We’ve rounded up some of the best and simplest energy saving tips to help you save money on your bills – and help the planet too! These are quick, easy measures you can take without making big changes to your lifestyle or daily routine. Sure, they may not save you hundreds, but they will put a little extra cash in your pocket. And small amounts soon add up…
1. Familiarise yourself with your heating controls! A bit of fiddling can make a big difference to your bills.
Dropping your thermostat by just one degree should save £60 over the course of a year. This is a big saving and probably not a big difference in thermal comfort of your home.
2. Switch to efficient LED lighting.
In halogen bulbs, 90% of the electricity used is given off as heat, and only 10% as light. With LEDs, this figure is reversed. They are therefore hugely more efficient.
They are a bit more expensive to buy, but they last much longer than traditional halogen bulbs because they have no filament, which is the part that eventually breaks in traditional bulbs. For this reason, they are much cheaper to run in the long run.
3. Heating hot water is an expensive business. Try to limit your usage.
- Save water and save money – saving water is important even if you don’t have a water meter, because you will pay for the energy used to heat a huge amount of water.
- Obviously we all like to luxuriate sometimes, but if you can make the change, a ten-minute shower will – in almost all cases – use less water than a bath.
- To use hot water more sparingly, you could also fit a water-saving shower head. They only cost £20-40 and a good one will give you the same power, whilst using less water. You can install it yourself and it could save you over £100 in a year.
- Don’t use the hottest settings on your washing machine – wash clothes at a medium temperature.
- Insulate your boiler. Boiler jackets are super cheap, easily installed and could save you £35 per year.
4. Use your oven wisely
Try to cook in bulk when possible – the fewer times you have to heat up your oven, the cheaper it will be!
Instead of cooking things from frozen, defrost food in the fridge overnight – this will halve the cooking time!
It may sound obvious, but cutting food into smaller pieces will mean it cooks more quickly.
If you have an electric oven, you can switch it off a bit before the cooking time is up – it will retain the same amount of heat for ten minutes.
Try placing stainless steel skewers through baked potatoes and joints of meat to help them cook quicker.
Leave the oven door open when you’ve finished cooking – it’s free heating!
5. Finally, a quick reminder of the obvious things:
Air-dry laundry when possible rather than using a tumble dryer.
Make sure to turn lights off when you’re not in the room – this could save upwards of £50 in a year for very little inconvenience on your part.
Fill your washing machine with a proper load.
In the kitchen, even little things like using the right sized pans for your hob can make a difference.
Don’t keep things on standby!
So there you have it, some of our favourite tips for an energy efficient home!
Think we missed something? Do you have a different opinion?
Comment below to get your voice heard…
Love all these tips – the idea of cutting food up smaller to decrease cooking time is one of those “why didn’t I think of that?!” moments.
We did some investigations into unplugging appliances overnight – that step beyond not leaving things on stand-by – collating lots of research in this area. Hopefully it’s useful additional reading for those, like us, watching every penny: https://thriftyparent.co.uk/home-household/does-unplugging-electrical-goods-overnight-save-money/