In the middle of winter, fireplaces are a popular topic. This week, Ernie talked about re-building his dual-sided fireplace and adding a damper and tempered-glass doors in the process. In the heating urban myth debate, Elizabeth shared her former roommate's assumption that using a gas fireplace to heat a single room would be more efficient than a central heating system (not necessarily - it depends on your utility rates).

We have several blog entries that talk about using your fireplace efficiently, and we provide some tips on our seasonal website. [More]

This week, Amanda highlighted the Energy Savers seasonal website as a great place to get tips to save money and energy in any season. We want to know which winter energy savings tips you've tried. Have you covered your drafty windows, added weatherstripping to your doors, or opened your south-facing window curtains during the day? How well have these tips worked for you? [More]

This week, Erin talked about how she's helping her parents (and learning from them) as they maintain an outdoor compost pile. By composting, you can nourish your garden for very little cost while keeping organic garbage out of sewer systems and city dumps. Compost materials range from food scraps to worms, and you can keep your compost in an open pile outdoors or in a specialized container.

Of course, composting isn't just for homes - you can also participate in composting at the office. [More]

This week, Elizabeth shared her retail adventures in the clearance section of a store where she picked up some LED light strings at bargain prices. Whether you use them for holidays or every day just because they're irresistibly cheerful, light strings are an excellent example of LED products.

LED holiday lights have many advantages over ordinary incandescent lights:

• Running LED holiday lights on one 6-foot tree for 12 hours per day for 40 days can save 90% or more energy when compared to traditional incandescent holiday lights


• They last longer; they have an operational life span of roughly 20,000 hours, enough to last for 40 holiday seasons
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Between family vacations, shopping, and cooking extravagant meals, energy conservation isn’t usually at the top our list of things to do during the holiday season. But there are plenty of ways to save money & energy even now by doing little – and even fun – things to reduce our utility bills and use less energy overall.

This week, Amanda showed us how she saves money and avoids single-use wrapping paper by creatively wrapping Christmas presents in found items such as grocery ads, magazine pages, and used packing paper.

Saving doesn’t have to stop there - you can also reduce your energy use during the holidays by: [More]

Each week, we ask you questions. Now we'll answer one of yours…

One of the most popular questions we receive in the Energy Savers mailbox is about taking advantage of rebates after buying an item.

"I just bought an energy-efficient (fill in the blank). Can I get a rebate or tax deduction?" [More]