, find an electrician to conduct an energy audit on your house. Your local Mister Sparky® is always available to help!

Security cameras provide constant monitoring of your home even when you are not there. Unless you are a superhero, there’s no way you can be two places at once. It’s practically impossible. Security cameras are a great investment that can be your eyes even when you cannot be there in person. You don’t have to install a full security system, as it can be very expensive and intrusive, but installing a couple of cameras in your home can go a long way. Check out these reasons to install security cameras in your home this summer!

Keep an Eye on Your Children

When you leave your kids by themselves, you don’t have control of where they go or what will happen to them. There’s always that fear that something terrible will happen to your kids while you are away. Although that scenario is not likely, it’s good to have a few cameras around just in case. Security cameras can help you watch your children when playing in the front yard or near the street, and this can alert them to strangers approaching or children wandering too close to the street.

You rely on babysitters and trust to take care of your children properly. During an evening out, you can remotely access internally mounted security cameras to monitor how your babysitter interacts with your children. If there should be any issues, you can know about them immediately if you are monitoring in real time, or you can watch taped footage later to ensure that the babysitter is acting in their best interests when watching your children.

Dissuade Possible Vandals and Thieves

Even if you live in the safest neighborhood in Virginia, there are those few criminals that are always around and tend to target the least prepared and most vulnerable amongst us. Security cameras are an excellent way for your home to be on guard against these risks. Those who are looking to break into a home often look for security cameras and observe the property prior to acting. they should see security cameras positioned around the home, it is more than likely that they simply move along to another home that is not as well protected.

Security cameras have an added benefit of protection with the ability to capture a break in or vandal and save the images as evidence. Sometimes security cameras are in place with the added protection of burglar alarms to ensure your home is safe all around. This can be very helpful to police agencies by providing them the evidence they need to pursue individuals who commit crimes in your home.

Monitor Your Home Remotely

If you’re taking a long vacation and are worried about leaving your home unattended for several days, consider installing a few security cameras. Security cameras give you the ability to monitor places like a remote vacation property or your home when you are not there. This allows you to be notified quickly if there is something wrong with your remote home or property and you can alert the local authorities to the trouble. That way, you have peace of mind and can relax and enjoy your vacation!

Many appliances use electricity even when they aren’t powered on. This property is known as standby power, which is used to perform functions that must operate continuously. Energy saving measures often include unplugging electrical devices to eliminate the cost of keeping them in standby mode. This strategy requires you to estimate the cost of standby power for each appliance since it may not be worthwhile to unplug a device when it is not in use.

A year is about 8,766 hours long, so a month has an average duration of about 730.5 hours. This means you can multiply an appliance’s standby power in watts by 0.73 to obtain the kilowatts of energy it consumes each month, assuming it is always plugged in. A typical cost of electricity in the United States is 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. You can therefore estimate the standby cost of an appliance in dollars by multiplying its standby power consumption in watts by 0.0731.