Energy Saving Tips

Stansgran Can you afford to pay for a Green Deal survey? They should be able to tell you what you need to do to make your house energy efficient and should find any failings in your current home insulation. You do not need to then sign up for the Green Deal. I think the survey costs about £150.00. Is it possible that the contractor recommended by the council didn't do what he was paid to do and that your cavities and roof are not fully insulated?

We bought a new house in the 1970s when the first building regulations for insulation came in. Ours was the last house on the site to be completed and when we went in the loft we found the builder had used rolls of much thinner wall insulation to insulate our loft and if a role ran out half way along a rafter run, they left the rest of that rafter space uninsulated. I suspect they couldn't be bothered to get the proper materials when there was only one house left to finish.

I agree with JessM over condensation. When we first had our house in France the walls would stream with condensation during every winter visit because the house was uninsulated and the thick solid walls were very cold. Now that we have replaced the windows and insulated most of the exterior walls and the roof we have no condensation because the walls no longer get so cold.

A new boiler will not require all the central heating system to be replaced, just the boiler so there should be no need to replace central heating pipes set in the concrete screed.

henetha that is tough. Park homes are the most difficult to improve. Breaks my heart to think people need dehumidifiers in their houses tegan - where does the condensation form?

Is that addressed at me bags ? Depends on architecture and orientation doesn't it. If you have a large sun-facing window in a well insulated property it would be noticeable. In this flat, at this time of year, we don't get much direct sun on windows at all. The main big window faces east and is recessed because of a balcony so by the time the sun is over the hill it is not actually hitting the glass for long at all. Later in day only 2 small windows and back ones rarely a beam gets to them.

Our thermostat is in the lounge. The central heating comes on for an hour in the morning, then we light the wood burner and that heats all our winter living space. Sometimes, if it is is very cold we boost the central heating for another half hour. The wood burner gives us 11kw and we use ten cubic metres of wood a year. We have lots of insulation and double glazing everywhere.

The "solar gain" in our house this morning was very noticeable. This continues through the winter when the morning sun is coming in horizontally. Why do you say it's not very significant? I notice its significance even outside. There's a huge difference in terms of clothing needed when working outside in winter between working in sunshine and working in shade. Of course solar gain is significant, even if it's only for a short time each day.

Could you get a dehumidifier to help with the condensation? I wouldn't be without one and my kids use them all the time in their homes as well. Used to have a mould problem in my house before I bought one.

I live in a mobile home (called Park Homes these days) and have no gas laid on. I do have a form of electric CH but it's too expensive to use.
So I just keep my living room warm with a 2 bar electric fire and once the weather gets really cold I sleep on my large comfortable sofa. Last winter I did this for 5 months and it was fine..
Condensation is a problem in spite of having extra cladding added to the
outside walls, and double glazing. I'm forever mopping windows and cleaning mould off walls and ceilings.

By the way, I did apply for a Warm Front grant to have gas installed and then gas heating, but was turned down. But they did pay for the extra cladding.
But I cope with the help of warm clothing and drawing the curtains early and sitting under a duvet in the evenings etc. There are some great ideas
in all your mesagers above.
Are we downhearted? Never ! Nil desperandum....

As long as you can see the stuff laid out if you peep through the hatch it should be ok. although ideally, tucked into the rafters like a duvet.
How old is your boiler? What kind/model is it?
Worth looking at some of the draught proofing etc suggestions above (esp Flicketyb's) - they are all cheap.
A fair bit of heat can be lost through a solid floor (which is why new houses are insulated under the floors). Carpets, underlays and rugs all help.

If you have gas c/h then you should not be needing to have electric radiators. They are expensive to run - electricity works out much more expensive heating than gas. If you had a not-too big room with a closable door that you spend a lot of time in a fan heater with a thermostat might be the answer to improve the comfort. Or maybe one Dimplex style heater.

