How many times have you got an electricity bill and wondered if you’re powering the whole street? Where does it go? Similarly, winter seems to seep through your walls no matter how high the heating is, and then when it comes to bill time, you’re weeping into your cocoa because you’re paying hundreds of dollars, to still be cold anyway.
Why is this?
It’s because your home isn’t energy efficient. In other words, you might as well put your air conditioning unit in the front garden and cool down the whole road, because that’s what you’re doing!
When your house is inefficient in terms of energy, not only are you wasting valuable resources, you’re also metaphorically opening the window and throwing money out of it. Its’ time you took steps to preserve the energy you use in your house and help ensure your home assists you with this.
Still confused? Try these.
1. Get some insulation in your roof/loft/attic. Heat rises, so if your roof isn’t insulated, your radiators are pumping out heat, only for it to rise up and escape out of the top of your house. What a waste! The birds on your roof don’t need heating!
2. Insulate your walls. A similar idea, providing insulation in the walls of your house is like giving your home a great big coat to wear or a thermos jacket. Just like your body, when your home is being heated from the inside, it needs something to prevent that heat from escaping outside, and wasting your money and precious energy.
3. Double-glaze your windows. If you have a new home, the likelihood is that you’ll have double glazing. Those of you with old houses and no double glazing are asking for big heating bills. Single windows are only slightly more effective that putting saran wrap on your windows! Double glazing isn’t cheap, sure, but it’s an investment that will save you hundreds in energy payouts.
4. Check your window frames. Replace metal window frames because these, especially aluminium, work as heat conductors, so they’re just funneling the heat straight out your house to the great outdoors.
5. Upgrade your appliances. Being totally energy efficient is something we’re only newly starting to do. With this in mind, old appliances like washing machines and fridges gobble up electricity faster than new ones as nowadays there is far more focus on being efficient. Not only will replacing these appliances help the environment, they’ll help you save money on electricity in your home.
6. Don’t turn water heater off. Every time you turn the water heater off, it has to heat all the water from scratch every time it gets turned on. This a little like a car. Keeping a car running uses less gas than turning it off and kick starting it again. Same with water. It takes more energy to heat it from scratch than to keep it at a continuous warm temperature.
7. Switch bulbs. Get rid of those old incandescent bulbs. They use a lot of electricity, have a short lifetime and they’re not even that bright. Change them to LEDs to be the most energy efficient and to help the environment the most. Not only do they use a fraction of the electricity, they last about as long as Queen Victoria.
8. Look to the sun. OK, so we have to use electricity, but that doesn’t mean we have to pay the energy companies to use it. The sun is right there, just use that. By implementing a portable solar power system in your house, you can use the sun to power some of your gadgets rather than relying on fossil fuel powered electricity.
9. Turn it all down. By turning down your heating thermostat by one degree, you could save ten percent a year on your energy bill. Wow. Similarly, turn down your water temperature a little, your washing machine temperature, and your air conditioning. Also, while you’re at it, try to change light switches to dimmers, to use a lower setting when possible.
10. Cut of draughts. Start draught-proofing windows and doors. You can buy draught excluders from Walmart, so it’s not expensive, but it will stop heat escaping or cold air coming in and will keep your house cosy and tight, meaning you don’t need to constantly have the heating on full this winter.
Just take a moment to sit back and work out how many of these things need to be done in your house and you’ll start to understand how much energy and money you waste every year but not giving your home that extra layer of energy efficiency. Stop letting your house give away your money, and start taking control. At the end of the day, with all the money you save on heating, you could buy a holiday in the sun!
Freelance writer Rick Mercado live in Halifax, Nova Scotia with his wife and enjoys spending time in the great outdoors hiking across the rugged East Coast of Canada. Although he doesn’t get the chance as much as he’d like to, he always says that when he’s hiking, he feels at one with the world. In the same breath, he find himself angry and sad about the deterioration of the environment enjoys visiting sites like http://www.go-green-solar-energy.com and thinks it’s refreshing that there’s so many online resources to help people go green.