Ways To Keep Your Bills Down In 2022

The recent increase in utility bills that was announced upon us last year have shown how important it is that our homes are efficient in their use of energy. It looks like high energy prices are here to stay for a while. With the news warning that energy prices may well rise again this year, we are all looking for ways to save money when running our homes. Here are a few areas that can help individually or as a whole to improve the efficiency of your home and reduce your energy bills.

With the shorter days of winter here now, lighting in our homes tends to be on for longer periods of time, with that comes a higher electricity bill at the end of the month. Lighting was one of the first benefits given to consumers through the provision of electricity nationally. This long history has been full of innovation and inventions in lighting technology that has not only improved the quality of electrically produced light, but the energy required to do so is much lower with modern lighting. The cost of new lighting is not prohibitive when you take into account the savings it will produce every time it’s used. The first LED lights were good and a massive improvement in efficiency over existing incandescent lighting. But even they have now been superseded by longer-lasting, more efficient LED technology that produces great light in a variety of subtle and even less subtle colours.

LED fittings are available in all the styles a modern home could possibly need. From kitchen downlighters and ceiling fittings that offer diffused high-level lighting, to feature lighting that illuminates a specific area. Led lighting has many advantages when it comes to external lighting too, garden steps and features can be lit for safety and pleasure cheaply and efficiently. Lighting that you use for access, an external set of steps, for example, could be fitted with both a simple switch, but in addition a motion sensor activated switch can bring lights on when they are needed, keeping them off and not consuming power when they are not. Being smart with lighting will help keep your bills as low as they can be.

Heating is where most of the energy our homes require is consumed. For both our homes themselves to be warm and also to provide hot water as and when we need it. And we need it a lot. The heating requirement for British homes is very seasonal, and though we may get the occasional off-season colder evening, our usage is mostly during the winter. Hot water is required all year round and most heating systems combine the heating of your home and water to use the same heat source. Having that source being as efficient as possible can not only save you money on your monthly running costs, but because energy prices are high across the board, the time taken to recoup the cost of a new boiler installation is shorter than it has been in the past, ensure that you get in touch with a company such as BBright that offer cost-effective boiler solutions. It may seem counterintuitive to replace a functioning boiler, but if that boiler is over 10 years old the efficiency will be lower than the latest high-efficiency boilers.

This lower efficiency will be worse still if your boiler dates back further, back to a time not so long ago when gas consumption specific to the heat output of a boiler was of much lower importance when manufacturers designed a boiler. There are other ways to heat your home these range from air or ground source heat pumps to biomass boilers. But with all their promise of lower running costs, they have yet to be made to work efficiently in the average UK home. One of the biggest factors in this is the construction of our homes themselves. A gas boiler will provide efficient heating regardless of your property type and construction, this leaves them as the best choice for the majority of homes.

Keeping the heat in our homes once we’ve generated it is a great way of reducing our bills. For each KW of heat that escapes, we have to spend another KW of energy to replace it. Depending on the age of your home your insulation may be inadequate. Lofts and walls have had the specification for insulation increased in recent years, it is worth checking if your home could have further insulation to improve efficiency. Again, with energy bills being high, the payback period for insulation by reduced bills is lower than it has been. Loft insulation has a staggeringly low payback period.

The doors and windows of homes in the past let much more heat escape than modern double and triple glazed systems. It is worth seeing what you have fitted and if efficiency can be improved. Draughts can be eliminated with self-adhesive rubber draught excluder strips where possible. Adding curtain linings or replacing curtains for ones with built-in thermal linings will help keep your home warm in the dark winter evenings.

*Collaborative post