Thank you Jess. There is a very low rake to the roof which means I can't get up and crawl about. Only ever done it once. The loft insulation was done in a day by one of these companies recommended by the local council. The wall insulation at the same time. I know we will need a new boiler although when it was put in we were told it would see us out! We have concrete floors and the thought of re piping horrifies me. I am toying with the idea of electric radiators as advertised in the national trust magazine. In Geneva I did the opposite ,took winter clothes and boiled. I travel light but DH took a lightweight Goretex a Goretex fleece and a heavy weight Goretex . The reason why I travel light is because he has to have something for every occasion.
Sorry once I start to ramble.....

Stansgran I once rolled up in HK with summer clothes and the temperature dropped to 4 deg and stayed there. Shops closed for New Year (the only 2 days in the year so couldn't even buy a fm heater. Wore a lot of v large clothes that belonged to OH. I tried the bathwater technique with some enthusiasm. Flat remained at 4 deg.
I presume your decorator was not talking literally . Condensation could of course cause your paper to peel. Did this occur before or after the insulation I wonder?
Condensation inside houses is not caused by poor ventilation - after my pressure test experience I realised that even very new and energy efficient houses are full of cracks and gaps that let air in and out. It is caused by water vapour condensing on cold surfaces e.g. single glazed panes, single skin brick or stone walls. Condensation occurs on cold cars at night for instance in the outdoors where there is no lack of fresh air.
In an insulated house with good double glazing you would have to produce a lot of extra water vapour (leaving hot baths lying around, boiling soup all day etc) to generate some condensation even on the windows.
If you have had your loft insulated you should not be getting any condensation on the ceiling unless your house is extremely cold. Can someone check that your loft insulation is actually installed properly? A friend bought a new house, looked in the loft and found they had put the rolls of insulation up there and they were still in their wrapping...

My daughter has a flat on the top two floors of a six storey block. They have to have the windows open most of the time and never turn on the radiators. We have just returned and we slept with a sheet on and windows open. Very cold in Geneva too. Actually I like a cold bedroom and find this uncomfortable.

We had our house insulated but I don't think it's made a scrap of difference . Also I am finding wallpaper peeling off the ceiling. The decorator says the house can't breathe. I read that if you put the thermostat on at the lowest temp and the radiators on max ALL THE TIME it gave you the best run for your money. Can't get DH to agree. I heard on the local radio and I've been doing it in winter that don't empty a hot bath but leave it in and open the bathroom door - rather like the Japanese and the lids on their baths to keep the heat in like Tegan says.

I am sitting here in a T shirt in a not very well insulated house. I tackled the problem from the other direction and chatted to the furniture manufacturer down the road and got a free supply of his offcuts and then got a huge wood burning stove.

Entirely depends on insulation. In a perfectly insulated house, if you left your heating on, the thermostat would turn the heating off once it had reached the required temperature and would never turn on again. In a tent, the heating would never turn off if the outside temperature was low.

- Heat pad down the back of jeans.
- Thick dressing gown on over clothes in the evenings.
- Vests, bed socks and fleece jimjams at night - well, blokes like challenge!
- We have thermostats on all radiators and only switch them on when we will be using the room. No point in heating a room you are not in.
- Efficient boiler - we can flick a radiator on in the bedroom before we go to bed and the room is hot in 10 minutes and the radiator can then be switched off again.
- keeping doors shut.
- wearing layered clothing - vest, polo jumper, over jumper, cardigan or fleece and wool jacket.

You have probably gathered that I hate the cold! - and hat waste of fuel!

I think this is a much argued issue with strong advocates on both sides. Personally I do not like heating at night in a bedroom, once in bed the colder the room the better I sleep (within reason).

In the winter, once the morning temperature outside drops to 3 degrees or less we light our stove and find that provides sufficient heat downstairs. At higher external morning temperatures the internal temperature rarely drops more than 2 or at the most 3 degrees between morning and evening heating sessions and we find that quite comfortable. I must admit in daytime my first recourse when he temperature drops is an extra layer of clothes.

