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Simple tips to save energy

How to reduce what you use at home

We’ve asked the experts at Energy Saving Trust to share a range of energy saving tips to help introduce you to sustainability in your home.

Here are five small but powerful tips from Energy Saving Trust which could make a positive impact on the planet and hopefully your pocket.

Whether you’re a renter, a homeowner or a landlord, read on to find out more.

Visual representation of five small tips to help you save energy at home

1. Get to know your boiler

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.

2. Defeat draughty doors

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.

3. Play dishwasher Tetris

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

4. Don’t overfill the kettle

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

5. Turn the lights down low

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

Know your bulbs

It’s important to know the type of lighting you have in order to determine when you should be turning your lights on and off.

  • Incandescent lights (classic heat wire filament light bulbs) should be turned off whenever possible as they are the least energy efficient.
  • For compact fluorescent lights or CFLs (spiral-shaped light bulbs) the general rule of thumb is if you’re not going to be in the room with the lights on for more than 15 minutes you should turn them off.
  • LED lights (long tube-shaped light bulbs) are very energy efficient, turning the majority of their energy into light, so we would suggest applying the same rule as you would for CFLs.

For more useful energy saving tips to implement in your home, take a look at the Energy Saving Trust’s quick tips to save energy.

Energy saving on a budget

If you’re able to spend a little more, check out the Energy Saving Trust’s Energy Saving on a Budget guide, with advice for home energy efficiency budgets ranging from £0 to £1,000+.

Information and estimates provided by Energy Saving Trust correct as at 5 October 2022. Movements in the price of gas and electricity since this date may have an impact on the size of Energy Saving Trust’s estimated savings.

If you decide to access any of the third-party websites, you do so entirely at your own risk.

 

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