How Does Ventilation Affect Your Energy Bill?

August 09, 2021

Attic Ventilation

Proper attic ventilation goes a long way towards regulating your home temperatures and reducing energy costs.  

Though heat rises, it won’t make a difference if your home has an attic with poor ventilation.

In the summer, the temperatures in your attic soar to over 120° F. Vents push the hot air up and out of your home, keeping the cool air inside.

Though insulation in the attic does help create a barrier to contain the hot air, without good ventilation, this air will eventually spill out into the rest of your home, causing you to crank up your air conditioner and your energy use to skyrocket.

Unbalanced or Closed Vents

An uneven balance of vents can also contribute to higher energy costs. Too many vents and your home will be freezing in the winters. Too little and your home will burn up in the summers.

Closing off or blocking your vents can also contribute to higher bills. We’ve all messed with the vents in our rooms to try and control the airflow but doing so hinders the ventilation.

Homes have two types of vents: a return vent and a supply vent. Return vents take the warm air in your home and use chilled coils to draw heat from it, delivering the chilled air back into your home.

If you close it, the chilled coils can’t cool the air, so your home feels warmer. As a result, you have to hike up the thermostat to counteract it.

The supply vent is the one that supplies your room with cool air and the one you've most likely messed with in the past to change the airflow direction.

If you close or block this vent, the air is forced through the ductwork until it finds an escape through another open vent. Over time, the air is unevenly distributed, and the pressure in certain parts of the system is too much for the ducts to handle. This creates air leaks that cause your AC to work twice as hard to deliver enough air to cool your home, which, in turn, leads to higher energy bills.

How to Reduce Costs

Making sure your home is properly vented is a great way to save money, but there are also a couple of easy tricks to reduce your energy bills.

Besides keeping all your home vents open and making sure your attic is well ventilated, you can also reduce cooling expenses in the summer by leaving your windows open on cooler nights to allow a natural flow of fresh air.  

If you have questions about improving your home's ventilation or want to find ways to reduce your energy costs, give us a call today!