High Electric Bills
Many problems can indicate crawl space issues. Did you know that high electric bills could be one?
How to Solve Your High Electric Bills
If you’ve recently noticed strangely high electric bills, there are many reasons you could be experiencing this problem. High electric bills tend to indicate several issues, from just forgetting to turn down your thermostat to something much more concerning. If there don’t seem to be any obvious reasons for these high electric bills, consider this information.
What Are High Electric Bills a Sign Of?
Often, a high electric bill just happens because you ran your air conditioning or heating more than usual or because you left a light on without thinking about it. However, if you’re seeing them regularly for no apparent reason, it may be because of these things.
- Moisture in Your Crawl Space
If you have ongoing moisture problems in your crawl space, you’re going to have higher energy bills. That’s because moisture makes it harder for an AC unit or heater to warm or cool the air as effectively as possible. You may instead find that you have to run the AC or heater at a more significant temperature than you usually do.
This moisture definitely isn’t a good thing. Not only is it raising your electric bills, but it could also cause problems with crawl space condensation and general moisture throughout your home. Especially if you’ve noticed more humidity recently, it’s a good idea to get a crawl space repair expert to help you understand what’s going on.
- Open Crawl Space Vents
Do you have a vented crawl space? If you do, it’s okay; many people do. However, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to leave the crawl space vents as they are right now. You should still pursue crawl space encapsulation and sealing with vent covers because those vents may be raising your electric bills.
For a long time, people built vented crawl spaces because they believed that it would air out the crawl space, reducing moisture and that classic musty smell. However, over the years people have realized it actually makes moisture problems in the crawl space worse. Plus, it’s letting in air from the outside, which can undo your hard AC or heater’s work and make your unit work overtime.
- Generalized Structural Concerns
You could also have general structural concerns that are making it more difficult for your home’s treated air to stay inside the home. Your home should generally keep all your treated air indoors, but if you have structural problems like gaps between your windows and the window frames, the outside air will come inside as quickly as it can.
These structural concerns tend to indicate issues with your foundation, which is a much more serious problem than anything else you might worry about in the home. Especially if you’ve already checked with an electrician who said everything was okay, it might be a good idea to request an inspection from a crawl space expert to ensure your home’s structure is safe.
The Most Common Crawl Space Problem Signs
Why Is It Important to Get to the Bottom of the High Electric Bills?
Why do you even need to think about high electric bills? If the high electric bills have a deeper reasoning behind them, they can have a variety of genuinely far-reaching consequences.
- Lower Your Electric Bills
The most obvious benefit here is that you can lower your electric bills when you find and fix the problem. If your electric bills have doubled recently, you could end up saving an awful lot of money every month by just finding and fixing the problem. This can even be the case if you never had a bill that was at a normal level.
This is also a great argument for pursuing the solution to the problem, even if it might require some up-front investment. After all, the money you spend right now would just be going to your needlessly high electric bills every month. After some time, it pays for itself, making it a great decision.
- Uncover Structural Problems
When you have a crawl space expert check out your crawl space because of high electric bills, you’ll also find any information you need about the structural problems you’re experiencing. This could even include structural problems that are happening in your home but weren’t contributing to the high electric bills.
It’s always better to know than to not know. When you know about the structural problems happening in your home, you can at least take steps to fix them. If you don’t know anything about your home’s structural problems, you won’t be able to do anything to fix them. Crawl space structural problems can go unnoticed for years, so a crawl space expert is your best bet to discover them early on.
- Make Your Home More Comfortable
Managing a more comfortable home may almost be a side effect of fixing your crawl space problems, but it’s a desirable one. It’s common for your crawl space to end up creating high indoor humidity throughout your home.
The comfort of your home is an important element of your ability to live there. You should never just assume that you can’t change the comfort of your home. When you fix your crawl space problems, you’ll be able to have a more comfortable home you feel even better living in. It’s a great added bonus for your newly-healthy home.
FAQs About High Electric Bills as a Warning Sign
High electric bills can occur with basements or crawl spaces, but it’s often more difficult to notice problems in a crawl space. Basements tend to be easier to catch problems in. That’s why it’s so important to think about this when you’re talking about crawl spaces.
- A Possibility for Basements
Both crawl spaces and basements can create problems with high electric bills. The problem is that it’s less common for basements to have these issues since they have more support. Many people treat these areas of the home more carefully than crawl spaces, which can lead to maintenance falling by the wayside or early warning signs getting overlooked.
There are many reasons a basement can end up being healthier than a crawl space on average. You might go into a basement more often or address issues more often if you use it as an extra living space or den. However, it’s important to maintain both of them equally, even if one is only used for storage. Both can get out of hand if they’re not properly cared for.
