Free ways to save energy in your home – Nicks Energy Saving Tips!
Over the next six weeks I am going to share an energy saving guide with you each fortnight. This content will combine some of our favourite energy efficiency tips from TheGreenAge readers and ones that we think will make the biggest difference in your home to lower your energy bills. With the big energy suppliers now announcing their seasonal energy price increases – now is the perfect time to fightback against these spiralling costs.
And better still – not many things in life are free, but I am pleased to say that if you take on board the tips explored in our first guide it will not cost you a penny. Carrying on the thrifty theme, our second guide will explore measures you can undertake for under £100 and finally if your pocket can stretch a little further, the last guide shows you how to make some smart energy efficiency improvements that will have the biggest impact on your utility bills.
If you have any thoughts on our recommendations or have tips of your own to share – please comment at the bottom of this blog.
You may think that in order to become energy efficient and help the environment requires high upfront capital costs; however if you read on, the 5 tips in this guide actually demonstrate you can do pretty simple things that make a big difference and all for free. There are savings to be made everywhere in the home if you know where to look – so follow our pointers below and see how much you can save on your energy bills!
Check your heating controls
Turning your thermostat down by just 1°C can save you as much as £60 per year on your heating bill. The reason? Your boiler does not really need to work as hard when it comes to heating the home and to be completely honest – turning it down 1 degree shouldn’t really be noticeable.
A lot of people also have thermostatic valves on radiators, so if you have them – use them! If you have rooms in your home that don’t require heating, turn the valve down to zero (or at least down very low). This means the not wasting heat on unused rooms, which will also save you on your energy bills.
Finally – it is more than likely you will have a programmer with your boiler – make sure that you have this on in the most efficient manner. For example if your house is really well insulated and you have a fairly new boiler, leaving your timer on 24/7 and using the thermostat to determine the temperature of the home is the best way to go.
Conversely if you have an older house with solid walls that gets cold very quickly your best bet is to use the timer so the house gets warm twice a day – as you wake up and when you get home from work / school.
Unplug appliances when they are not in use
This may come as a surprise, but when appliances are left in standby mode they actually still use a significant amount of energy – so try to get in the habit of turning them off at the plug when you are not using them. If you have an entertainment system, plug it into a strip adapter so you only need turn one plug off and it will cut power to everything.
Also once items like phones and cameras are fully charged – remove the plug from socket completely. If you manage to start unplugging everything religiously the savings on your electricity bill will become noticeable very quickly.
Use your oven to heat your home
I’m not talking about switching the heating off and solely relying on your oven to heat your home here! However if you do choose to cook with your oven (remember a microwave is quicker and therefore cheaper) leave the oven door open when you are done.
This will help heat the house so you don’t need your boiler and radiators to work as hard – but obviously remember to turn the oven off!!
It costs more and it shrinks your clothes…why wash above 30°C
As much as 90% of the energy used by a washing machine is spent on heating the water. As you can imagine the savings that are there to be made are vast, especially if you lower your wash temperature down to 30°C. Most modern detergents are designed to operate at these lower temperatures – so follow the guidelines!
In addition if you only want to wash a half load – see if your washing machine has an eco function or a half load function. This means less water will need to be heated to get your clothes clean – so big energy savings!
Avoid baths (+ lengthy showers!)
A full bath will need about 80 litres of water to fill it, while a normal 5 minute shower will need about 35 litres. Obviously the water needs to be heated (normally with your gas boiler) – therefore the less hot water you need to produce the better.
A power shower will use about 60 litres every five minutes – so do try and keep these short!
So there you have it – 5 ways to save energy in the home that don’t cost you a penny. Come back in a couple of weeks to see our next guide!
Leaving the oven open has NO net effect on energy to heat the house. The heat gets out into the house no matter what as the oven cools because all six sides are inside the house there is no where else for the heat to go. Leaving the door open just lets the heat get out faster. MAYBE you would get a slight benefit if you have a fast warming trend outside or the sun comes up and shines in a lot of windows and takes over the heating from the houses system. Basically, front loading the oven heat by opening the door prevents the normal house heat from coming on until the sun comes up.
Thanks for your comment Ed, your absolutely right – it does have no net impact – however there is no point letting the heat slowly diffuse out of the oven – since that rate at which it does so provides no actual benefit. In a small space, leaving the door open can provide a quick heating boost though, so worth doing surely?
Seal around windows/doors under the molding.
Put insulating gaskets in all outlets, swiches, and light recepticals to prevent air leakage. This includes those on internal walls as these usually vent to the wall interior, which vents to the attic space that is outside the heated/cooled perimeter.
Seal seating surface of doors.
Switch to CFL or better LCD bulbs. The last of the normal size bulbs incandescents, 40w & 60w won’t be allowed to be sold in 2014 and beyond in the US, 75w and 100w and 150w are already gone.
Keep the refrigerator/freezer full rather than nearly empty
Replace separate washer and vented dryer with a horizontal axis, combination washer/dryer machine with condensing drying and NO vent. Condensing dryers reuse/recycle heated air and just cool enough to remove the moisture before sending it back in to the wet clothes. Heats cool house air once then dumps all the residual heat outside, plus the dryers air source is the heated/cooled air in the house, so using that up draws in outside cold/hot air which has to be heated/cooled using extra house heating/cooling energy.
