As temperatures start to drop and the cost of energy rises, now is the ideal time to winter-proof your home and keep your bills in check.
Households will see a £149 annual increase to their energy bills as the price cap rose by 10 per cent yesterday. A household using a typical amount of gas and electricity will now pay £1,717 a year.
Ten million pensioners in England and Wales are also facing their first winter without annual winter fuel payments worth between £100 and £300 after the Labour government scrapped them for everyone who is not in receipt of pension credit.
A few simple steps could knock hundreds of pounds off your energy bills – and with no need to shiver through the winter months.
From employing a robot to monitor your heating system to drawing your curtains at 3pm in winter, our tips could help you slash your gas and electricity costs by more than £1,200 a year.
Rising bills: As temperatures start to drop and the cost of energy rises, now is the ideal time to winter-proof your home and keep your bills in check
Insulate your home with sheep wool
Poorly insulated homes cost an extra £385 to keep warm in comparison with a typical property, according to the non-profit body Energy and Climate Change Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
The least insulated will typically pay £1,290 for gas and electricity for the winter months between October to the end of March. One with slightly better than average insulation would pay just over £900 for the same period.
Jess Ralston, energy analyst at the ECIU, says: ‘Millions of homes are facing higher bills this winter simply because they are leaking far too much heat.
But by insulating a home you bring bills down once and for all, with a long-term solution that will cut the cost of heating.’
Adding insulation to your walls is one of the most effective options, but can require a considerable upfront cost and may be invasive.
For example, adding external wall insulation costs around £11,000 and internal wall insulation around £7,500, according to organisation the Energy Saving Trust.
However, there are faster fixes that could save you hundreds of pounds.
Nick Miles, director of energy advice firm The Green Age, says that putting sheep wool in the loft is one of the most cost-effective ways to insulate while demonstrating eco-credentials. He says: ‘Wool might seem expensive but can pay for itself in three years.’
Sheep wool is not flammable and has the benefit of being far more breathable than synthetic loft insulation.
It can absorb and release any moisture in the air without losing its thermal qualities. More than a third of the heat from a home can escape through the ceiling and roof.
Natural fibres: Sheep wool is not flammable and has the benefit of being far more breathable than synthetic loft insulation
A £1,000 ‘Thermafleece’ attic space roof lining can recoup its cost in three years and then save you money.
Unlike with some modern synthetic insulation, Thermafleece – which is three-quarters British sheep’s wool and a quarter recycled polyester – can be handled without gloves and is not irritable to the skin, though it is still a good idea to wear a dust mask if you decide to lay it in the attic yourself.
It is recommended to be laid at least 240mm thick. Expect to pay about £100 for a 6.5 metre long by 40cm wide roll.
It can be rolled out between the joists on the floor of the attic and cut by hand and purchased from retailers such as Jewson, the Roofing Superstore, Natural Insulations and Insulation Merchant.
If you don’t have loft insulation, installing some with a thickness of 270mm could save you £285 a year. If you already have 120mm thick insulation, increasing it to 270mm could save you £35 a year.
A single untreated sheep fleece can be bought from Ebay for £12.99 and can be useful to block draughts coming from unused chimney spaces.
A Chimney Sheep draught excluder costs from £19 and can be pushed up an unused chimney space to block draughts to cut bills by up to 5 per cent – £85 over a year. An alternative is to shove up an old pillow.
Chimney Sweep also sells 100 per cent wool rolls that can be used for loft insulation – charging £165 for a set of three three-metre long ‘premium’ rolls (chimneysheep.co.uk). The wool needs to be laid down in rolls to make the most of its insulation qualities.
Save: £330 a year.
One-off investment: £1,000 of wool in the loft.
Hold a candle by the window
As much as 10 per cent of the heat from your home can disappear through the windows.
Flicker test: To test where the cold air is coming from you can light a candle and carefully move it around the area
Doubling-glazing can cost £5,000 to install, but you can stop draughts by spending less than £50 on solutions found at a DIY store such as Wickes.
For example, you can buy 20 metres of door and window sticky-backed rubber seal for £21.
This can be affixed around windows to fill any gaps that allow cold air to come through.
To test where the cold air is coming from you can light a candle and carefully move it around the area where you suspect there is a draught. If the flame flickers – or goes out – there is a good chance you have found the source.
Letterboxes can also allow warm air to escape outside, but a £13 brush-insulated letterbox should solve this problem.
If you have single-glazed windows, you can cover them with a plastic film that creates a similar effect to double glazing.
Called secondary-glazing plastic film, it can be cut to size and costs around £3.89 a metre. A typical home will lose up to 15 per cent of its heating through the window.
Save: £90 a year.
One-off investment: £73.
Boost the power of your radiators
One of the most cost-effective ways to increase heat in the home is sticking silver foil on the wall behind the back of radiators.
