Last Updated on March 8, 2024 by Kravelv
Moving home is an exciting and stressful time, often the last thing that you will want to be thinking about is energy bills, however making sure that your new home is energy efficient, using courses like backyard revolution review can save you a lot of money as well as making your home more comfortable. It can also increase the value of your home so that if you decide to sell your home in the future, it will be worth more than if you didn’t make any energy efficiency improvements.
Improving the energy efficiency of your new home will also make it more environmentally friendly, and you will not have to worry as much about the constantly increasing costs of electricity and gas that seem to be occurring annually.
Find out how energy efficient your home already is
Your estate agent or conveyancing solicitor should give you an Energy Performance Certificate when you move home, speak to them if you don’t already have one as they may have it on record. The Energy Performance Certificate will give your property a rating from A to G, and will also include recommendations about the changes that you can make to improve your property’s energy efficiency. You can use this to work out what the most important changes are for your property.
It’s extremely important for you as the homeowner to understand how to improve epc rating from e to c to ensure that your property meets regulations and reduces long-term energy costs. Listed below are things you can do to improve your home’s energy efficiency and raise its EPC rating:
Insulate it
The best way to save energy is to make better use of what you already have. This means keeping the heat on your property so that your boiler doesn’t have to work as hard to keep your house warm. The most common places to lose heat include the doors, windows, roof, and fireplaces. Check out the Washington Post’s infographic for more details on where your home is likely to be losing heat.
Many older homes tend to be draughty, so they will lose a lot of heat. This is often especially the case with their doors, if your home is draughty, you can use draught excluders to insulate your doors without having to replace them. It can also be fairly inexpensive to fit insulation in your attic as this is where a lot of heat is lost due to heat rising, in some cases, you may even be able to claim a grant from the government to fit insulation in your loft and wall cavities.
Out with the old boiler
Older boilers are often horribly inefficient, noisy and more prone to breaking down. While the initial expense of a new boiler can be high, over time it will end up paying for itself. In fact, uSwitch estimates that people can save from £79 to £237 a year just by upgrading their boiler. Though depending on the age of the boiler that is being replaced, and the cost of the new boiler, it can take between 7 and 23 years to be fully paid off.
Getting a new boiler can also significantly improve your quality of life as many older boilers take a longer amount of time to heat the cold water and the temperature of the water will often fluctuate, so no more cold showers!
No pane no gain
As mentioned above, if you want to save energy, replacing your windows can save you a lot of money in the long term, especially if you have older single glazed windows. Most modern windows are double glazed, and some even have triple glazing so that very little heat is lost when they are closed. Triple glazed windows are especially good if you live in a busy area as they will significantly decrease traffic noise, making your home more comfortable.
Modern windows are also more secure than older windows, so by replacing the windows you are less likely to be burgled, and many insurers will reduce your house insurance costs if you replace the windows.
Light up your life
Many homes still come with old incandescent bulbs that use huge amounts of energy, 90% of which is wasted as heat. Many people are still suspicious of light bulbs that are not incandescent because older models of energy saving light bulbs that used compact fluorescent tubes often took a long time to “warm up”, had a slight flickering, or the light given off was too cold. However, with modern LED lights, this is no longer an issue. LED lights do not need to warm up, do not flicker, can be bought with many different colour temperatures (from very white, cold light to very warm light that makes it feel like it is dusk). Unlike fluorescent lights, LEDs also work with dimmers.