There is a school of thought that turning your boiler thermostat down(can't remember what setting) and also your room thermostat down and leaving the heating on is less wasteful than heating the house up from cold twice a day. A plumber recommended it and 2 winters ago I tried it with no increase in gas consumption.A tricky one to do because you do have to have good insulation but it seemed to work.
Of course I also think we do not wear nearly enough clothes anymore and far fewer natural warm fabrics/fibres. Wool, tweeds, flannel - all those things I wore when I lived in Scotland and used to get dressed under the bedclothes - we don't do them anymore , modern easy care artificial fibres aren't the same as vests, thermal tights /socks - put more clothes on!!

I can attest that getting up in the morning out of a warm bed and having to put on multi-layer clothing because it is only about 5 degrees indoors is not fun.
But having an electric blanket that I could turn on at a low level in the night was a blessing.

Well, it is just that if we can do it with our house and without using any esoteric measures or investing in any expensive technologies because we are constrained in what we can do because the house is listed then it is possible for anyone with an older house to do likewise.

We have had a whole series of threads about reducing carbon emisssions with all sorts of suggestions for innovative and generally unproven technologies, yet the one thing that will really reduce emissions is householders addressing making sure there houses are as energy tight as they can be and using energy responsibly. We have also had stories of heroic Gransnetters getting through the coldest weather using nothing more than a thermal blanket, hotwater bottle and hot drinks, they assure us, they are very happy and comfortable like this. I confess I admire them, but do not want to emulate them. I want a warm house and as lower fuel bill as I can manage. I want people to know that it can be done.

For those on small incomes help and assistance is available from the energy companies themselves, but much of what we have done has been mostly small scale, low tech and using inexpensive materials purchased in our local DIY store and is within the budget of most people.

Sorry if I misunderstood flicketyb - you are a legend re your attempts to reduce energy consumption of your house.
We once had someone do a pressure test on our house to detect leaks. It was surprising how many of them there were , despite its recent construction. Going around the outside and checking if there are any gaps around pipes or under sills is something you can to to reduce these. That expandable foam works.

No heating (or vest) on yet ! I spend a lot of time outside gardening during the day and right now I am on the sofa with a blanket over my legs and my reading lamp (the only light on) has a halogen bulb in which gives out warmth. I am cosy and warm !

JessM I wasn't suggesting that behaviour was more important than insulation. All energy saving starts with a good warm tea cosy over the house, but all too often people in well insulated houses are then careless in the way they use energy. Drive through any town at night and see how many houses have all the lights on and none of the curtains drawn - and how often the curtains, when they are drawn, are unlined. Leaving lights on and even double glazed windows uncurtained and there is considerable heat loss.

Many people walk around their well insulated houses in winter in T shirts. To my mind that means the house is overheated and the heat should be turned down, many have heating on 24/7. Many people put dishwashers and washing machines on to wash very small quantities of clothes/dishes instead of waiting until they have a full load.

I sympathise with your life in a fuel efficient house. When we bought our 15th century house in the mid 1990s there was not a shred of insulation anywhere in the house and 'central' heating in only three downstairs rooms and a downstairs bathroom. We moved in just before Christmas, in a cold snap, and for the first week until the first tranche of roof insulation was installed walked round indoors in outdoor coats and gloves and came close to sleeping in the living room our bedroom was so cold.

In 2000 I set myself to halve our energy consumption over 10 years and that I have more or less done. It has included relatively cheap initiatives, like doubling roof insulation and making sure our single glazed windows and frames, which we cannot change, are as draft proof as possible but over 13 years we have also upgraded our boiler and when the roof was renewed made sure insulation was fed down the inaccessible sloping ceilings in the bedrooms.

