Save on Heating Bills
Heating can be a tremendous expense but in times of bad weather, or as it is known in the UK, Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer, there is little you can do but heat your home and worry about the bill later!
But there are actually quite a few ways of reducing those bills to more manageable levels and saving large amounts of money during the long Autumn/ Winter period. The first thing that you must appreciate is that although the feeling of comfort is subjective, we can assume that a temperature between 19 ° C and 21 ° C during the day and 15 ° C -17 º C at night, is enough for most people, for every degree that your thermostat is turned up, consumption soars by between 5% and 7%. Did you know this?
If you're going to leave home for a few hours, leaving the thermostat at 15 º C, is sufficient to maintain the heat at a very reasonable level, don't forget if its cold outside you will feel warm when you re-enter the house, even if the heat is turned down.
Turning off your heating at night time, or at the very least turning the heating down to low, can save substantial amounts of money for you in the short, medium and longer term. The subject of regular maintenance checks for your heating system is also interesting because even after taking into account the cost of maintenance you could see your bills reduced by anything up to 15% a year!
A good level of insulation throughout the shell of your home, with double glazed windows and draft excluders to reduce cold seeping in from outside, should allow you to turn down your heating and save money on an ongoing basis. What is the point of insulating your home and keeping the heating at the same temperature?
The heating of water is another way to save expensive energy consumption and you can save substantial amounts of money by just turning off the tap while shaving or brushing your teeth. An open tap consumes about 6 litres per minute, which can lead to an awful lot of wasted heating energy!
It is also worth considering the fact that a shower consumes at least 4 times less water than a bath and taps with dripping or leaking washers can waste up to 30 litres of water per day. However, there are a number of very cheap aerators and other mechanisms which you can place on your taps to reduce the water flow by up to 50%.
Make the most of the capacity of your washing machine and dishwasher and use the most appropriate program because these devices use thousands of gallons of treated water each year.
Simple ideas for reducing your electricity costs include thawing the refrigerator before it accumulates more than 3 millimetres of ice and save up to 30% on energy consumption. Do not put hot foods in the refrigerator and conversely, think ahead, if you have to defrost something for the next day it's a good idea to leave it in the refrigerator, rather than use the microwave.
Replacing the traditional incandescent light bulbs with so-called "energy-saving bulbs", which use 20% of the energy of a normal bulb and also last 10 times longer, is a very hot topic at the moment and one your should consider. Finally, a tip for all of those home cooks out there, if you cook with an oven remember that each time you open it, even for a second, you lose 20% of the stored energy.
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