Help With Energy Bills - Heating Solutions For Family Homes
Lifestyle

Help With Energy Bills: Heating Solutions For Family Homes

Being comfortable, cosy and content is what makes any old house a home.

It is especially important to make sure your home is warm enough when there are children involved.

However, having a cosy home is sometimes a bittersweet feeling because it comes at a cost… Quite a hefty cost at that. Energy bills for most families naturally shoot up around winter and Christmas time because of the chilly weather. This can leave a lot of people in a constant state of worry.

There is a mental conflict between wanting to be cosy at all times and wanting to be able to afford Christmas presents!

Despite this, there are a number of useful tips to help with energy bills whilst at the same time making sure your house doesn’t feel like the North pole.

Update your thermostat

Arguably the most important way to help with energy bills and heating costs is to replace your boiler and/or thermostat. Nowadays there are many different types of thermostats to suit your family best. You could install a programmable thermostat which lets you customise when your heating comes on and turns off. This could be programmed according to the time of day or according to temperature. Why not program your heating to turn on at a certain temperature and off at another temperature so it never gets too cold or too hot?

Help With Energy Bills - Heating Solutions For Family Homes

You could switch to an independent heating oil and services provider, rather than using the big names we often see plastered all over the place. More often than not, when using the big brands, part of your money is going towards the name itself. Rix specialise in offering cheap heating oil and can take all your heating worries away, from installing the boiler to delivering heating oil whenever it’s needed!

If you want to really get with the times, you could incorporate one of the app-controlled thermostats into your home. This way you can control your heating wherever you are! This might be easier if you are one of those people who has far too many things to remember, without having to think about what times to schedule the heating.

This method to help with energy bills might be more of an initial investment but it’s worth every penny as it will save you a heck of a lot of money in the long run.  

Draught-proofing and insulating

The second tip to help with energy bills and prevent any heating energy being wasted is to insulate, draught-proof and insulate some more! Your aim should be to eliminate all potential cracks and crevices for naughty draughts to sneak in through.

There are a number of ways to get stuck in with insulating your home. You could buy some door draught excluders or just chuck some cushions around the edges of any pesky old doorways or window frames. It might seem like it won’t make much difference but when it comes to help with energy bills, it’s worth trying.

Another idea which is more of an investment is to make sure all your windows are double-glazed. If you have a big family that live in an old house, it might look beautiful but the chances are it needs some structural improvements! Double glazing makes all the difference with keeping heat in and the cold out.

Older houses probably also need a heck of a lot of insulation foam stuffing into the walls. This is a reasonably affordable method to help with energy bills and doesn’t require much effort either.

Rearrange furniture

This tip is one that requires no funding at all! Simply rearrange some furniture around your home to make sure that no radiators are covered up or blocked.

If you’ve got a radiator in the living room but a huge sofa is blocking a lot of the heat, you will be wasting a heck of a lot of money. To help with energy bills, you could even just change the furniture around for the winter months when it’s particularly chilly.

Close doors behind you

This one almost goes without saying, but closing doors is a good way to trap heat and make sure your family feel it’s benefits. Whilst it might go against parent instinct to tell children to close their doors, it will help with energy bills. If you leave all doors wide open there is far more opportunity for heat to escape.

Don’t buy into myths

A last but not least tip for saving money on energy bills whilst still keeping a cosy family home is not to buy into any energy-saving myths!

Help With Energy Bills - Heating Solutions For Family Homes

There are many people out there claiming to be experts on money saving and throwing about advice that may actually be wrong. One common energy-saving myth is that you should leave your heating on low all day, even when it’s not needed. In today’s society, with the new and improved thermostat technology we have available to us, this is not necessary and will actually cost you a lot more. As long as you have your heating programmed to come on just before your family arrive home from school or work, you shouldn’t have to worry about it taking a while to heat up.

Then there are the even sillier energy-saving myths like clingfilming windows and painting radiators black, which might make a slight difference but are downright absurd!

Hopefully, these tips will help with energy bills and make sure that your home is toasty when you need it to be.

Claire x

 

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