Ceiling fans help save energy by helping you stay comfortable when you raise the temperature setting on your thermostat. If you can get the A/C to work less and still feel cool as the air moves across your body, you're saving money. So when you're not home, you might as well just have the thermostat set higher and not run the fans.

Set your thermostat to a comfortable level. In the colder months, it is recommended to set the thermostat to 68 degrees when home, or back to 58 degrees when sleeping or when the house is unoccupied for more than four hours. In warmer months, it is recommended to set the thermostat to 78 degrees when at home, and then set it 5 to 10 degrees warmer then you're out of the house or asleep.

A programmable thermostat can change these settings automatically

An attic fan helps, but is most economical when you have poor insulation in the attic. The idea is to rid the attic of heat and prevent if from radiating into the conditioned space.

If your attic is well ventilated and insulated then an attic fan will still save money, but over a very long period of time.  Instead, check caulking around windows and doors. Also, make sure you are doing all you can to stop heat from entering your home, such as window coverings and carefully placed shade trees and bushes.

It is not really true that small appliances, ceiling fans and lights use more power restarting than leaving them on. If you measured the current going into many electrical appliances you would see a spike. But it's for such a brief moment that the amount of power used is insignificant. If you're leaving the room for more than 15-20 minutes then turn them off.

The fact is both technologies do a good job of preventing your home from heating up too much in the summer. And in fact when comparing them in most cases it's too close to call.

Theoretically the solar screens might have a slight advantage. First, you can take them off in the winter, letting sun in your windows and adding heat to your home when you need it. They prevent heat from reaching the window   Also in the summer the screens shade the window frames, which can otherwise transfer heat to the house...

But the efficiency of either system depends a lot on the particular situation. If the windows are new they are likely vinyl-clad framed, and already does a good job of blocking heat transfer. So the screens wouldn't have as much of an advantage.

Just make sure you use a licensed contractor. If you use film, make sure it's metallic coating, not dyed film and that the film is for flat glass not auto glass. If you use solar screens make sure they're installed with a one-half inch air space between the screen and the window and that the material is at least 0.25 mill thick.

Another consideration has nothing to do with energy. If you live in a neighborhood with a home owner's association, check to see what the rules say before installing solar screens or window film.

Check out the following links for more information on energy and windows: 

First you need to ensure your air conditioner is properly maintained. Make sure it has the proper level of coolant. Clear all debris and dirt away from the unit.  Call your local air conditioner technician to do a proper check of your system each season.

As for operating the air conditioner, unless it is an expensive zoned system (used in larger homes and commercial buildings) make sure all interior doors are left open. When you close those doors the air coming out of the vents in that room has no place to go. As a result, back-pressure builds up inside the duct system and the fan motor does not work as efficiently.

When operating the air conditioner, close all exterior doors and windows. Also shade the exterior windows with drapes, blinds or curtains and if possible have trees and bushes that shade the windows from the direct sun.

Another good bit of advice is to not use heat-generating appliances like dishwashers, stoves, ovens, or clothes dryers in the mid-day. These appliances add more heat to the house and the air conditioner must work to remove that heat from the house.

Of course I'm sure you know that fans help. Fans allow you to feel cooler while setting the air conditioner to a higher temperature, allowing it to work less. Fans use far less power than air conditioning systems.

Finally, I would suggest using a programmable thermostat. It allows you to set the thermostat in such a way so that the air conditioner works less when you are not home or asleep.

In the winter, the fans should be pulling up, which is counter clockwise. The easy way to remember is if the switch is up the fan pulls up, if it's down, it blows down.

Put the fan on the lowest setting to help distribute heated air but so you don't feel a breeze.  If you can set the thermostat to a cooler setting, by using the fans then it will save the money. But if you don't change the way you use the heater it won't save any money.

There are three methods, each increasing more accuracy: 

The first is an easy one, but doesn't tell you that much. First, make sure it's not windy outside and go around closing all your exterior doors and windows. Then open all interior doors and all the heating/air conditioning vents.  Then, make sure the air conditioning is running and go to your front door and crack it open just a bit. If you feel air rushing in, you have a leak in the ducts that send cool air to all your rooms. If you feel air rushing out it means you have a leak in the vents that supply air to your system.  Of course that's not very accurate, but it will tell you if you have a leak and in what area the leak is in.

Next you might want to grab a flashlight, some gloves and get into the attic and check out the ducts for yourself. Often there are large breaks in the duct system that are easily spotted.

Finally you can hire a company to do a blower test. There are various systems that can locate the leaks. While I can't recommend any particular brand or contractor a little research should help you locate one.

