Cost Saving Measures
Lighting and Appliances
Lighting
As lighting accounts for around 15% of a typical household’s energy bills: cutting your lighting bill is one of the easiest ways to save energy and money in the home.
The two main types of light bulbs available are Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) and Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). Replacing a traditional bulb with an LED bulb will save you around £6 per year.
Replacing all your bulbs with LEDs will save you around £35 per year.
But remember, the easiest way of all to save money is to remember to turn your lights off whenever you leave a room!
Appliances
Whenever buying a new appliance always read the energy rating label. Energy ratings labels are generally given to products based on size categories. The idea is to enable you to compare between two similarly sized products.
This means two differently sized appliances with the same energy rating may use quite different amounts of electricity. For instance, an A rated 180-litre fridge freezer could cost only £39 a year to run whereas a larger 525-litre fridge freezer with a better A+ rating would cost £52 a year to run. That’s £13 a year more.
In trying to save energy it is therefore best to look for the product with the best energy rating for the size of product you require.
(Courtesy of Energy Saving Trust)
Low-Cost Measures
There are lots of things you can do at home to save energy that won’t break the bank.
Not only will you save money, but you’ll be reducing your home’s carbon dioxide emissions and helping to fight climate change.
Replace your light bulbs with LED bulbs and save £35 per year.
Fit a water efficient shower head and save around £45 a year.
Install a chimney draught excluder and save around £15 per year.
Reflective radiator panels are cheap to buy, easy to install and trap heat that would otherwise drift through the wall, reflecting it inwards where you want it. These panels slot neatly behind your radiator wall panels and are fixed into place on the wall. You can cut them to fit perfectly behind each radiator and, at £20 for approximately 10 reflective panels, you should start saving money immediately. If your budget doesn’t stretch to these panels, you can try using ordinary kitchen foil.
Boilers and Heating Controls
High efficiency boilers
Boilers account for around 55% of what you spend in a year on energy bills so if your boiler is more than 10 years old, it may be time to think about replacing it with a new high efficiency model.
Replacing an old gas boiler with an A-rated high-efficiency condensing boiler and improving your heating controls will significantly cut your home’s carbon dioxide emissions – and could save you as much as £200 a year.
Today’s central heating boilers are much better than the old ones. They can heat water more efficiently, meaning they use less gas or oil to do the same job. This saves energy and will save you money. Condensing boilers improve efficiency by recovering heat from the gases that would normally be wasted by a conventional boiler. High efficiency condensing boilers convert more than 88% of their fuel into heat, by recovering the maximum waste heat normally rejected to the atmosphere by a conventional (non-condensing) boiler.
What to think about when buying a boiler
Combination boilers can provide a continuous flow of hot water, require less space and avoid heating water unnecessarily, but are less suitable for houses where there are simultaneous demands on the hot water, such as multiple bathrooms or showers.
Conventional heat-only systems take up more space than a combination system, but are able to provide hot water to several sources at once and are more suitable for larger houses.
Finding an installer
For a list of registered installers go to the competent person website or SNIPEF or Installers First.
For gas and LPG boilers, the installer must be Gas Safe registered. For oil boilers we would recommend that you use an OFTEC registered installer. You can find registered installers at gas safety register and oftec.
What are heating controls?
Heating controls help you heat your home more efficiently and lead to lower fuel bills. A properly controlled system should have the following controls:
A programmer
Programmers allow you to set ‘On’ and ‘Off’ time periods. Some models switch the central heating and domestic hot water on and off at the same time, while others allow the domestic hot water and heating to come on and go off at different times.
A room thermostat
A room thermostat is usually found in the hallway or sitting room and simply switches the heating system on and off as necessary. It works by sensing the air temperature, switching on the heating when the air temperature falls below the thermostat setting and switching it off once this set temperature has been reached. Thermostats are normally set between 18 and 21ºC although some people need to keep their home warmer due to their age or health problems.
If you are too warm, try reducing your thermostat by 1ºC. This can cut up to 10% off heating bills and save energy.
A programmable room thermostat
A programmable room thermostat combines time and temperature controls and allows you to set different temperatures for different times of the day.
A cylinder thermostat
A cylinder thermostat switches on and off the heat supply from the boiler to the hot-water cylinder. It works by sensing the temperature of the water inside the cylinder, switching on the water heating when the temperature falls below the thermostat setting, and switching it off once the setting has been reached. The thermostat should be set to 60-65ºC: hot enough to kill bacteria.
A thermostatic radiator valve (TRV)
Thermostatic Radiator Valves or TRVs allow you to control the temperature of a room by regulating the flow of water through the radiator. If, for example, during the day you spend most of the time downstairs, you could set the TRVs on the downstairs radiators to medium or high, whilst leaving the upstairs radiators low, or even turning them off altogether.
To make sure you are doing all you can to ensure your heating controls are working efficiently, refer to the manufacturer’s user guide for more advice.
By installing and using correctly your programmer, room thermostat and TRV’s could save you around £75 per year and 340 kg carbon dioxide.