Home insurance - Tips & Advice - Green living
An energy-efficient house makes sense: it’s cheaper to run and now also a key selling point if you choose to put your home on the market too. You might also be surprised at just how easy it is to cut your energy use without making a huge difference to your facilities or home comforts.
You can run a simple, online Home Energy Check with the Energy Savings Trust at www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/proxy/view/full/165/homeenergycheck. Spend a few minutes completing the questions and you'll receive a personal report, showing you how much energy and money you can save in your home. In the meantime, here are a few tips to help you reduce unnecessary energy use:
Insulating your loft can save you around £110 on your energy bill and just under one tonne of carbon dioxide emissions a year. And this is just one of many improvements you could make. You could also install cavity-wall insulation – applicable to most houses build after the 1920s – or solid-wall insulation where you’ll start to see savings after five years.
Wrap up your hot water tank
Insulating your hot water tank and pipes keeps water hotter for longer by reducing the amount of heat that escapes. Fitting them is an easy DIY job and costs about £22 initially.
Seal gaps around skirting boards to keep draughts out and stop heat escaping through your floor. You can do this quickly and easily yourself with sealant. In a typical home, 20% of all heat loss is through poor ventilation and draughts – but if everyone in the UK adopted a few more simple draught-proofing measures such as fitting brushes to letter-boxes we could save around £130million a year!
Glaze windows
Double-glazing can cut heat lost through windows by half and save £80-£100 a year on your heating bills and 740kg of carbon dioxide. It works by trapping air between two panes of glass to create an insulating barrier. Get the professionals in for this job and always look for the Energy Saving Recommended logo when choosing windows.
Reducing your room temperature on your heating thermostat by just 1ºC could cut your heating bills by up to 10% saving you £40 a year. Plus your cylinder thermostat shouldn't need to be set higher than 60°C/140°F. Adjust it today and when it gets warmer just turn it off!
Close your curtains
You can also stop heat escaping through windows by closing your curtains. They act as a draught excluder.
Turn lights off when you leave a room or go to bed – and use energy-saving lightbulbs. Just one can save you £60 over the lifetime of the bulb as they last up to 10 times longer than ordinary light bulbs. Plus don’t leave appliances such as TVs on standby or charge phones or other gadgets unnecessarily – the CO2 emissions from electrical equipment being left on standby are equivalent to 1.4 million long-haul flights according to a recent government report.
Wash with care
Ask your family or housemates if they have any washing that they could put in with yours. A full cycle will use the same energy whether it is full or not. Or, put your washing machine on its half-load or economy programme. Always reducing the temperature to 30ºC will also save energy.
Don’t overfill the kettle if you’re only making one cup. Just use the energy you need for exactly that amount of water (make sure the element is covered in an electric kettle).
Direct Line home insurance includes cover for your buildings including fixtures, fittings and outbuildings. Plus cover for contents including furniture, carpets, curtains and home entertainment equipment. If you make any changes to your home by making it more energy-efficient, make sure you let us know so that your home insurance policy is up to date. New customers can also apply for an online home insurance quote today.
To make sure your home and its contents are covered in case things go wrong, go to the Direct Line website for an online quote today.
|
