Brrr. A cold snap can challenge even the most hard-working home heating system. And the older, and more poorly-insulated and air-sealed your home is, the harder it is to keep up with the cold weather.

The solution? For year round comfort, you can't beat home weatherization. Weatherization can make your home snug and comfortable and cut your heating costs by up to 25 percent, or around $150 dollars a year.

Even if you can't weatherize, you can cut down on home heating costs with these simple tips:

• Get your family together and agree to set the thermostat at a level that is comfortable. 
• Then, leave the thermostat alone! Constantly nudging it up and down ends up costing you money.
• Assign one person in the family to be responsible for turning down the thermostat at night. (Unless you have an "intelligent" thermostat, this doesn't apply to heat pumps. They are more efficient if they are set at one setting and left there, year round.)
• If everyone is leaving the house for more than one hour, turn the thermostat down to 55 degrees F. 
• When it's time to warm the house up, set the thermostat to your lowest comfort setting. Setting it higher won't heat the house any faster, and it will likely cost you extra in wasted energy.
• Let the heat flow freely. Move furniture and throw rugs away from floor registers or baseboard heaters. Be careful not to block baseboard or wall heaters with drapes.
• Check your furnace filter every month during heating season and replace the filter when it is coated with dust.
• Vacuum the dust off the heating fins on baseboard heaters once a month.
• Check the duct work at each floor register. If debris or dirt have fallen in, vacuum the ducts out.
• When the sun is shining, open the drapes to let the sunshine warm the room. When the sun isn't shining, shut the drapes to trap the heat inside.

For more information, contact Sharon, Klickitat PUD's Energy Services Specialist. You can call her at 509-773-7622 or toll-free at 800-548-8357.