Top ten tips for making your home more heat efficient

Looking for some tips to keep your home warm and your power bills under control? We’ve got you!

1. Check out your insulation

Having good insulation in your home is an essential part of efficiently keeping your home warm. Insulation in the walls, floors and ceilings can save you 15 per cent on heating bills, so it’s a good idea to check your insulation’s up to scratch! It can also have a similar impact on your cooling bills, too.

2. Use floor coverings

If you have hard floors, you know they can get chilly in the colder months – whether your home is built on a slab or has draughty floorboards. By covering those hard floors with good-quality carpet or rugs, you can keep the warmth in and reduce bills by 4-6 per cent.

3. Stop the draughts

Sounds obvious, but it’s easily overlooked. Internal and external doors can be a key source of escaped heat but there are many more – including gaps between ceilings and cornices, skylights and floorboards. By sealing them up, you can get significant energy-saving benefits.

4. Look to your window coverings

Another major area of heat escape is windows. Make sure they’re sealed and there are no gaps that heat can escape from. Good-quality curtains and/or blinds can make a big difference here, so as soon as dusk falls, cover your windows to keep the heat in.

5. Consider double glazing

And, on the subject of windows, if you want to really solve the problem of heat escape at the source, think double glazing. While a costly solution, double glazing can reduce heat loss by up to 30 per cent, and is one of the most effective things you can do to reduce heating bills.

6. Switch ceiling fans to reverse

Most ceiling fans today have a ‘winter’ mode, which works on a very simple but very effective premise. Hot air rises, so by putting your ceiling fan in reverse, it pushes that hot air back down, balancing the temperature out more evenly.

7. Use your air conditioner wisely

Reverse cycle aircon units are one of the most popular ways to heat our homes – however they can also be costly. The ideal temperature is 18-20 degrees – every degree above that can increase the energy you use by 10 per cent.

8. Harness the sun

While it’s important to get those curtains and blinds down at dusk, it’s equally important to get them up as the sun rises. By harnessing the natural heat of the sun, you can increase the ambient temperature of your home naturally, reducing the need for artificial heating.

9. Explore new technologies

Heat recovery ventilation is one example of new technology that’s becoming increasingly popular as a more natural way of heating homes. Effectively, warm air from your bathroom is extracted and recirculated within the home – it can recover thermal energy at 80 per cent efficiency, and can reduce or eliminate the need to ventilate with outdoor air, which of course reduces the temperature indoors.

10. Be aware of how you’re using your home

After the ‘open plan living’ trend, homes today are being built with more areas to close off – thereby reducing heating requirements. If you can close off areas of your home then it makes sense to do so – you can warm the room you use in the early evening, for example, and not worry about heating the whole house.

By following these tips, you should be able to reduce your heating bills – and, of course, if you need any further help, you can call your local electrical contractor.