This past labor day weekend, if you’re like those of us here at ECI, you were enjoying your long weekend with some outdoor grilling, cracking open a cold one, and spending time with your friends and family during the beautiful weather.

It's finally the New Year - again. And, it's yet another opportunity to make that yearly resolution cliché. This year, instead of a new you, how about ditching some old energy wasting habits and having some extra money at the end of the year to show for it? Here is our top energy saving tips bound to net you some extra cash in your new year. 

If your like me, you are always trying to find ways to save money. I always do the little things, like making sure I turn the light off when I leave a room, putting my computer at the best Power Saving settings and some other simpler energy saving methods to keep my bills low.

Here is a Easy Home Efficiency Solution

However, I know that I can be, most likely, running more efficient. I found a useful tool on the Energy Star Website that allows you to, with a little bit of information about your home, find out how you measure up when it comes to efficiency. It's called the "Home Energy Yardstick"

Here is the first of a series of videos that we will be showcasing every week on the ECI Comfort Website. We hope to not only show you the services that we offer, but to share great tips to help you improve the comfort of your home. This week we feature a video of a Home Assessment that ECI Comfort performed at the Morgan residence in the Parkwood section of Philadelphia.

Growing up, we were always told to put on a cap in the winter – we lose most of the heat from our bodies from our heads – same thing with your home. Protecting the top of our homes during the winter is like putting on a warm cap.

Our homes act like a big chimney, the taller the home, the greater movement of air, which is called stack effect.

Windows are a very important part of our lives - they allow us to see what is going on in the world, they let in sunshine, and they light our houses so we don’t have to use electricity during the day. We need windows.

But they are a mixed blessing. They have very low insulation values so they cost us a lot more than a plain wall would cost to heat and cool. Also, this low R-value means the surface is cold so we can feel cool standing next to them, and they have a lot of moving parts, which means they can leak air.

I just recently had the opportunity to go on vacation to Jamaica. It is hard to totally separate yourself on vacation from what you do everyday back home. For me, that is selling HVAC equipment.

I couldn’t help but notice that there were very few buildings that have central air conditioning systems where duct work is used to deliver conditioned air from a central air handler.

Upgrading your heating and air conditioning equipment is never more affordable. Homeowners in Southeastern Pennsylvania, which includes Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties, can upgrade their heaters and air conditioners with new high efficiency equipment. Financing Rates of .99, 4.99 and 5.99 percent are available for terms up to 10 years to help make high efficiency equipment affordable to almost all homeowners. For example, for a 10 year $10,000.00 loan, the monthly payment is less than 100.00 per month. This payment is largely offset by utility savings incurred with the newer high efficiency equipment.