Heating your home uses up around 70% of your total energy consumption and so if you are trying to cut down on energy bills, your heating is where you should start. It is possible to save money and to live in a pleasantly warm house by following these five top tips.
Use your curtains as insulation
During the hours of daylight, the heat of the sun will stream in through the windows and help to heat up your room. This is free so it is a shame not to use it! However, once the sun goes down, the heat will travel in the opposite direction and you will lose heat from the room out of the window.
Shut your curtains as soon as the sun goes down. They will act as insulation and keep the heat in. If you can get thermal curtains that is even better but you can also line normal curtains with a thermal layer. Make sure that the curtains are long enough and wide enough to cover the whole window.
Fit some thermostatic radiator valves
The University of Salford recently reported some research that showed that installing heating controls and thermostatic radiator valves could reduce your heating energy consumption in your home by around 40 per cent. The way to save yourself some real money is to install some radiators from Only Radiators with thermostatic valves. Talk to your central heating engineer about this. Fitting radiators and radiator valves are jobs for the experts and are not DIY jobs that you can attempt yourself.
Use your heating wisely
There is no point in leaving your heating on during the day if no-one is at home. If you work from home in one room, there is still no point in heating up all of the rest of the house. Instead, get yourself a small electric heater and just heat up the one room where you are sitting.
Use the timer on your heating to start it up about half an hour before you get home and before you get up in the morning. Setting your thermostat to a lower temperature for half an hour longer is cheaper than leaving it until the last minute and then turning it on to a higher temperature.
Keep things away from the radiator
Radiators use convection currents to heat up a room and so if you place something directly in front of them they will not work properly. Curtains should be shortened so that they cover the window but do not cover the radiator that is located beneath it. Drag your sofa forward so that there is a gap of a few inches between it and the radiator.
Insulate, insulate, insulate
Insulation is at the heart of any money saving measures involving heating your home. You simply cannot afford to lose the heat through the roof so install at least 25cm thickness of high-quality insulation in your loft as soon as you can.
Image source:
Image 1
