How opening interior doors can cut heating bills

It may seem strange, but leaving the doors to unoccupied rooms open can actually reduce your energy costs.

Q. We bought a four-bedroom home about 25 years ago for our growing family. But now the kids have grown up and moved out, so it's only my husband and I in our master bedroom. He insists on shutting the doors to the unused bedrooms because he says it saves on energy, but I think it's better (and cheaper) to leave them open to ensure that warm air circulates throughout the house. Who's right?

A: This might surprise a lot of my readers, but most energy experts say it's better to leave doors to unoccupied rooms open rather than closed in order to save on utility bills and improve the quality of the indoor air that you breathe.

On its face, closing the door to a vacant room would seem to make the most sense. After all, if you have a 1,500-square foot home and shut the doors to 500 square feet of unused space, it would seem that you would use 33 percent less heat.

In reality, though, the opposite is true. A closed door creates pressure in the unused room and blocks the circulation of warm air throughout the home, according to experts at the nonprofit Home Energy Magazine (www.homeenergy.org). That makes your furnace work “overtime” to heat the rooms that you still occupy, which can dramatically increase your utility bill.

Further, the backed-up air in the empty room has to be replaced by unfiltered air from other sources — cracks in the walls, poorly insulated windows, a chimney or the like. Unfiltered air that's contained inside a home can create all sorts of health hazards, from airborne viruses to deadly carbon monoxide or radon gas.

Folks who live in areas that are subject to extreme cold weather have an additional concern: Most homes have a plumbing system that runs throughout the house, so the pipes under the floor or inside the walls of an unheated room can still freeze and then burst, even if the rest of the house is nice and warm.

To safeguard against plumbing bursts, most energy pros and plumbers say the interior temperature of a property should never be allowed to drop below 55 degrees regardless of whether a room is occupied or not.

Q. Our homeowners' insurance policy is about to expire, so we have been shopping around to get the best rate on a new one. We were surprised, though, that most of the insurers that we have contacted insisted on getting a copy of our credit report before they would provide us with a quote. Isn't this sort of odd?

A. Not really. Studies over the years have consistently shown that people with the highest scores are also those who tend to file the least number of claims, so they're rewarded with the lowest insurance premiums. Those with poor scores are typically charged more.

Some companies flatly refuse to issue policies to owners and renters with below-average scores or who have a recent bankruptcy on their record, fearing that the homeowner's dire financial straits might encourage them to file numerous claims or even set fire to their own property to collect insurance proceeds.

Q. Did Congress ever get around to extending the law you wrote about earlier that prohibits lenders from starting foreclosure action against National Guard members for a year after they return from active duty?

A. Thankfully, yes. The one-year prohibition on foreclosures on members of the military was set to expire at the end of 2014, but was extended until the end of 2015 in last-minute negotiations by lawmakers in mid-December.

The extension applies to nearly all military service personnel who are returning to the United States. But it's a particularly important break for members of the National Guard or those in the Reserves, many of whom had to give up high-paying jobs in the private sector to honor their commitment to the military after being called to active duty.

Real estate trivia: About 49 percent of all U.S. homeowners use gas for heat, the federal Department of Energy says, and 34 percent use electricity. Most of the rest use fuel oil, propane or wood to keep warm, but 3 percent have no heating at all.

• For the booklet “Straight Talk About Living Trusts,” send $4 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to David Myers/Trust, P.O. Box 4405, Culver City, CA 90231-4405.

© 2015, Cowles Syndicate Inc.