\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSouthwest Florida residents are bundling up this week as temperatures dip into the 40s, and with the chill comes a common question: how do you stay warm without blowing your power bill?Just weeks after Florida Power and Light raised rates for 2024, some Southwest Floridians are thinking twice before reaching for the thermostat.\u201cIt did surprise me that it\u2019s lasted this long,\u201d said Harvey Comrie, who spends half the year in Southeast Cape Coral and the other half in Michigan. \u201cI thought it was a couple days and it warms up.\u201dComrie and Jan Schumacher, who also lives in Southeast Cape Coral, came to Florida for sunshine and bike rides … not pool covers and layers. But this week\u2019s cold snap has them adjusting their habits to stay comfortable and keep costs down.\u201cI\u2019m still conscious of the money,\u201d Comrie said. \u201cSo I don\u2019t heat the pool. I leave the solar heater on and put a solar blanket on the pool, and we usually don\u2019t turn the heater down here unless it gets 67, 68 in the house.\u201dLee County Electric Cooperative, the utility provider for much of Southwest Florida, says heating your home is the number one reason bills spike during cold snaps. Their advice? Keep your thermostat no higher than 68 degrees. For every degree above that, your heating costs can jump by 9%.\u201cIf you have a cover over your pool, that helps,\u201d said Karen Ryan with LCEC. \u201cBut this really isn\u2019t a good time to use that heater because the temperatures are so low. The heat just escapes.\u201dOther energy-saving tips include using space heaters to warm individual rooms instead of the whole house, taking shorter showers to cut down on water heating, and opening blinds during the day to let sunlight naturally warm your home.”Cleaning your air filters can also save you money,” said Ryan. “When you have dirty air filters, it just causes your unit to work harder, and it’s not as efficient. So that will drive your costs up.”Ryan added if you are an LCEC user, you can track your usage in real time with LCEC\u2019s SmartHub app.DOWNLOAD\u202fthe free\u202fGulf Coast News app\u202ffor your latest news and alerts on breaking news, weather, sports, entertainment, and more on your phone or tablet. And check out the Very Local Gulf Coast app to stream news, entertainment and original programming on your TV.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tCAPE CORAL, Fla. \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Southwest Florida residents are bundling up this week as temperatures dip into the 40s, and with the chill comes a common question: how do you stay warm without blowing your power bill?<\/p>\n
Just weeks after Florida Power and Light raised rates for 2024, some Southwest Floridians are thinking twice before reaching for the thermostat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt did surprise me that it\u2019s lasted this long,\u201d said Harvey Comrie, who spends half the year in Southeast Cape Coral and the other half in Michigan. \u201cI thought it was a couple days and it warms up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comrie and Jan Schumacher, who also lives in Southeast Cape Coral, came to Florida for sunshine and bike rides … not pool covers and layers. But this week\u2019s cold snap has them adjusting their habits to stay comfortable and keep costs down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still conscious of the money,\u201d Comrie said. \u201cSo I don\u2019t heat the pool. I leave the solar heater on and put a solar blanket on the pool, and we usually don\u2019t turn the heater down here unless it gets 67, 68 in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee County Electric Cooperative, the utility provider for much of Southwest Florida, says heating your home is the number one reason bills spike during cold snaps. Their advice? Keep your thermostat no higher than 68 degrees. For every degree above that, your heating costs can jump by 9%.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a cover over your pool, that helps,\u201d said Karen Ryan with LCEC. \u201cBut this really isn\u2019t a good time to use that heater because the temperatures are so low. The heat just escapes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other energy-saving tips include using space heaters to warm individual rooms instead of the whole house, taking shorter showers to cut down on water heating, and opening blinds during the day to let sunlight naturally warm your home.<\/p>\n
“Cleaning your air filters can also save you money,” said Ryan. “When you have dirty air filters, it just causes your unit to work harder, and it’s not as efficient. So that will drive your costs up.”<\/p>\n
Ryan added if you are an LCEC user, you can track your usage in real time with LCEC\u2019s SmartHub app.<\/p>\n
DOWNLOAD\u202fthe free\u202fGulf Coast News app<\/a>\u202ffor your latest news and alerts on breaking news, weather, sports, entertainment, and more on your phone or tablet. And check out the Very Local Gulf Coast app<\/a> to stream news, entertainment and original programming on your TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southwest Florida residents are bundling up this week as temperatures dip into the 40s, and with the chill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,1267,26895,6025,104,28,65956,65957,213,65959,1554,65958,65955,65960,1521,1456],"class_list":["post-134446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-cold-front","tag-cold-snap","tag-cost","tag-entertainment","tag-florida","tag-harvey-comrie","tag-karen-ryan","tag-late-news","tag-lcec-user","tag-pool","tag-pool-cover","tag-solar-heater","tag-southeast-cape-coral","tag-southwest-florida","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}