Thursday, June 29, 2006

Money saving tip for the summer

If you have a gas furnace, turn off the pilot light during the summer. My landlord came by a couple weeks ago to look at our air conditioner and he turned ours off for us. Our gas bill dropped about $10. Who knew a little flame ate up so much gas? Well, I guess it is on all the time, but that's about 20% of our warm-weather gas bill. Obviously you'll have to relight it if there's a cold snap, but that isn't terribly difficult in most furnaces.

2 comments:

Tiredbuthappy said...

Except that ours can't be lit without taking apart our boiler. Last year we weren't sure if it was lit, so we turned the gas feed to the boiler off to relight it. Ended up having to call a technician to relight it--$75. So make sure you know how and have access to relight the thing before you turn it off.

Anonymous said...

Eeesh! Boilers! I feel for you claire.

Great tip, Kira, I didn't realize that extinguishing the furnace pilot light could save a significant amount on the gas bill...

-Grant