Simple tips to save energy

It’s never been more important to understand how your boiler works. After all, it is the most common type of central heating system in the UK, with around 23 million homes getting their heating and hot water from gas boilers.¹

By reducing your thermostat by just one degree and being in sync with your boiler, you could avoid being out of pocket by £145 a year.²

If you’re interested in expanding your boiler knowledge, take a look at Energy Saving Trust’s guide to how to take control of your heating.

One of the biggest ways that energy is lost in the home is through draughty doors and windows. By blocking up gaps to keep the heat in and the cold air out, you can keep your home warm and toasty. A quick and free way to solve this is to create a draught excluder using plastic bags stuffed with newspapers or other spare materials. Otherwise, with the help of a J Cloth, a pair of scissors and self-adhesive foam tape (found at any homeware shop) you can draught-proof your doors for a small cost.

For windows, heavy curtains can make a real difference to how much heat is lost during the winter – and in the summer, blinds can help keep rooms cooler, so you can avoid having to turn on your fan, or even buying one.

It might sound obvious but running your dishwasher half-full wastes half the amount of energy needed when running a full load.³ So a good way to reduce this waste is by only using your dishwasher when you’ve managed to fill it as much as possible.

If you’ve got kids, get them to help by treating stacking the dishwasher like a game of Tetris. By reducing your dishwasher use by one run per week, you could save £17 a year.⁴

There’s nothing more quintessentially British than a steaming hot mug of tea. But when it comes to making one, many of us are boiling more water than we actually need: 95% of us boil the kettle every day, with 40% doing it more than five times a day.

Three quarters of us appear to be overfilling our kettles, wasting a total of £68 million.⁵ However, all is not lost as we can avoid this water and wallet wastage by only boiling what we need and checking if the water in the kettle is hot before re-boiling it. Developing these habits could save us £13 a year each.⁶

Or just turn them off when you’re not using them. Doing so could help to reduce your household carbon emissions and could well save you around £25 a year.

To save even more switch all bulbs to more energy efficient LEDs and save up to £65 a year.⁷