I was right.
For a while, my wife and I had big problems with our utility bills, and we had gone from having two salaries to one after the birth of our son. I opted to stay at home and take care of myself instead of paying for daycare, and my wife was supportive of the idea and continued to work, but it got harder to cover all the bills each month since there wasn’t extra income coming in, and though she never said it, I knew she wished we had some extra money coming in or a way to cut back. The best I could do was find out how to make our home more energy-efficient. The first thing I looked into was the central heating and cooling unit. We needed lots of heat to warm the house since we lived in a cold area, so that meant the A/C was on all day, every day, which consumed lots of energy. After speaking to an A/C expert, I found out some things we could do to make the Heating and Air Conditioning energy-efficient. One, we changed the old thermostat with a new one that could regulate the temperature in the room. The quality A/C had sensors that could detect when the home was hot enough and reduce its output. That made a big difference and helped keep the house at a nice humidity level in the winter. Another step I took was to ask an Heating and Air Conditioning expert to come and perform some repair on the heating unit. It had been a while since the last servicing, and I suspected that was why the a/c was consuming lots of energy. I was right. When the A/C professional opened it up, the air filter was clogged with dust and debris. As a result, it needed lots of extra energy to heat the house each day. But, after cleaning and fixing some parts, it made less noise which was a big bonus for us.