 Tips to help you save money and reduce your carbon footprint
Thanks for joining our green savers mailing list. This month’s tips will help you save money and energy by getting the most from your heating over the colder months. They also help to cut your carbon footprint, which helps the environment.
1. Draught-proof your home the easy way
Draught-proofing is an easy way to cut your energy use, by stopping cold air coming in under your door or around your windows. Reducing draughts means that your heating system won’t have to work as hard to reach your desired temperatures, and so will help your energy bills.
You can buy specially made draught excluders – or you can make your own. An old pillowcase or pair of tights filled with stuffing, and placed in a draughty door or window gaps could be enough to stop that draught, and save you money.
2. Turn down the flow-temperature on your combi-boiler
Radiator-flow temperature is the temperature of the water that your boiler sends through to your radiators. This is different to your hot water temperature. If you have a combi-boiler, you can reduce the flow temperature down to 60 degrees Celsius and save up to 8% on your gas bill.
3. Install foil behind your radiators
If you have a radiator against an external wall, you will be losing heat from one side of the radiator through the wall. By installing a strip of radiator foil behind the radiator, you can reflect heat back into the room, and prevent it being wasted.
Installing radiator foils is easy, whatever your DIY skills. You can buy specially designed sheets from your local hardware store, but if you are on a tight budget, you can even use standard tin foil – although this will not work quite as well.
4. Use your radiator’s thermostat to control the heat in different rooms
Most radiators have simple thermostats on them that you can use to control the temperature of individual radiators. This will be a small knob on the side of the radiator with some numbers on it, usually with a scale from 0 to 6, where zero (0) is off and six (6) is fully open. Try aiming for the lowest temperature that keeps the room comfortable in each room.
You can also use this to control the temperature of different rooms, so you can save energy being wasted in a room which you don’t use, or that you would like to be cooler (such as your bedroom).
5. Myth-buster: don’t leave your heating on low all day when you are out.
This will waste energy when you don’t need it. If you want the house to be warm for when you return home from work, use a timer to set the heating to come on about 30 minutes before you arrive home.
Got more tips? Share them with us!
What else do you do to save money and energy at home? Send your tips to us so we can share the knowledge and help all of us to keep our bills down, or share on social media with the hashtag #Southwarkgreensavers
If you need urgent financial help
Try more things to help the planet
If you want to do more to cut your carbon footprint, then there is lots you can do, from eating veggie to flying less.
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