Saving Energy in Your Home

Easy stuff – change your behaviour

To start saving energy straight away - these easy tips can make an immediate difference.

• Turn your thermostat down. Reducing your room temperature by 1°C could cut your heating bills by up to 10%. You could save around £50 per year.
• Is your water too hot? Your cylinder thermostat should be set at 60°C/140°F.
• Close your curtains at dusk to reduce heat escaping through the windows.
• Always turn off the lights when you leave a room. Don’t leave appliances on standby and remember not to leave appliances on charge unnecessarily. You can save around £32 a year by doing this.
• Wait until the washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher are full before switching on.
• Only boil as much water as you need (remember to cover the elements if you’re using an electric kettle).
• Use energy-saving light bulbs. They last up to ten times longer than ordinary bulbs, and using one can save you around £40 over its lifetime.

Harder Stuff - install energy-saving measures

You’re going to have to spend to do this, but the savings start immediately – and the changes will boost your home’s comfort and energy rating.

Insulate and keep the heat in

• There’s not much point putting in an energy efficient boiler if all the heat goes straight out of your house again. Insulation is the essential first step.
• About 25% of heat in an uninsulated house escapes through the roof, so insulating your loft is an easy ‘quick win’ worth around £155 a year in fuel savings. Loft insulation is cheap to buy and easy to install.
• Draught proofing is a bit more fiddly but still cheap. It won’t bring big savings but it will boost the ‘comfort factor’ of your house by cutting out all those annoying draughts.
• If your house was built after the 1920s, chances are it has cavity walls. If these aren’t insulated, having them sorted is relatively cheap and can be worth £120 a year in savings.
• Older houses with solid walls are more expensive to treat, but with potential savings of around £380 a year, solid wall insulation is worth a look if you’re in a house for the long term. If your external walls need work anyway, that could be an ideal time to have external wall insulation added. Find out more about solid wall insulation

Install Double Glazing

• Double glazing is an investment too. It’ll reduce noise, increase the comfort of your house and save up to £110 per year. . Even old-style sash windows windows windows can be double-glazed.
• Invest in new technology if your boiler is more than 15 years old – it’s probably not as efficient as it could be. A high-efficiency condensing boiler with a full set of modern heating controls could cut your heating bills by up to a third.

Upgrade Your Heating

• Modern heating controls are a particularly clever way to save energy, because they simply make your existing central heating more effective. Timer controls coupled with room and radiator thermostats mean you can ‘tune’ your heating so you only heat the house when and where you need to.

Energy Saving Recommended

• Buy ‘Energy Saving Recommended’ appliances.
• If you want to replace or upgrade your old appliances and electronic products make sure you look out for the Energy Saving Recommended logo. This is your guarantee that you’ve chosen a highly efficient model. This logo is only awarded to products that meet strict criteria on energy efficiency, as set by an independent panel.

Make your own energy – renewables

Only when we’ve done all this insulating, and sealed up all the draughts around the house do we move towards renewable technologies, which let us generate our own energy at home.

These generally involve heat or electricity harnessed from the sun, wind or even water power.

‘Microgeneration’ technology can bring down your bills. Solar hot water panels can save around a third of your water-heating bill and can improve your home’s energy rating.

Or alternatively, you could install a ground source heat pump. This uses a loop buried in the ground to transfer heat to warm your home. If you currently have electric heating, installing a ground source heat pump could save you as much as £880 a year, although the saving will vary depending on what your current heating fuel is.

Find out more about Generating your own energy