By reflecting heat off the walls, it can add 20 per cent to heating efficiency and knock £120 a year off energy bills. A five-metre strip to cover around half a dozen radiators from a DIY store such as B&Q costs £12.
Trapped air in radiators makes them less efficient – but bleed them to let this air escape with a £2 key and you will make them work at their optimal best.
If unsure how to do this check out a tutorial on website YouTube. Search for ‘bleed radiators’ on the online video platform and check the most popular posts.
Sludge can also build up in radiators over years to affect their performance.
However, cleaning the system out is often a job best left to a professional with specialist radiator power-flush equipment and it typically costs £300.
Simply moving the furniture around in your rooms can help as well. For example, sofas are often put in front of radiators, but this wastes heating the back of the sofa instead of the room. Keep furniture away from radiators to help the heat better circulate around the room.
Thermal-lined curtains in rooms with radiators can reduce heat loss by 25 per cent – saving you £150 in gas and electricity a year, according to the publication Ideal Home.
Heat boost: Sticking silver foil on the wall behind the back of radiators can add 20% to heating efficiency and knock £120 a year off energy bills
Thermal lining can cost from £10 for a metre square of curtain from a supplier such as Dunelm – and you will save at least £30 if you can stitch lining on to the curtain yourself.
You can save money on fabric – and keep the home warm – by ensuring curtains do not cover the radiator so that valuable heat disappears behind the draping.
Ideal Home says: ‘Drawing the curtains keeps the heating in at night – but open them during the day as any sunlight will naturally heat up the room.
The sun sets at around 4pm during the height of winter, so to make the most of the natural warmth keep curtains open until 3pm.’
Replacing a very old boiler is one of the most effective ways to lower bills. Households typically spend around £600 a year on central heating, according to energy supplier Ovo Energy.
Switching from an old to a new, more efficient one knocks 30 per cent off typical bills.
However, replacing your boiler does not come cheap at around £3,000 on average, so it may take you some time to make back the initial outlay. Another option is an eco-friendly air source heat pump.
These can cost more than £10,000 to install, but there are Boiler Upgrade grants worth up to £7,500, as the Government is desperate to roll them out.
However, there are steps you can take to make even the least efficient heating systems work more productively.
It is easy to focus on your thermostat temperature and radiator valves and forget the boiler itself. But controlling the ‘flow temperature’ is important.
This is how hot the water is when it passes through the radiator after coming from the boiler. If you are able to turn this temperature down by adjusting the setting of the heating control attached to the boiler – while still keeping radiators nice and warm – you can save money.
Save: £270.
One-off investment*: £124 for radiator foil and curtain lining.
* Not including boiler replacement.
Embrace robotic technology
There are a host of fancy new gadgets designed specifically to save you money during the winter months.
An old-fashioned dial thermostat on the wall is probably worth updating to a modern ‘smart’ version – but the Energy Saving Trust says turning down any thermostat one degree Celsius can shave at least £145 off the home heating bill.
Citizens Advice says: ‘You usually find a temperature between 18 and 21 degrees Celsius is comfortable. Every degree you turn your thermostat down can save around 10 per cent on your energy bill.
Savings: The Energy Saving Trust says turning down any thermostat one degree Celsius can shave at least £145 off the home heating bill
But if you have a health condition that could be made worse by the cold you should not set your thermostat lower than 21 degrees Celsius.’
A so-called smart thermostat, such as the £220 Nest or £179 Hive, does much of the thinking for you – responding to your temperature requirements and habits when you are at home.
They link the boiler up with the home internet so you can set your chosen temperature inside the house and also when the heating comes on and off – controlled via a smartphone app or a voice-activated device, such as Amazon’s Alexa.
Such technology can also be used to remotely control smart £10 electric lights and £15 sockets that mean you do not waste energy with TVs left on standby.
The smart thermostats can save you money by being turned off when you are away or out of the property – and then turned on as you make your way home. Installation is best done by a professional electrician, which typically costs around £100.
To make the most of such heat control technology also consider installing robo-radiator valves that have their own individual thermostat radiator valves (TRVs) that can also detect when no one is in the room – and automatically shut off. Smart thermostatic radiator valves, such as a £60 Radbot, can also be controlled remotely.
TRVs are compatible with most house thermostat systems – also enabling you to control rooms using a phone app or voice-activated system.
However, they cannot override the main house thermostat. With a system such as Hive it is worth considering its own range of TRVs for £60 each for a fully integrated remotely-controlled system where everything can be controlled from the same app.
Smart home thermostats, as provided by Nest, Hive and Honeywell, if used properly could knock at least £300 a year off your total energy bill.
While robo-radiators such as Radbot can cut bills by an additional £180 a year if they are fitted throughout the house. But with ten radiators in the home the price of making each one smart could cost up to £600.
Save: £625.
One-off investment: £920.
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