Money Saving Tips On Energy Around The Home
Author: admin / Category: Energy Bills, Home Improvements, NewsEnergy is expensive. There’s just no getting away with it, heating, lighting and powering our homes costs money, and for many of us at the moment those costs are getting rather too high for our liking.
Reducing the amount of energy you use doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to change your lifestyle however, there are quite a lot of things you can do to lower your household energy usage and bring those costs down. Alternatively you could look at creating some of your own electricity to supplement that which you have to buy.
Insulate your home:
Fit double glazing to your windows, add insulation in roof spaces, lofts and under floors, lag pipe work, and put thick curtains up over doors and windows. Get your walls filled with cavity wall insulation if you’ve not got it, and fit brushes over letter boxes.
All the above things will help to reduce the amount of heat that’s lost from your home, making it easier and cheaper to keep it warm and draft free.
Adjust your heating:
Drop your thermostat by 1 or 2 degrees and wear more clothing indoors. It might sound mean, but in fact it’s one of the cheapest and most sensible ways of cutting your heating (and therefore your energy) bill.
Use less hot water:
Wash your clothes at lower temperatures, have showers instead of baths and reduce how long your water is heated for and the temperature you heat it to. Insulate your water tank so that the water doesn’t cool down so much between the times it’s being heated. Look at fitting on demand hot water instead, you’ll have no tank, and you’ll only heat the water that you actually need hot.
Think about your appliances:
Most of us have lots of things that use energy – TV, mobile phones, cooker, fridge, microwave etc. These things all use power in different ways. First of all learn to turn everything off completely when it’s not in use. So TV, microwave, mobile phone charger etc. can all be switched off instead of left in standby mode this will reduce power consumption.
When these things need replacing opt for lower energy versions. On some things like fridges and washing machines the energy rating level will help you to choose lower energy appliances, on others you may need to look and ask more questions, but as you do need to replace things you’ll become more and more energy efficient.
Install Solar Panels:
Fitting solar panels on your roof can be done quite easily these days and mostly doesn’t require planning permission either. With the government’s FiT scheme you’ll not only be making your own energy and saving money on your electricity bill, you’ll also be being paid by the government for doing so!