Here are a collection of the simplest ways of keeping energy costs down at home. Most of them you probably already do, but its worth refreshing your memory.
- Turn your room thermostat down by 1°C – if you’ve got one or more room thermostats simply turning them all down by 1°C could save you between £55 and £65 per year.
- Close your curtains – as the sun goes the heating effect from solar radiation also stops. So closing your curtains will help keep the heat inside and reduce any draughts from your windows.
- Turn off lights – each time you leave a room turn the lights out, after all what’s the point in paying to light an unoccupied room? This is especially relevant if you are still using the old style tungsten bulbs.
- Do a full load in the washing machine – it’s cheaper to do one full load of washing than it is to do two small loads. Also try to wash your clothes at 40°C (or 30°C if possible) rather than 60°C (It’s around 30% cheaper).
- Let clothes dry naturally – rather than automatically putting your clothes from the washing machine straight into the tumble dryer, an often overlooked green home improvement tip is to hang them outside (weather permitting) or hang them on a clothes horse inside until they are dry or close to dry. If required you can then put them in the dryer to “finish them off”. A typical tumble dryer in a typical home can cost around £115 per year to run.
- Turn appliances off standby – if you turned all your appliances (especially your TV) off standby you could potentially save up to 10% of your electricity bills – check out theenergyEGG and turn unused appliances off automatically.
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