Warm up your home and keep heating costs down

Ed Perratore

Even if you love cold weather, you want it toasty inside your home. A properly maintained furnace or boiler can give you a warm feeling in your wallet because heating your home accounts for about 40 percent of your utility bills. And with all of the time you’ll be spending indoors, it’s also important to take care of things you can’t see or feel, such as carbon monoxide and radon. Here’s what you need to know:

The sad reality of heating equipment is that it tends to fail when it’s working the hardest—on the coldest days. The best way to prevent that is to have your furnace or boiler checked every year by a heating contractor. That can also alert you to any potential problems and keep your system working at peak efficiency, saving you money as well as headaches. Then replace your furnace filter monthly during the heating season.

If your furnace is on its last legs, start researching a replacement now. Because the latest models are more efficient, you can save up to $40 for every $100 you spend on fuel compared with older models. So that pricey new model will pay for itself over time.

But there’s an exception to the newer-is-cheaper rule. Think twice about buying a gas furnace from York, which broke down about twice as often as other brands, according to a survey of readers by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. Models from American Standard, Carrier, and Trane fared better with our readers, who told us about 21,132 natural-gas furnaces they bought. Reliability especially matters with furnaces because when they failed, 77 percent needed significant work. Most of those stopped working completely.

Tip: If you can, wait to get bids for a new furnace or boiler until the summer. Heating contractors aren’t as busy when it’s boiling outside, and they may offer a better deal.

If you merely want to take the chill off one room, a space heater can help. The best models we’ve tested can heat an entire room or just you as you sit in a chair. They’re unlikely to save you money on your heating bills, though, because electricity is the most expensive way to heat. But they’re handy especially for unheated spaces, such as a sunroom.

For small rooms. If your room is 80 square feet or smaller, the models below will heat the space quickly. All except the Holmes have multiple fan speeds and a tip-over safety switch. The Dyson can oscillate and be tipped back or forward, and has a remote control. The Holmes has a ground-fault circuit interrupter plug intended to prevent electric shock, including in moist areas. It’s marketed as a bathroom heater—though the manual warns against using the heater near water.

For larger rooms. For spaces up to 200 square feet, these models did best in our tests. All have remote controls. The Honeywell and Duraflame have wheels and a timer.

About 2,500 people die each year in residential fires and about an additional 500 from carbon monoxide poisoning. But protecting yourself isn’t as simple as buying a combo smoke/CO alarm. Those we’ve tested have not been good at detecting all types of fire. So you need separate smoke and CO alarms.

Look for smoke alarms that use ionization and photoelectric sensors. Those are effective at detecting flaming and smoldering fires. Get one for each bedroom and at least one for each level, including the attic and basement. Alarms that use just one technology are great at detecting one type of fire and are poor at detecting the other kind. Replace smoke alarms every 10 years. The Kidde PI9010 replaces the dual-sensor smoke alarm that aced our tests.

Carbon monoxide is colorless and odorless, so there’s no way to know that you’re being poisoned. When any fuel-burning appliance isn’t working right, it may emit CO. Place a CO detector on every living level, though not in the kitchen or near a cooking appliance, in the garage, or near the furnace or water heater. Also avoid breezy areas around fans, vents, doors, and windows, where fresh air can cause a misleadingly low reading. Replace them every five to seven years. The First Alert OneLink CO511B, $65; First Alert CO615, $30; and Kidde Nighthawk KN-COPP-3, $45, all did well in our tests.

Like CO, radon is odorless and colorless. It’s also the top cause of lung cancer after smoking. Long-term test kits give you a more accurate idea of average radon levels than short-term tests do because levels can vary from day to day. Winter is a good time to test because doors and windows are likely to be closed. The $28 Accustar Long Term Alpha Track Test Kit AT-100 was accurate and reliable in our tests. Place the detector on the lowest level of your home.

—Ed Perratore (@EdPerratore on Twitter)



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