Save on Heating

 

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Every winter we each spend a small fortune in heating our homes. Listen out for when your boiler’s on and imagine it’s drinking fuel like a car engine running – all winter long.

 

Of all the energy activities within the home, it is heating that takes the Carbon Crown, and hence it where you can make the single biggest dent in your emissions.

Because we have become used to heating the whole house, rather than just a couple of central rooms as in the not too distant past, our requirement for heating has grown dramatically. What’s more, with central heating it’s just so easy to “turn it up” without giving a second thought to what’s being consumed. When you nudge the thermostat up, it drives the boiler harder, burns more fuel into CO2 and of course clocks up your bills faster.

Of course this is a huge Carbon-saving opportunity – nudge it down and the boiler will burn less fuel, there will be less CO2 going up in to the air and your bills are not as high. Actually even a small change in thermostat temperature - like a degree or two - can have a BIG impact on consumption.

 

POSITIVE STEPS:

 

  Insulation for the body:

By far the simplest way of saving energy is to insulate ourselves a bit better when it’s cold – or as my dear Mum would put it “just put on another layer”.
 

Our bodies are brilliant at turning food in to heat, but if we’re not wearing enough clothes this heat leaks away faster than we make it – so we feel cold. 

So rather than waste our own heat and then have to chew through more gas or oil to heat the whole house, another layer saves both.

 

The acid test is putting another layer on now and seeing how long you can last before you have to turn the heating down !

Seriously though, another layer can cut your heating consumption by 20 – 30%. And that’s BIG.
 

 

  Room by room:

The amount of fuel and thus Carbon emissions used in heating depends on the number of rooms with radiators and the level to which they are set. If you shut off one room and turn the radiator down (or even off) you will immediately be saving energy and Carbon.

If you’ve many rooms at home, chances are not every room is used to the same extent. There might be some rooms that are used rarely like a guest room or others that are only used occasionally in the evening, maybe a study. Whatever the set-up, it may well be possible to turn a radiator or two down, and then fire it up when actually needed.

Say you’ve 7 equal sized radiators in the house and you decide to shut off one room like this, then you’ll be saving about seventh (or 15%) of your heating consumption. Just keep the door closed on it.
 

 

  Draughts:

Draughts show where there are gaps in the house that let warm air out and cold air in. They can add up to some serious losses, so a quick “draught audit” will pay handsome dividends.
 

Feel round doors, windows, letter boxes etc to find out exactly where the draughts are coming from. With each one you stop up you’ll be making the house warmer and more Carbon-efficient. And it will put a stop to the steady flow of cash drifting out through each one.

 

 

  Insulation

Why do we make heat then waste so much of it ? Insulation is so important that it has a page of its own - in fact it has two ! Check out the Insulation and Walls pages.
 

 

Radiators

If you have central heating radiators, they will almost certainly be placed against walls. This means that they will be radiating their heat both into the room and into the wall behind. If your wall is an internal wall then it's not so bad, but if your radiator is against an external wall, then it's effectively losing a portion of its heat to the great outdoors.

 

What can we do ? Well, there's a very simple solution that involves putting a reflective layer just behind the radiator.

Positioned out of sight behind the radiator, they simply reflect heat that would otherwise be lost back into the room. Overall, a very cheap, very effective way of boosting efficiency   >> Click here to see

 

  Boiler Efficiency

 

Once you've taken care of the types of energy saving measures above, Heating efficiency is your next port of call.

If you have a boiler, it will have a certain efficiency. This is simply a measure of how good it is at turning fuel into useful heat. Some boilers are great at it, others really wasteful.

Some old boilers are less than 70% efficient, meaning they waste more than 30% of their fuel. Others, like a modern condensing boiler, are over 91% efficient - ie: less than 9% wasted.

If you want to find what yours is, check out the database on www.boilers.org.uk

Upgrading to a more efficient model is one of the biggest Carbon- and fuel-saving opportunities. At a stroke it will make every firing of it less polluting and less expensive.