When it comes to saving energy at home, the first thing to do is to understand when and where it’s used as it can be easy to waste energy without even realising it, if you haven’t already had a smart meter fitted contact your energy company and they will do this for free.
The great thing about many of the energy saving tips we have here is that they can result in instant savings that you can see in your fuel bills. The best way to ensure that the changes you make stick, is to get all the family committed to policing energy usage.
Every room in the house uses energy and there is a whole range of things that you can do to improve energy-efficiency at home, including improvements in lighting, heating, cooking, washing and drying. Have a read below at a few of our tips on saving energy at home:
Heating
The first thing to do is to reduce heat loss from your home, older houses may lack quality insulation due to when they were constructed. There have been many government initiatives over the last decade to help homeowners with loft and cavity wall insulation.
Any obvious spaces in window or door frames will lead to heat escaping from your house and you’re paying to heat the great outdoors! A cheap and easy fix is to install weather strips on external doors to reduce draughts. If you have double glazing is it working or does it need replacing? If you don’t have double glazing a quick and cheaper way of improving your home’s efficiency is to have your curtains thermal lined.
Once you have reduced the amount heat that is lost, you can look at reducing the amount you use, below are some ways to do that: –
- Check what temperature your thermostats are set at. You may be able to reduce the setting without anyone noticing, you can also set different temperatures upstairs to downstairs as heat rises!
- Using a timer to control when your heating and hot water comes on is a great way of tailoring your heat usage around your family routine. Using smart technology, you can connect your phone to your home to help control your usage.
- If you find your wet system is not working correctly, i.e. some radiators are not getting warm or only partially warm, bleeding the radiators or system may increase the efficiency of your system.
- Also, check that you don’t have large pieces of furniture positioned against your radiators as they will reduce the heat entering the room.
- Install your own renewable energy solution, such as a biomass boiler. Fuelled by high-quality wood pellets, you can easily improve efficiency by using renewable energy in your home. It even comes with its own thermostat that can be adjusted during winter and summer to provide effective heating throughout the whole house. Find out more about how a biomass boiler works here.
Lighting
Reducing the amount of energy, you use for lighting can be as easy as ensuring that as a you leave a room you turn the lights off. As simple as it sounds, it can be a challenge with children, especially if they require the light to be left on all night. Here the answer is to choose a low energy lamp or using a night light.
2009 saw the start of the phasing out incandescent lamps and them being replaced by more energy efficient technology.
- An old 60 watt light bulb can now be replaced with an equivalent LED lamp that uses only 10 watts, saving around £8.00 per bulb per annum (assuming power is 15p/KWh and it’s on for 1,000 per annum).
- You’ll virtually never have to change an LED lightbulb. Most last 50,000 running hours versus 1,500 for an old incandescent bulb. If the average light in your home is on for around 10% of the time, this means about 876 hours of usage per annum. In other words, you’d change an LED bulb about once every 57 years!
- Try and choose lamps that are 700+ lumens and a kelvin score of 2,700 for a bright, warm light that isn’t too powerful. Anything more than that can be too bright and use more power than you require.
- You can also opt for a smart-meter which will be supplied free of charge by your energy company as part of a UK wide project. It is now possible to connect your lamps to the Wi-Fi using smart technology, giving you the ability to turn your light no/off while you’re out and about.
Cooking, Washing & Drying
You may not even realise but you might be losing energy just through operating standard appliances such as ovens, washing machines and tumble dryers. It might be that it is the appliance itself, but there are always tips to help you save energy whilst performing day-to-day tasks:
- When you come to replace white good always make sure your appliances have the highest possible energy efficiency rating, always aim for an efficiency rating of A (or above in some cases such as A+++)
- When cooking, try and reduce or eliminate pre-heating time. Leaving an oven on without cooking anything can use up a lot of energy, try make use of oven space and heat by cooking a cakes etc at the same time, using the excess heat.
- Try to batch cook food and freeze the extra, not only energy saving but time saving to
- When washing, ensure you are doing a full load every time to improve efficiency. Also try to choose an eco-setting that is a bit colder than a traditional 40-degree hot cycle.
- If possible when drying cloths use an outside cloths line, but if you have to dry indoors remember that hanging clothing on radiators will reduce their effectiveness. Instead, use a clothes line or clothes horse. If using a tumble dryer, try to dry light and heavy clothing separately and empty the lint filter frequently.
For more information about saving energy in your home using renewable energy such as a biomass boiler fuelled by wood pellets, speak to Woodlets today. Head to our contact page to get in touch.