It is most efficient to set them within 2 degrees of each other, such as 78-80 degrees when you're home and awake, and 5-10 degrees warmer when you're away or asleep.

Depending on the location of your thermostat and the lay out of your home, you may find that the upstairs thermostat is causing your A/C to constantly run.  Sometimes this happens because warm air is rising and tripping the A/C. The hall where the thermostat will be a bit warmer but all the rooms upstairs are freezing.   In that case you can set the thermostat upstairs a little higher, say 2 to 4 degrees to compensate.

You can add insulation to the garage doors, or add some ventilation to the garage. However, without adding some kind of cooling you will never make your garage cooler than the ambient air temperature, which basically is the outdoor temperature in the shade.

If you are going to spend a lot of time in the garage working on your cars or a hobby, you might consider using a swamp cooler as an affordable way of making the garage more comfortable. However, even though swamp coolers are cheaper to buy and run than air conditioners, they are still more expensive than not having anything at all.

The fan in the HVAC system is just that, a fan. It moves air around and that's about it. When set to Auto, it turns on when your thermostat tells the air conditioner or heater than your home is cooler or warmer than what you want. It then moves the heated or cooled air around your home.

When set to On it just moves air around. Now that moving air may help you feel cooler allowing you to set the thermostat to a higher setting in the summer and possibly save you some cash. However, ceiling fans and floor fans save you more money because you can have them on only in the rooms you're using. Not in all the rooms like the HVAC air handler's fan.

SEER stands for Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating.  It is a measure of efficiency, or how much cooling you get for every watt of power.  The most efficient air conditioner will always be the one with the highest SEER number. 

However, while the highest SEER number will be the most efficient it doesn't mean you will get back the money you invested from the savings the unit will produce.

In other words how much money will you save on each power bill for say a 12 SEER versus a 10 SEER unit?  Of course I can't tell you how much it will save in your specific case. I don't know how much you would use it or what your home is like. So I can't tell you how much more money an efficient unit will save you compared to a less efficient one.

What I can tell you is you can expect to save 7 percent to 9 percent more on your cooling bill with each digit in SEER you go up. For example with an 11 SEER unit your cooling bill will be 7 percent to 9 percent lower than a 10 SEER.

Now that is just 7 percent to 9 percent of the portion of your electric bill that goes to pay for your air conditioner. And typically in a Las Vegas summer air conditioning costs account for 60 percent of a typical residential power bill.

It's almost impossible to give you a monthly number because so much about a person's bill depends on a lot of factors. Much depends on the house of course-what kind of building practices are used, the size of the home, the orientation (if the house faces north/south or east west)-and a lot depends on your energy habits. If you have a lot of kids or other relatives living with you, any energy-intensive hobbies, etc. But what I can give you is a very rough idea.

For every SEER upgrade (say 10-11) you will see roughly a 7 to 9 percent reduction in the amount of power used by your air conditioner. But remember, the reduction only happens in the summer when you use the air conditioner. That seems obvious but it's important in figuring out how long it will take to make back your money you spent on the upgrade from energy savings.

For most people in Las Vegas, the air conditioning is roughly 60-70 percent of their summer electric bills. In your case you could then expect to see that number (the 60-70 % of the summer bill) month's number decrease by 14 to 18 percent.

The number you'll need is the difference between a normal bill and one that's reduced by 14 to 18 percent. Then you would add the amount for June, July, August and September together to get your yearly savings. Now you'll be able to figure out how long it would take to get back the money you spent for the upgrade.

The best thing would be if you could finance the cost of the upgrades into the mortgage. Then it wouldn't be a matter of how long it would take to recoup your investment. Instead you would be looking for the monthly savings (the four months of summer savings spread throughout the year) to be greater than the portion of your monthly mortgage that pays for the upgrade.

There are many comparisons.  Some communities, for aesthetic reasons have CC&R's that prohibit things like A/C units on the roof.  Also, from a thermal stand point a roof mounted unit is operating under the harshest conditions.  Whereas a ground mount might be shaded.   Units that are on the roof are called packaged equipment.  The "package" contains all the controls, 2 fan & fan motors, condenser, compressor, evaporator, etc...in one metal box.   The ground mounted units are what is typically know as split systems.   The outdoor ground mount typically houses the compressor, condenser, a condenser fan and controls.  The box that no one sees from the outside is usually in an attic, garage, or even a hall way closet.  This box is called the air handler and it houses the evaporator coil and evaporator fan and some controls.   Connecting the two "boxes" of a split system is the refrigerant supply and return lines.  Typically, greater efficiencies can be found among the split equipment, probably because the heat exchange components can be larger and are not in as harsh condition as the package equipment.

