Make Environmentally Friendly Home Improvements

As we are constantly reminded that we need to be ‘green’ and how it will save us money, many of us will look on in envy at those lucky people who are having the chance to build an eco-friendly home. Not only do they get to do their bit for the environment, but they will also save a lot of money on bills in the long-run. But what if building just isn’t an option?

Well, there are plenty of green home improvements you can make that can help your home retain its heat better and you can carry all these things out on a strict budget. It’s important to recognise that if you’re living in an old house, your heating and heat retention probably isn’t going to be as effective as it should be; so you will need to assess just how effective it actually is.

Firstly, you will need to find out a little bit more about how your house was built; was it built with single brick walls or does it have cavity walls? Is there insulation in the loft? Getting a basic idea of how your home was constructed will allow you to start planning your eco-friendly improvements. You should also calculate how much energy you are using in your home; using an electricity monitor is a great way of finding out how much energy you are using to carry out simple tasks such as boiling the kettle. Once you have an idea of where your energy is running away to, you can start putting things on standby, turning the heating down a degree and so on.

Keep the heat in your home.

The temperature outside drops dramatically, so you’re turning the heating up, but as you’re heating your home it is just escaping out of the top. This leaves you needing to leave the heating on for longer and on a higher temperature, therefore costing you far more money. This is why it is vital that you get insulation in your loft as well as thinking about getting cavity wall insulation. Experts also suggest that rendering your outside walls or repointing brickwork can also be an energy saving solution, should you have enough budget for this.

Get rid of those draughts.

Doors and windows are notorious for letting heat in, especially if you don’t have double or triple glazing installed.

If you haven’t, this should be something you try and budget for as this could save a lot of wasted energy – equally, by just shutting your curtains at night, this can help retain some of the heat lost through your windows.

Draught excluders are a great way of stopping heat from escaping under the doors; particularly if you have a front door in your living room. Just using a simple stuffed draught excluder (that you can buy from most home stores), will stop that draught from coming in and the heat going out.

Saving Water

You can really save water without having to spend too much, both inside and outside your home. For example, if your shower is quite powerful, you can have it fitted with a regulator that will reduce the flow of water, thus saving you a lot of money in the long run. Equally, taking a shower instead of a bath, or sharing your bath water are great ways of conserving energy.

Outside, be prepared for dry weather during the summer by installing a water butt. Hosepipe bans can soon come into play, so be prepared. Additionally, by storing up rain water from your drainpipes, you will save a lot of money on the water that you would have been using from your hosepipe.

It really is easy to make a few simple changes to your home to make it that bit more energy efficient. If you know exactly where your house is losing its energy, you can start conserving it and making changes that will help both the environment and your wallets in the future.