QUESTION FROM Donna Croswell

My mother-in-law has been turning her oil furnace off and on a couple of times a day in order to save on her oil bill. Should she be doing this? Her furnace is at least 30 years old.

ANSWER FROM HOME-WIZARD

Dear Donna:

No, I would not recommend that your mother-in-law turn her furnace off and on several times a day in an attempt to say energy.

Assuming that her house is thermostatically controlled, then the thermostat (or thermostats if she has more than one) will turn the furnace on and off as needed to keep her house at her desired temperature, that is, the temperature where she has set her thermostats. As such, there is no reason for her to manually shut down the furnace.

If her interest is in lowering her energy bill, I would suggest that she looks at the Energy Saving Tips in the online Maintenance Library of Home-Wizard.com:

http://www.home-wizard.com/maintenance/energysavingstips.asp

In addition, I would suggest that she also looks at Energy Savings section of Home-Wizard.com:

http://www.home-wizard.com/EnergySavings.asp

which will show the routine maintenance tasks that will help her save energy for her particular home.

Hope this is helpful.
Home-Wizard.com