Top 5 home improvement tips for keeping your heating bills down this winter

Rohan Mathew

Updated on:

When it comes to wintertime the natural thing to do is to turn on your central heating, which can end up being very costly. However, if you make a few changes around your house, you can begin to ensure that the heat generated is staying inside your home and your heating bills are going down. Following these five tips will give you a great start to your journey to lower heating bills! 

Insulate your loft 

Insulating your loft is a key part to keeping your bills down, not just in winter but all year round. You can be losing up to 25% of your energy through your loft, so it is important to get your loft properly insulated. While loft insulation is a large up-front investment, with an average cost of around £300, however, you will be seeing a return on this investment within two years as you will be saving around £150 a year. Saving an extra £150 a year on your heating is a great change to be making to those pesky energy bills! 

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Change your boiler

During winter it is more than likely that your boiler will be doing overtime to make sure that you’re cosy while at home, but your boiler could be the very source of your heating bill problems. The age of your home’s boiler is a really important factor in your heating bills as a boiler that’s ten years or older could be losing out on as much as 40% of all energy that it generates. When you compare this to a more modern boiler, you will be losing only 11% at most, which is a huge increase and means you could be saving around an extra £250 a year. If your boiler is one of the least efficient on the scale, a new boiler on finance will be better for your wallet over time.  

A new boiler is a very large upfront investment so it’s important to research which type of boiler is best for your home as combi boilers, system boilers and condensing boilers are all different and are built to serve different size homes. So, before you invest in that New boiler costs make sure that you’ve done your research and aren’t wasting your money. 

Insulate your pipes

Insulating your hot water pipes is one of the easiest and cheapest home improvements, only costing around £3 for some pipe insulation, that you can make to save some money on your home’s heating bills. All you will need is to go to your local DIY shop and purchase some pipe insulation, some duct tape, a tape measure, and a saw to cut your pipe insulation to size. To begin with, you will want to locate your hot water pipes and begin to measure them so you can cut your pipe insulation to size. When you come to any corners or a stopcock make sure any holes or angles you have cut into your insulation are taped to the rest of the insulation with the duct tape. Doing all of this means that your hot water will stay hotter for longer meaning less energy has to be used. 

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Draught proof your home

Draughts, especially when there is a cold winter wind, can be a major cause of heat loss from both the inside and the outside of your home. This is where draught-proofing comes in and the best part is it will only take between one to two days and cost around £70 for all the needed materials. Another bonus is while you are picking up your pipe insulation from the DIY shop you can also pick up everything you need to draught-proof. 

Draughts from outside your home

Draught proofing your windows is a job that can take a while but is worth it when it’s done. After you have been to the DIY shop and bought some self-adhesive foam strips, you can begin to get started on placing these strips to your window frame so that you’re filling the gap between your window frame and the window itself. 

 

Next, you will want to look at draught-proofing your front and back doors. To begin with, you will want to use those same foam-adhesive strips on the sides of your front and back door to cover up any gaps. You will also want to buy a pair of draught-proofing brushes for the bottom of your back and front doors. To begin to attach these to the bottom of your door you will want to first measure the bottom of these doors while they’re closed and then you can cut the brush to the correct size. This way both your windows and your doors are ready to beat the draughts! 

Draughts from inside your home 

Blocking draughts from inside your own home is one of the easiest bits of draught-proofing that you can do. All you need to do is purchase a draught excluder that will often come looking like a long cushion, these can be bought from most online shops and can be as cheap as £4 in some cases. Then when your draught excluder arrives you’ll want to place it at the bottom of your doors of a room like the living room or a room that you spend a lot of time in, this way the heat that is generated in that room stays in that room and doesn’t escape below the room. This way your rooms will feel warmer for longer meaning that you don’t have to have your heating on as much keeping those energy bills down. 

Move around your furniture

And finally, a little tip that will cost you no money at all to do, move around your homes furniture. While this might seem like a little thing to do it can help a lot as if your furniture is blocking your radiators you’ll find that your rooms will either not get as hot as they could due or take even longer to heat up, meaning you’ll have your heating on for longer. Doing this one little thing could mean savings each year that did not cost you a penny! 

 

Following these five tips will give you a great start in reducing your homes energy bills and starting to save some money!