Get insulated for the winter period

WITH winter nearing and the cost of energy rising, it is more important than ever to find the most efficient ways of heating and providing energy for your home.

This is especially true if do not use electricity to heat your home, as the new carbon tax in January will push up the cost of fuel.

It is not just energy costs that are rising. Temperatures could rise by up to 5°C in our lifetimes – enough for a rise in sea levels that will submerge the homes of 200 million people worldwide and cause the extinction of up to 40% of wildlife species.

Before you go out and spend your hard-earned euros on making your house more energy efficient, step one is to draw up a whole-house plan.

This means viewing your home as an energy system with inter-relating parts, rather than thinking about individual parts.

For example, a heating system is not just a boiler – it starts at the boiler and delivers heat throughout your home using a network of pipes, and even a super efficient boiler will use more fuel if pipes, lofts, walls, windows and doors are not well insulated.

The thermal photo above shows heat leaking from a house. The white, yellow and red colours show heat escaping – with red showing the greatest areas of heat loss.

You can save as much as 10% on your heating bill by reducing the air leaks in your home. So how do you find them in the first place?

On a windy day, hold an incense stick next to your windows, doors, electrical outlets, ceiling fixtures, loft doors, and other locations where there may be an air path to the outside. If the smoke stream travels horizontally, you have located an air leak.

The other benefit of carrying out this test is that your house will smell nice afterwards.

One of the quickest money-saving tasks you can do is to seal and weather-strip all cracks and openings to the outside of the house.

For those without double glazing, you can insulate windows by spraying a water mist on the glass and applying bubble wrap. The bubble wrap will usually stay in place for the whole winter with one spray.

The bubble wrap distorts the view, but does allow good daylight to still come through – good for windows you do not need a view out of.

At the end of winter, you can just pull the bubble wrap off, roll it up, and save it for next year.