October 25th, 2021 by Sarah Miles

With the cost of heating your home rising rapidly, how can you stop your energy bills from escalating?

That’s the question every UK household is facing as energy costs rise. Simply swapping to a new provider isn’t really an option and many will have found themselves switched to a new provider, often at higher tariffs, due to theirs ceasing trading. So, if you can’t find cheaper energy, how do you keep your bills at a manageable level as we head into winter?

If you can’t buy cheaper, the answer can only be to use less, so how can you do this and still keep your home warm enough? Here are 5 things that will not only allow you to use less energy but shouldn’t mean a compromise in how warm your home is.

1. Reduce energy wastage

The first step is to stop wasting energy. In an inefficient building, around 25% of the heat produced by your boiler will escape through the roof. 35% will be lost through the walls, windows, and doors. And 10% will be lost through the floor. Collectively, these areas are known as the thermal envelope. That’s 70% of the heat you are paying to produce simply leaking out of your home. Proper insulation and energy-efficient doors and windows are the best ways to minimise this loss, but they’re not cheap. If you don’t have the budget for these measures, there are still things that you can do to conserve heat better:

• Feel for any gaps around doors and windows and fill them
• Fix holes or gaps in the roof
• Use draught excluders on doors and keep internal doors closed
• If you have a chimney but don’t use the fire, use a chimney draught excluder
• Hang thick, heavy curtains that reach the floor and close them as soon as the sun goes down
• Carpets and rugs will insulate better than hard flooring

2. Be smarter

Smart heating is all about using energy in a more intelligent and targeted way. We often don’t use all the heat that we pay to produce, either because we’re not at home when the heating comes on, or we’re heating rooms that are unoccupied. Using a system such as Nest or Hive on your central heating, or panel heaters that are smart enabled, allows you to control the heating very easily via a smartphone app. This means you can adapt the heat specifically to your movements and only produce heat where and when it is needed.

MYLEK App Controlled Smart Electric Panel Heater 1KW

Price: £100.00

Buy Now

3. Review your appliances

Energy efficiency starts with making sure the appliances that you use to create it are efficient. That means making sure your boiler is working properly via regular servicing and maintenance, and that any electric heaters you use are energy efficient. You will usually find that old plug-in heaters are expensive to run so upgrade to modern devices. Look out for Lot 20 compliant heaters as these are the most efficient heaters on the market.

4. Find other ways to keep warm

The central heating is not the only way to stay warm. We all spend a lot of money heating the entire house when we could be getting better results by just heating ourselves better. Adding extra layers will help of course, but electric blankets and heated throws can keep us really cosy and warm at a fraction of the cost of heating a whole room. Did you know that an electric blanket can run all night for just a few pennies? (And you probably wouldn’t even need it on all night anyway).

MYLEK Luxury Electric Chocolate Heated Throw

Price: £52.99

Buy Now

5. Maximise the heat you’re producing

Something that makes no sense, and yet many of us are guilty of it, is restricting and impeding the heat that we produce. Radiators and panel heaters work by convection, meaning they heat the air around them and then this circulates around the room. If we block them with furniture or hang damp washing on them, it doesn’t allow the heat to penetrate the air and therefore doesn’t warm the room. And yet it still costs the same amount of money to generate the heat. Give heaters and radiators space and don’t use them to dry clothes, as this can also lead to damp walls.