Sunday, January 16, 2011

Warming To Your Bill

By Saul Malpass


It's amazing how many people are unaware or don't care about energy saving within their home. Not only for the environmental issues energy saving carries but also the savings that can be made by efficient heating within your home. With a home heating strategy you can make savings of up to 225 a year! This is a nice little earner for a home and could contribute to a better festive period at the end of the year. Your boiler is the most important appliance to get right when thinking of saving energy as it contributes to 60% of the carbon emissions generated from your gas heated home.

How long does a boiler last? Boilers last up to 12 years and then ideally need replacing. For efficient heating it is important to replace with an energy efficient condensing boiler to have a real impact on savings within your home.

How does an energy efficient condensing boiler help you? With a normal boiler your home will be converting around 65% of its fuel into heat, with an energy condensing boiler you will see improvement upon this of 20%. They do this by taking the heat wasted from a regular boiler condensing it and recovering it for use. Pretty simple really!

Controlling your boiler Carelessly leaving your heating on all day can be disastrous for your bill. It is important to be wary as to what times your heating comes on and goes off controlling the time your heating comes on can be just as important as having an efficient boiler. Timers will help greatly with saving energy, it is important to set them so your boiler comes on maybe an hour before you or a family member arrives home. A 9 to 5 worker may want the heating to come on in the morning at 7 and switch off around 9 for it to come back on around 4/5 O'clock, but remember everyone has different lifestyle so fit it to your own personal preferences.

Timing is not the only thing you can do to help with improving heating, turning your heating down by just 1C can make a saving of around 55.

What is the best temperature to have within a home? Studies have shown that the general consensus for an energy saving whilst maintaining a warm home is around 21C which equates to around 70 F and then at night suggests the temperature to be 19C equivalent to 65 F (Yahoo 2007)

A study on Yahoo showed that the best temperature to keep warm but also maintaining efficient heating was 70 F or 21C during the day and 65F or 19C through the night, this should be more than warm enough and if it is why not turn it down a notch to make these extra savings?

The iPhone has now developed an application that can control heating from wherever you are in the world. This will definitely improve efficient heating and limit wasted energy.




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