A competition run by Anglian Home Improvements has unearthed some top tips for saving energy – and money – by making your home more energy efficient.
Home and Garden on Female First
To coincide with Big Energy Saving Week in October, homeowners were asked to share their top energy saving tips with Anglian via social media. Anglian has now assembled a few of its favourite tips to help others improve the energy efficiency of their homes during the cold winter months.
• Share & Save: be more sociable – go grocery shopping with a friend and share the fuel costs; share meals with your friends, its cheaper and much more fun; turn the heating down a little and share a snuggle on the sofa with your partner, children or pets.
• Replace the dial on the thermostat with a scale in 'cost per hour' rather than temperature, to focus the mind.
• Use cheap fleece blankets to add an extra layer to your curtains for the winter, making sure no heat escapes. These can be hung from the same fittings as your current curtains.
• Attach an external letterbox to the outside of the house, blocking up the flap in the door so the hot air cannot escape.
• Think about replacing your old PC with a new one. At the moment, PCs do not have energy rating labels but the newest models now use much less energy than even two years ago.
Many of the old ‘tried and tested’ energy saving suggestions are still popular and effective too, like wearing extra layers of clothes; putting tin foil behind the radiators to bounce heat back into the room; and (if you don’t already have energy efficient doors) using draught excluders at the bottom of your doors, which can be made by simply stuffing a fabric tube with leftover pieces of material, old tights or newspaper.
Melanie McDonald, Head of Marketing and Communications at Anglian Home Improvements, says: “We were really impressed with the energy saving tips we received through our Big Energy Saving Week competition. There are lots of quick, easy things we can all do to improve the energy efficiency of our homes, as well as some longer term changes such as installing the best thermal windows on the market, will ensure the maximum return on investment and benefit for many years to com.”
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