Making Your Family Home Energy Efficient For Winter

Being able to keep the family home warm and cosy during the winter months is a top priority for most parents.  But keeping the house feeling toasty comes at a cost, both to our purse and to our environment.  You could change energy providers to try to reduce costs. But even better, you could make some energy efficient improvements around your home.

Here’s a few helpful tips to get you started.

Heating

To begin with, let’s look at your heating system.  Is your boiler energy efficient?  Like many homeowners, you may not know the answer to this.  If this is the case, have a look at your boiler’s make and model.  A search on the internet should give you an idea of how old it is and what sort of efficiency rating it has.  If your boiler is reasonably old, it may be worth discussing an upgrade with a reputable heating engineer.

If you have a modern, efficient boiler, there are still some basic improvements you can make.  Bleeding radiators is one maintenance task that often gets forgotten. However, it’s important to do to ensure your heating system is working well.  Another good tip is to make sure your furniture isn’t blocking the heat from your radiators.

Draughts

Keeping your family home warm and cosy isn’t just about having the heating on all the time.  It’s also about how well your home retains the heat.  Blocking draughts is a quick and easy way to help improve your home’s efficiency.

Check for draughts around the home, particularly around doors, windows, chimneys, floorboards, and skirting boards.  There are plenty of affordable ways to block draughts around doors and windows, including using thick curtains over doors and windows, draught excluders, and draught excluding strips.  You could also consider simple fixes such as chimney balloons and strips that fit between the floorboards.

Insulation

As well as blocking draughts, another way of keeping your home warm is to improve your insulation.  First check that your windows are double-glazed and that the seals around your windows are intact.  Secondly, check your loft space is insulated properly.  Gaps in your insulation, or not having a thick enough layer of insulation are common issues that should be addressed.

These simple steps should help keep your family warm and reduce your energy consumption, which is great for the environment and keeping costs down.  If you’re not sure how much you’ve reduced your consumption by, or how much it’s saving you, why not ask your energy provider to install a smart meter?