Home heating costs can be a big drain on your budget. Solution? You need to seal up the whole house. Having said that, it’s easier said than done. Unless you live in an igloo, chances are that your home is more like a Swiss cheese, with holes everywhere... even if you can’t see them.
Experts have now demonstrated that if you could actually find and add together all the small gaps in your home – including the walls, the roof, and the foundations – it would be equivalent to a 3-foot square window left wide open 24 hours a day, throughout the year. No wonder it costs so much to heat up your home!
So what can you do about it?
Sealing the leaks can radically reduce your energy costs, while saving you a fortune and making your home much more comfortable. It’s not small change either. Recent reports and home heating blogs suggest that this January’s average home heating bill in the UK will hit £200.
That’s a huge amount by anyone’s standards and if you’re on the UK’s average salary of £1,388 net a month (take home after tax and NI), it makes a serious inroad into your disposable income. That’s why slashing heating bills by between 10% to 30% percent over a year can make such a profound difference.
The best part, perhaps, is that sealing leaks is both inexpensive and very effective at the same time. Active You estimate that this method offers possibly the best ROI (Return on Investment) you can get on an energy upgrade.
How to go about it?
First, hire a professional home energy auditor to find all the leaks. He/ she will do some tests to determine how leaky your home is. Once the investigation is complete, the leaks can simply be sealed with caulk or weather stripping. This procedure will cost you in the range of £150 - £250 – depending on the size of your house – but the price is worth it.
Secondly, it is worth remembering there are a number of grants to help you make your home more comfortable and affordable. Homeowners in England can take advantage of a Government grant of up to £3,500 to improve the heating and insulation in their homes. You can additionally take advantage of the UK Government’s boiler scrappage scheme whilst people who fall behind with their fuel bills can sometimes receive emergency grants or loans from The British Gas Energy Trust.
Finally, do you want to save even more on both your gas and electricity bills? Click here and you can win £1000 off your utility costs, and also get a brand new Nintendo Wii into the bargain.
Photo: An open window, equivalent to the sum total of all the draughts in an average home, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