Put motion detectors on all outside lights.
Consider motion sensors for internal low use rooms for lighting control.
If you individual room thermostats, turn low use rooms down, and either way keep such room doors closed so they don’t request heating or cooling as much. This includes bedrooms during the day when they are not frequently used. You can stand brief entry with cold air to get something, and don’t forget to keep the door closed other than going through the door, otherwise you will lose heat/cooling into the room while you are in there. If you have individual room thermostats program them to go up/down based on each rooms use pattern, not a common use pattern for the whole house. Don’t forget that turning temperature down (heat)/up (A/C) by more than 10 degrees for a short period will not save much on a day to day basis, unless you are going away for a few days, then go lower (heating) or higher (A/C).
Plug airflow from around well intake piping if 4″ dry tubing is used to let water pipe and power line enter the house.
Use thermal curtains when hot/cold out, except south windows during the day time.
Use the smallest burner on the stove that fits the pot the best. Use a lid. Keep the heat as low as possible to do the job, rather than putting it on high and leaving the lid off so it doesn’t boil over. You can get used to using lids and estimating heat levels. Use pots with clear glass lids, to help, and not have to remove lid to check on it as much.
Put bookshelves against outside walls, if possible, rather than inside walls for the insulating value of the books.
Keep garage door seals, the whole way around in good shape. e.g. Check for mouse chewing holes.
Insulate the attic better.
If replacing house siding find/add another layer of insulation beyond what you had before.
Install fireplace sealed inserts or stoves that use outside air for combustion. Make sure the chimney wall penetrator around the pipe is well sealed. This was one of my biggest air leaks, detectable, then the bathroom fan with failed check valve, then the well line into the house. Of course all the wall switch/socket plates could be greater, but are smaller each and more diffuse so hard to determine total leakage rate.
For internal garage door opener replacement, buy shaft drive models with double the raising speed, to reduce air leakage time into garage when driving in.
Repair/clean/old bathroom vent valves or replace with ones with check valves that work, and seal around the vent body.
Use pretty wind up or weighted clocks rather than electric clocs, if you still use standalone clocks at all.
Turn the printer off unless you are using it regularly.
Use a dishwasher without doing pre-rinsing, only good scraping. And don’t heat dry the dishes, unless you need them immediately (rare).
Don’t use the garage door to enter/exit the house unless you need to for the car. If you park the car outside as much of the year as possible, and go in through a small door rather than the large garage door you save. You really won’t melt in the rain.
Plant large deciduous trees around the house to shade it in the summer, especially the south side, to reduce cooling costs by preventing sun getting into the house or heating the house outside, including the roof. Pick a strong tree, like oak or taller species of maple, and not poplar or birch, so they won’t fall on the house. This obviously takes a a while, so don’t wait to get the trees started. Plant tall evergreens on the windy side away from the house a ways to reduce the wind speed passing the house to reduce the heat transfer from the outside of the house.
Have motion/infrared sensor, with time delay shutoff, controlled power sources for entertainment systems as an alternate way of making sure the power gets turned off to entertainment systems when you leave they rooom, and then they automatically start the power up when you come into the room, since that may take awhile for cable boxes particularly, or leave the cable box on separate non-shutdown power so it does not have to go through the long power up and download sequence.
Power down everything electronic before you leave for a vacation or long weekend, e.g. computer, modem, wifi.
Don’t use A/C except on really excruciating days, location dependent. In the northeast, US there aren’t more than 10 days a year where you might really need A/C so it is not worth the cost or electricity to use it or even install it. The trees above and a whole house fan can get you through those few days with MUCH less electricity usage.
Same goes for 4 wheel drive. There are less than 10-15 days a year where 4 wheel drive MIGHT help you, but remember 4 wheel drive does not really help with stopping today as you always have 4 wheel braking even in two wheel drive vehicles. So, 4 wheel drive only helps if you are on hilly roads with snow/ice, or are driving on roads where you shouldn’t be in the first place with deep snow, or if you drive a lot of off road. Front wheel drive cars, especially with traction control can do about as good as 4 wheel drive on almost ALL normal road use. Outsdie of those 10-15 days you pay for the unused 4 wheel drive feature with significantly reduces gas mileage, an enourmous amount of energy.
Turn lights off in rooms when not using them, especially if you still use incandescent bulbs. This just takes practice, by everyone, but then it becomes normal after a while.
Buy a smaller house. You probably don’t need that huge house, and it takes much more energy as the house gets bigger, to heat due to the larger surface area of the outside of the house. This is already done much better in Europe than in the US where houses are unnecessarily huge.
If you have two cars, have one car for driving distances, and the other be a commuter car only which can be electric for most people.
Thanks again Ed for sharing – lots of really useful stuff here!
Thanks for the tips Nick! Just turned my thermostat down a few degrees cant hurt to save some cash, plus ill just put on a jumper if i do feel a bit chilly. 😀
This is a really good article. Thank you for sharing your tips! Kind Regards, Evans Energy Solutions