Insulating and Heating Your Home

Keeping your house comfortable and cozy particularly during the winter months is one of the biggest preoccupations in any household. As such, energy bills are one of the biggest expenses, even after recent announcements that many of the energy companies would be lowering their costs for customers.

This is why insulation is a vital investment for any household that’s looking to curb its heating costs. Not only does it make heating your home more energy efficient and therefore use less energy to keep it adequately warm, it’s also a much greener way of using energy.

Insulating your walls and your loft will reap the biggest energy saving benefits overall, as this is where around half of your heat is lost. There are also some simple money savers you should get started with. Whether you choose to adopt all or even one of them, you should certainly consider them for your property’s wish list.

Quick Ways of Insulating Your Home

Before you start considering the bigger insulation jobs in your house, it’s worthwhile to look at the smaller tasks you can complete inexpensively in order to start making savings to your energy consumption and bills immediately. Here are a few ideas:

• Place foil along the back of a radiator –This reflects the heat away from the wall and instead back into the room rather than out of the house, so the heat stays where you want it to.

• Draft excluders –You can purchase these inexpensively from a DIY shop or make your own using leftover carpet or material. Place them under doors and drafty areas to stop heat escaping.

• Fit an insulating jacket on your boiler –This helps to prevent heat escaping at the source of its generation, and instead reach the rest of your house as it should do.

Now you know the basics, it’s time to understand the two main types of insulation you could save money and energy by adopting loft instulation and cavity wall insulation.

Loft Insulation

The roof loses a third of the heat you use to keep your home warm, so insulating your loft has great energy and money saving benefits. It works by simply laying a sheet of insulating material over the floor of the loft, though you should leave it to a professional tradesman to carry out the practical work.

With this sort of insulation you can expect to pay in the region of £250 to install it, but the payback you'll get through the savings you should make on your energy bills should cover this cost within a year.

According to the Energy Saving Trust, if you currently have no loft insulation and you install the recommended 270mm depth you could save between £180 - £220 a year on your heating bills and nearly 1.5 tonnes of CO2 every year.

Cavity Wall Insulation

Cavity wall insulation works by inserting an insulating foam-like material between the two walls of your house. This helps to retain heat in your home more efficiently and prevent condensation. It's a fairly simple process that takes two to three hours for a professional to complete.

This type of insulation costs around £260 to install according to the Energy saving Trust. However, in the long term, you can expect to knock up to £160 off your bills each year. There are also government grants available for a certain number of households each month.

Cavity wall insulation is becoming more and more popular as people see the long term benefits associated with insulation. Between 2002 and 2005, 800,000 households installed cavity wall insulation, saving around nearly 400,000 tonnes of CO2.