- Request Help with Problems in Any Under-Home Spaces
Whether you have a basement or a crawl space, the problems in your under-home space are going to lead to the same issue. You should request help with all of your problems, regardless of where they’re coming from. It doesn’t matter when you encounter the issues or how “serious” those problems are.
When you have high electrical bills, those bills might be your first warning, allowing you to avoid a costly replacement in the future. Talk to a Groundworks expert to get help with high electric bills from your basement or your crawl space. When you schedule an appointment [add link], you can not only stop the present issue but prevent future ones.
High electric bills certainly won’t be the only thing you notice as you’re having crawl space concerns. It’s just that they’re one of the things you may be more likely to notice because it’s going to hit your wallet pretty hard. Here’s how you can look out for crawl space problems overall.
- Use the List of Groundworks Problem Signs
Because Groundworks deals with crawl space concerns every day, we know exactly what indicates a bigger problem. Groundworks experts can more readily identify common problems and apply more tailored solutions, so your home can stay healthy and your budget can stay intact.
Groundworks has an entire list of crawl space repair problem signs you may want to think about when you go about your day-to-day life. Looking out for these possible issues will help you catch the early warning signs and avoid more severe damage. Even just knowing about these problem signs will often help fix the root issues.
- Think About These Problem Signs Regularly
You must remember how a crawl space impacts your home. It’s easy to think your sticking windows, foundation hairline cracks, and high electricity bills are all unrelated. However, catching these problems early is key to managing them, so thinking about them regularly can be genuinely beneficial.
Remember that you don’t have to do this on your own. If you start to notice something, talking to an expert can help, especially because experts often deal with a variety of these problems every day. Make sure you’re utilizing information about these potential issues with help from a crawl space expert.
Although high electric bills should pique your interest, they don’t necessarily indicate issues that are structural in nature. When you see high electric bills, here’s what you should do.
- Check Other Electric Bill Problems
Before you assume that you’re having structural problems, it’s a good idea to check other things that may have had an impact on the electric bill. Did you leave a particular light on all month? Have you forgotten you plugged something in? Did someone forget to close the door behind them one day? Answer these questions first and foremost.
You can more readily identify the foundation or structural issues once you’ve ruled out other options. It’s much easier to ensure that a door stays closed or a light stays off than it is to go all-in with a serious fix for your crawl space or basement. If you’ve narrowed down that the issue lies with properly heating your home, for example, you can then determine if your crawl space or basement need better insulation, or if you just left a window open by accident.
- Keep Structural Concerns in Mind
Even though you should look for other electricity problems, you shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it could be a structural concern. There are a variety of ways that your electric bills may end up being very high, such as forgetting to close a door. However, foundation problems are something that can cause high electric bills as well. This will be a mounting issue over time.
As you narrow down the list of options, see if you can tie back clear signs to a structural weakness. For example, maybe you’ve been running your AC too often, which is causing the electricity bill to jump. However, if you’ve noticed that it needs to run all day, not just during the heat of the day, then you may have poor crawl space insulation, which will let out cool air 24/7, not just during the warm parts of the day.
If you’re experiencing high electric bills, you should know that these bills could come from multiple places. Just fixing one of the elements might not be enough. You need to think about all the different reasons you could have high electric bills.
- Look at Your Electric Bills
First off, you want to know when these problems started. To do that, it’s a good idea to take a closer look at the electric bills that were extraordinary high. When did this start? What happened around the time your bills started to get very high? Is there anything that seems to make the bills go down, even just a small amount?
If you notice these bills only go down slightly after you implement a specific fix, you may want to look into other explanations for your high electric bills as well. Essentially, there may be more than one reason that you’re having high electric bills. Fixing all of them is an important element of ensuring a healthy crawl space.
- Actively Try to Find Problems
Don’t take a passive approach to the high electric bills you’re experiencing. It’s a bad idea, for example, to assume that your electric bills will go down after a certain amount of time or just to pay the extra amount without wondering what’s wrong. Instead, you should actively try to figure out what’s going on.Keep a close eye on your electric bills and on the way you use electricity in your home. If you can cut down on electricity, see whether that reduces your bills or doesn’t seem to make a dent. This way, you’re more likely to figure out the overarching problem, as you’re paying attention to its core.
Fix Your Crawl Space Problems with a Visit from an Expert
Crawl space problems occur in a variety of contexts for a variety of reasons. If you’re having any sort of crawl space problems, whether or not high electric bills are the main symptom, a crawl space repair expert will be able to help you diagnose and treat those problems. Schedule a free crawl space inspection with a local crawl space expert today to learn more about your options and find out how you can fix them.