Elmore “Butch” Lawyer offers simple math as winter approaches — fewer degrees in the house means more dollars in the wallet.

“Probably the biggest thing people can do is turn the thermostat down,” said Lawyer, director of the home weatherization program for Cornell Cooperative Extension in Voorheesville. “For every two degrees you keep that down, you’re supposed to save a certain percentage. You can’t go too nuts with it because people have to be comfortable.”

The nation’s economic slump and high prices for food and fuel have made many uncomfortable. Lawyer and others who know heat conservation say folks can reduce their financial sacrifices to energy companies. And still keep as warm as a cricket on the hearth.

Crickets and humans stay warmer if houses are insulated. The simple procedures pay a simple dividend — heat stays inside the house longer, so furnaces and boilers are not constantly replenishing warm air.

“Because the walls and attic are insulated and with the price of oil, you’re talking about eight or nine hundred dollars the first year or more can be saved,” Lawyer said. “If you can have a payback in four, five or six years, certainly less than 10 years, that’s wonderful.”

Insulation is crucial

Robert M. Pena, owner of the Burnt Hills-based home improvement company R.M. Pena, said his crews work blow-in insulation jobs all year.

“We can insulate a house that has minimum or no insulation and cut the fuel bill — conservatively — 40 to 50 percent,” Pena said.

He also said heat escapes through the basement.

“We change a lot of basement windows, because basement windows are single-glass, steel casement windows,” Pena said. “It’s not heat loss if it goes up through the floor, but if it goes out the foundation and out the windows, it is loss.”

If people don’t want to spring for new, energy-efficient windows, Pena said, they can try wrapping the windows in plastic as a quick-fix solution.

People at the New York Energy Research and Development Authority also have a hot list. Spokesman Tom Lynch reaches for the thermostat when discussing ways to save money.

“Using a programmable thermostat, so you set back your energy consumption overnight and then also during the day when you might not be home, that can save 1 [percent] to 2 percent on energy costs if you use that tool correctly,” he said.

“Caulk” and “seal” are two other words in the NYSERDA playbook. Any holes or cracks near windows or doors are entry points for cool air, and with this year’s high energy prices, even small steps can conserve heat and money.

“Commodity prices have come down, we’re still at very elevated levels in terms of commodity costs for heating oil and natural gas, but we’re not seeing the prices that we have seen back in July, when heating oil was $4.80 a gallon on a statewide basis,” Lynch said. “That doesn’t mean those prices can’t change over the winter. We have kind of a perfect storm for consumers. You have tremendous pressures in terms of the economy, job losses. You’ve had the impact of gasoline prices. Consumers are strapped.”

What else you can do

Other moves can help. NYSERDA suggests:

- Make sure floor and wall vents are not blocked by draperies, furniture, or rugs. Vents should also be cleaned regularly with a vacuum or broom.

- Keep blinds and drapes of sun-exposed windows open in the daytime and closed at night.

- When the fireplace is not in use, keep the flue damper tightly closed.

- Have your heating system inspected. If you have a forced-air heating system, check your air filters once a month and replace if dirty.

- Make sure outdoor portions of your heating system are not blocked by leaves, shrubbery, or other objects.

- If you have a window air conditioning unit, remove it for the winter months to prevent heat from escaping through and around the unit. If it can’t be removed, buy a cover to prevent drafts.

- Install rubber gaskets behind outlets and switch plates on exterior walls. Gaskets can be found in most home improvement stores.

- Use ceiling fans. They can keep you comfortable in the winter too. Reversing the direction of the blades pushes warm air down into the room.

- Lower your water heater temperature to 120 degrees. For added savings, have your water heater wrapped with an insulation blanket by a heating or plumbing contractor.

The U.S. Department of Energy offers more ideas:

- Take more showers than baths. Bathing uses the most hot water in the average household.

- Place heat-resistant radiator reflectors between exterior walls and radiators.

- Bleed trapped air from radiators once or twice a season.

- For the fireplace, use grates made of C-shaped metal tubes to draw cool room air into the fireplace and circulate warm air back into the room.

Decisions to make

Sometimes, an idea has both pro and con factors. Keeping a house cool and depending upon a small electric space heater to warm a bedroom at night sounds good in theory. But is it smart in practice?

Cornell Cooperative’s Lawyer said electric rates vary in communities. But he said in this area, according to NYSERDA figures, running an electric heater for about eight hours a night would cost about $40 a month in electricity. That’s about $1.30 a night.

“If you were going to heat the house up four or five degrees with an oil burner, and it has a half-a-gallon an hour nozzle on it, for like $1.50 you can warm the whole house up like 10 degrees and the house would probably hold that heat for five or six hours.”

And space heaters are not for everyone, especially children.

“You have to watch out for all the bad things that can happen with those electric space heaters,” Lawyer said. “They catch things on fire; there are a lot of safety things, terrible things with kids and children.”

Other ideas have been around for hundreds of years. Garet Livermore, vice president of education for the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, said people coping in winter during the 1800s used to pile bales of hay against the foundations of their homes to knock down drafts.

“They would restrict their living space to one or two rooms,” Livermore said. “The warmer rooms, which were usually the hearth or the kitchen room, they’d keep the fire going all the time.”

People also had their version of portable heaters. Livermore said soapstone placed near fireplaces soaked up heat; it went under the bed covers and warmed people over night.

“Its equivalent today would be a hot water bottle,” Livermore said. “When you get the warmth under the covers, it tends to stay there.”

Heavy drapes covered windows and provided some protection from cool air.

Blocking the wind

“They didn’t really have insulation, but they were very conscious of the cold winter winds,” Livermore said. “Another thing they did, long term, they thought about the plantings around their house. If there was a prevailing wind coming from the west or the north, they would plant trees in that direction to break the wind. You can still see that at some farmhouses in upstate New York that date from that period.”

A mild winter, while not in the best interest of the ski and skate crowd, would save the money at home. Lynch said people can’t control that option.

“The only thing we can control is our energy consumption,” he said. “That’s why we preach energy efficiency.”