As a result our fuel bills have remained stable and risen very little in the last seven years. We reckon all the work we have done is currently saving us over £1,500 a year compared with what we would be paying if we were still consuming as much energy as we were in 2000.

Impressed with your caulking Flicketyb. I disagree though about behaviour being more important than insulation and other energy efficiency measures.
When warm air flows rapidly through walls, windows, roof and floor it is potentially a very rapid process - but of course totally invisible. I keep trying to explain to MIL that if she leaves her bedroom or bathroom window open half an inch "for ventilation" it the equivalent of posting £5 notes out of the window at regular intervals. Its the same with a non-insulated loft etc. - the money just wafts away.

It's easy to be careful with your heating when your starting point is an efficient boiler and a well insulated living space. Because the rooms stay warm for much longer. In my energy efficient house in MK we would have the heating on first thing and it would stay warm, even in normal winter temperatures, until mid afternoon. Heat emitted from fridges, computers etc was enough to top it up.
I also have experience of winter in NZ in a completely energy-inefficient house. No insulation, lots of glass, high ceilings, cracks between the floor boards and around the doors leading to the great outdoors etc. There was no adequate heating system - an electric fan thing in the wall that broke down would never have managed to warm up the kitchen/living room because all the heat went up into the high ceilings or out of the fabric, without pausing to warm at ground level. An attempt to heat the same space with a bottled gas heater was a joke.
The only way to keep my sickly son warm was to have a plug in radiator on in his bedroom all night and then move it into another tiny room and have it on all day. This gave me an insight into life in fuel poverty.
Having said all that, when "behaviour" involves leaving the windows open while the heating is on - well heads and brick walls come to mind.

Setting the thermostat clock to turn the heating off an hour before you go to bed is another good wheeze.

We have a big listed house and despite the age, size and limitations on insulating our house we have all the heat we need and our fuel bills are around the national average.

This is because over 45 years in a range of sizes and age of houses we have never felt the need to have the heating on for more than
3 hours in the morning and 6 hours in the evening. Having heating on 24 hours, is quite unnecessary unless someone is old and ill or disabled or otherwise vulnerable. Occasionally on very cold days we light a stove but usually just putting on an extra layer is enough. We also have the thermostat set at 18.5, which we find quite warm enough.

Although we have plenty of roof insulation and some wall insulation I think a lot of heat economy lies in good heating behaviour. Like Jess we close all our curtains as it gets dark, all our curtains have thermal linings and if there is a radiator underneath the window I tuck the curtains onto the windowsill so that heat does not escape behind them.

We also have kitchen foil or the thicker specialist foil available from DIY stores behind any radiator on an outside wall. This reflects heat back into the room

We have thermostatic radiator valves on every radiator and in winter months I keep the thermostat down and the doors shut on any room we do not use regularly. It will quickly reheat once the door is open and thermostat turned up when it is required.

All our windows are single glazed and cannot be changed but where possible we have fitted fixed secondary glazing to the windows using acrylic sheet and a plastic gasket that goes round it and all windows and doors are draft proofed with that cheap stick-on foam from DIY stores, which is as good as anything. I have also gone round the window frames with a tube of decorators caulk to stop drafts from ill fitting window frames.

We are fortunate we can afford our heating bills but can see no point in wasting heating unnecessarily.

I saw some socks in a sports shop the other day that are supposed to keep your feet warm. I always wear a vest in the winter, and a hat. Agree about drawing curtains; the people who live on the boats on the nearby canal told me they all do that. I've made sure I've turned the radiators down in all unused rooms but turned them up in the ones I live in. This sounds awful [sorry] but since I had a water meter fitted I've filled plastic containers with the bath water to use to flush the loo. I put tops on them to stop evaporation but noticed that, by doing so, the water was still really warm hours later. I also fill a flask if I've boiled too much water for a cuppa. I'm also going to get a cover for my immersion [I don't have a combi]. The cover it has seems to keep it pretty warm but I'm still going to get an extra one.