If you are looking to save some money on your monthly and yearly outgoings you could do this by changing the way you heat your home. Although you might not be able to completely convert your central heating system to a completely eco-friendly and energy efficient system, by following some or all of the tips mentioned below, you will find a dramatic change in your energy bills.
First things first, you should check what kind of central heating circulation pump you have and consider changing this to a Grundfos Alpha heating pump.Although these are widely available in the UK now, you may have to press your plumber hard to get them to install one of these. If you do though, it could significantly affect the amount of money you are spending on electricity consumption every year.
If it takes a while for your hot tap to become hot enough, this is another thing you could change so that you save money from a more energy efficient system. If your hot water tap is connected to a large bore hot feed pipe, you should consider, with the help and advice of your plumber, whether it is possible for you to reduce the diameter of this pipe or take a greater number of much smaller bore pipes directly to single taps.
Monitoring Your Electricity Use
One rather sensible and probably obvious way to help save you money from having a more energy efficient home is to actually analyse the amount of electricity you use and waste by investing and installing a whole-house electricity monitor. You may be shocked by the results, but just remember that these results could save you lots of money in the long run. It is important to bear in mind though that these devices actually measure the current. This will produce accurate results with normal electric heaters, but will be less accurate with electric motors, such as heat pumps.
Following on from the last paragraph, you should seriously look at the rooms that are getting more heat than they actually need. For instance utility and storage rooms do not need as much heat as the living room, bedrooms and kitchen.
Another way that you can save money is by looking at the insulation, if any at all, in your home and think about having it replaced or upgraded. By insulating the walls, both internally and externally you could make your house far more energy efficient and thus save hundreds on your utility energy bills. You should also look at the pipework throughout your home and insulate the pipework in parts of the house that are unheated. It is thought that in the UK there are thousands of miles of pipework that are losing heat because rooms that don’t need to be heated are being heated.
Although there are many other things that you could do to change the efficiency of the heating system in your household, the above is a list of good places to start this process.
