Whether your house or flat is large or small, you might find that your home heating bill is higher than you’d like. Thankfully there are some pretty easy steps you can take that can reduce how much you need to use your heating, which will help to save you some money.
Why it can get expensive to heat your home
With the summer over and the colder winter months ahead, temperatures outside will soon be dropping and creating some chilly nights. That’s the time when you’ll be turning up the heating to stay warm indoors, including using radiators, space heaters, and more. But all of these warming devices use up electricity and can quickly increase your monthly energy bills.
This can be especially true in older homes that maybe aren’t as energy efficient or well-designed as newer builds, because flaws in home construction can let heat escape. If that happens you have to use even more power to compensate for the lost heat, so your heating costs will keep getting higher. But you don’t have to put up with this situation.
Steps you can take to cut your overall home heating costs
The experts at property buying company LDN Properties talk to homeowners every day, and they’ve heard about the stress of high heating bills. They’ve also discovered a number of steps that homeowners can take that will help to conserve heat and reduce those bills, ranging from zero-cost or low-cost steps to more-expensive changes.
- Make your home more energy efficient
Houses and flats that are less energy efficient tend to have higher heating bills, because they have outdated electrical appliances or poor construction that lets heat escape and requires the homeowner to use their heating more. Improving your home’s energy efficiency can therefore be a good way to conserve heat and reduce your need to turn on your heating. Options for achieving this goal include the installation of double-glazing or insulation that can help cut your energy bill by hundreds of pounds.
And although installing such measures can be expensive, it doesn’t have to be. The UK government recently announced grants of vouchers worth up to £5,000 to help pay for home improvements to make your house more energy efficient.
- Seal any drafts around the house
If you have small holes in your house or flat, heat will be able to escape through these and it will require a greater amount of energy to keep your home warm in order to compensate for the heating that is lost. A simple way to fix this problem is using tape to plug drafts, which will keep the heat inside the house and reduce how much you use.
- Use a hot water bottle
Hot water bottles have been around a long time and they are surprisingly effective at helping to keep you warm. If you feel that you are able to use one of these for many weeks during the winter then it can be a very low cost way to stay warm that will also help you avoid the need to have to turn up your heating.
- Wear thicker clothes or extra layers
Another low-cost option is to put on extra layers or clothes or wear thicker jumpers and other heavy material when you’re in the house. This will increase your overall temperature and likely mean you won’t need to run your heating as much whilst indoors, which in turn will help to reduce your total heating costs.
- Lower your thermostat slightly
For many people the difference between one degree of temperature and the next degree higher or lower is barely perceptible, if they even notice it at all. Should you notice that your heating bills appear to be significantly high then you might want to try lowering the thermostat by one or two degrees. It might read like it’s a small step, but turning the heat down by even just one degree can potentially create major savings on your heating bill. And it’s a zero-cost option that you can implement within seconds.
- Purchase a rug or two
Rugs are great at insulating homes, increasing the ambient temperature and reducing the need to crank the thermostat at a high heat to keep your property warm. If you have some extra funds to spend on rugs and have the space to lay them down in your house, you might want to consider buying one or two as a way to stay warm at a low cost.
Stay warm this winter but don’t break the bank
Whether you decide to take extensive measures such as installing new insulation and making energy efficiency improvements to your home, or whether you take cheaper and quicker steps that will help you conserve heat, the steps outlined above show that there is no reason why you won’t be able to stay warm this winter without breaking the bank with your heating bills.
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