How to win the war against rising fuel prices

Investing money in the heating of your home is a serious business.

Replacing your boiler for a new condensing version is likely to save you up to an incredible 40% on your fuelbills. But sometimes it is easy to overlook some of the other measures, which combined can further make HUGE savings.

For instance, just lowering the temperature on your room thermostat by 1 degree C can save you a staggering 10% on your bill. It is highly unlikely that you will even notice the difference in temperature. Installing thermostatic radiator valves give you the ability to control each seperate room temperature individually. For example, you may find that you are comfortable at 18 degrees C in your bedroom whilst you may need 21 Degrees in your living room whilst sitting around watching TV. Imagine how much extra heat your bedroom needs to produce to maintain the temperature of your bedroom by those 3 degrees for an average of 8/10 hours a day.

Now imagine multiplying that amount of heat by the number of bedrooms that you have, then adding any other rooms that you have which do not require the same temperature as your living room. You are now seeing where you can make those massive savings.

If you have a traditional hot water tank, you may find that you are met by a blast of heat whenever you open the airing cupboard door.

Of course it is quite luxurious to have lovely warm towels but they are warm because your system is losing heat. If you worked out that this heat loss was costing you a pound a day, £365 a year, would you settle for towels at room temperature! Insulating the hot pipework in and around the airing cupboard and making sure your tank has some form of lagging on it is a must for all homes. Simple foam lagging for the pipework is a cheap and effective measure of energy saving.

Other simple measures like closing the curtains at night when the heating is on and pulling sofas away from radiators slightly to allow heat to circulate are obvious energy saving measures, along with timing your hot water to come on once in the morning and once in the evening rather than plod along all day. It is NOT more efficient to leave the hot water on all day, forget it, it will cost you much more that way.

However, this is the BIG one.

You MUST adequately insulate your loft. 25% of the heat your home produces is LOST through your loftspace. Recent government recommendations are that you should have 10 inches of insulation. It sometimes requires that you have to re-organise a few bits up there, but when you could be saving a quarter of your fuel bill I am sure that you agree that it is worth it. The good news is that your local council will HEAVILY fund the works and you will pay only a fraction of the cost. If you only do one thing, do this one!!

Small, hardly noticeable changes to your heating system that will make a huge difference to your heating bill.