6 Tips To Improve Your Home, Save Money And The Planet
A guest post by Geoff Thomas from Moneysupermarket.com
If you’re struggling to keep up with those energy price hikes and lead a greener life, then we’ve got a few very handy tips on how you can do both, relatively inexpensively, as well as helping you save money on your home insurance cost!
Fill In Cavity Walls
Image courtesy of Zane Selvans
Homes built after 1935 were often built with cavity walls – and if your walls are made of brick and measure 26.5cm wide or more, then your house is likely to contain cavity walls. You could be losing up to one third of your heat through your cavity walls, so getting them filled could save you up to 30 percent on your heating bill!
Getting those walls filled will help maintain a constant house temperature and will reduce condensation and damp while also keeping your home cooler during summer. Take a look at Energy Saving Trust or Energy.gov to see if you’re eligible to apply for any of the home improvement grants available in your region.
Insulate The Attic
Image courtesy of SLWorking2
A startling fact: roughly 30 percent of a home’s heat leaks up out of the house and through the attic. It’s therefore recommended that attic roofs are insulated to a depth of 270mm to help prevent the great heat escape, save valuable resources and save money.
Test For Drafts
Image courtesy of Laura MT Portugal
Roughly 20 percent of a home’s heat can be lost via ventilation grills and windows. Hold the palm of your hand up against all the windows in the house, and where you feel air moving through, you can be certain that your valuable warm and cold air is escaping.
Get An Extractor
Image courtesy of David Hawkins Weeks
For houses or individual rooms that suffer from humidity and condensation, it’s a good idea to invest in a good extractor fan, and/or implant an air brick into the wall in order to add a further means of ventilation. With the extractor, only internal doors need to be draught-proofed, so there’s no need to go to the expanse of altering windows or external doors.
Keep Your Pipes and Tank Warm
Image courtesy of Rae Allen
Insulating your hot water tank and pipes will cut heat loss by around 75 percent, whilst also ensuring that your water is hot enough for a nice soothing bath when your return home from a hard day’s work.
Double Pane Glass
Image courtesy of Ray
While many houses nowadays have been double glazed windows, yours may not. It’s a simple way of making a huge difference to your heating costs. It works by trapping a layer of air between the two windowpanes, which thus creates an insulating layer that minimises heat loss as well as noise and condensation. And even if it’s not something that you can afford to get done all at once, you can always just do the rooms that in which you spend the most time to start off with.
Image Credit: Flickr – sarah_elizabeth_simpson