Comparing the impact of low-e glass to radiant barrier  - generally the windows will save you more money, especially if a lot of your windows face south or west. Radiant barriers do work but they have more impact on older homes with poor attic insulation and bad attic ventilation.

Are you paying for either of these options out-of-pocket or are you financing them?

It's an important consideration because the monthly cost of these improvements could be relatively small if you finance them. And if each month the amount of money you save on your energy bill is larger than the monthly cost of the improvements then you're ahead of the game.

However, if you pay for these two investments out of pocket then it's an entirely different game and you'll probably need to live in the house for a long time to make back your investment. But it's really hard to know exactly without getting an engineer and doing a study.

To get exact numbers you would need to know how much energy the house might use without the improvements and then with them. That means knowing much energy you use and also knowing how much of the sun's energy comes in your house and how much that raises your bill and also by how much the low-e windows will reduce the sun. The same goes for the radiant barrier. Even if you have a neighbor with the exact same model of house right next to yours to compared to, you still need to account for their living habits, the condition they keep their equipment in, etc., etc.

So it's a guess basically but you can be sure it will take a long time, at a minimum 5-7 years to make back your out of pocket costs for both of these things. Remember that's only a guess at a minimum number. And it's probably too optimistic.

The reason is that is for the most part these two investments will save you money in the summer during high bill season. They work by reducing the demand for air conditioning. And for most customers air conditioning is 60-70 % of their summer bills. Now obviously I'm not saying that summer bills are insignificant. Instead what I'm trying to get across is that your two additions will reduce a portion of your power bill for only four months out of the year. That lengthens the time it will take to make back the money you paid for them from reduced energy bills.

You could be better off spending that money on landscaping, getting trees that are older and shade your house sooner than smaller younger trees. The great thing about that is you have to have landscaping anyway so the trees do double duty, making your house look better and helping keep it cool in the summer.

Again remember, if you can finance these improvements then you can calculate the portion of your mortgage payment that is going to pay for them. There's no guarantee. But the chances are good that your monthly energy savings (take the savings from the four months of summer high bills and spread them out over the year) will be higher than the monthly cost of the improvements.

A real big thing you can do to help save money is stay on top of the builder especially when they are installing your heating/air conditioning system. Look for kinks in the duct system or very sharp 90 turns or places where the straps holding the ducts up are too tight and restrict air flow. Walk around and look at the vents if you can. The ducts should be tightly connected to vents. Also look at the air handler and the place where the ducts are attached, look for large holes or cracks where they are connected. Also, try to make sure they don't put the thermostat by an external door or in the kitchen or where a window can allow the sun to shine on it directly.

Sierra Pacific Power will help our customers when they have extremely high bills and together we can't find a quick solution such as a billing problem or something similar. We call these energy consultations.

So instead of providing energy audits, we developed this web site with a lot of energy conservation tips and resources including do it yourself audits.

Electricity gives you a shock as it travels through your body on its way to the ground. This is because electricity always tries to go to the ground. When a bird sits on the wire there is no path through the bird to the ground. So the power does not travel through the birds and they do not get electrocuted. The power simply flows through the wires as usual.

The next time you see a power pole look up at the place where the wires are connected to the pole. You'll see things called insulators. They hold up the wires and prevent the electricity from traveling through the poles to the ground. The plastic/rubber coating around an extension cord is also an insulator that prevents the power from going through you to the ground.

The operating cost differential would be based on the source of heating for the Hydronic system.  If the source of heat is electric resistance heat you would be better off staying with your electric baseboard heating...if the source of heat is natural gas then depending on the amount of heating demand, the size of the system, the cost of natural gas per therm, the system efficiency of the hydronic system and all additional electric loads such as circulating pumps, fans, needs to be included.   In the long run the hydronic system would probably be cheaper but when considering the cost to install the system...the payback might be a very long run especially in a retrofit application.

If comparing electric baseboard to say a central electric heat pump, the electric heat pump would be about a third the cost to operate per BTU.

The formula for calculating kW of a motor is:

• kW = Horsepower x 0.746 kW per horsepower/efficiency
• kW - 2 1/2 horsepower x 0.746 kW per horsepower/0.84 efficiency
• kW = 2.22

Let us assume that the pool pump horsepower is 2 1/2, efficiency of motor is 0.84, the one (1) hours per day and at our current residential rate of 0.8834.  Then, using the example above: 2.22 kW x 1 hours x 0.08834 rate* =  $0.0196 Cents-per hour-per day.