The heat is on to save cash
Heat will always flow from a warm area to a cold one, so the colder it is outside, the faster heat from your home will escape. Houses built from the 1990s onwards usually have wall insulation, but older houses may not and could be losing a lot of heat.
Most types of wall can be insulated, though you need to identify what sort of walls you have. If a house was built after the 1920s, it’s likely to have cavity walls (two walls with a gap in-between). Older houses are more likely to have solid walls. You can tell which type of wall your house has by looking at the exterior brickwork: if the bricks have a regular pattern, the house usually has cavity walls, and if there’s an alternating pattern, it probably has solid walls.
Solid walls let through twice as much heat as cavity walls, but they can be insulated, either from the inside or outside. Internally, rigid insulation boards are fitted to the wall, or a stud wall is built and filled in with insulation material. Externally, a layer of insulation material is fitted to the wall, then covered with a special type of render or cladding. There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods, says the EST. Solid wall insulation usually costs more than insulating a standard cavity wall, but heating bill savings are bigger. The EST says external wall insulation costs between £8,000£22,000 and internal costs £4,000£13,000. Savings can be anything from £115-£415 a year. homes are more likely to have suspended timber floors, which can be insulated by lifting the floorboards and laying mineral wool insulation supported by netting between the joists. Many homes, especially newer ones, will have a solid concrete ground floor. This can be insulated when it needs replacing, or can have rigid insulation laid on top.
Floors of upstairs rooms don’t need to be insulated if they’re above heated areas, but it’s a good idea to insulate those above unheated spaces, such as garages. Insulating the floor can cost anything from £950-£2,200, and savings range from £25-£65 a year. less money heating water and it stays hotter for longer.
Fitting a hot water cylinder jacket is straightforward, says the EST. Pipe insulation is simply a foam tube that covers the exposed pipes between the hot water cylinder and boiler. It can be bought from a DIY store and slipped on. It varys widely depending on the work done, but the EST says installing a hot water tank jacket on an uninsulated tank, for instance, will cost about £15 and save around £89 a year.
Draught-proofing is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to save energy, and it’s as simple as using sealant to block unwanted gaps around areas including windows and doors, and around pipework leading outside. Professionals can draught-proof your home at a cost of around £200, but it’s often easy and much cheaper to do it yourself. Make sure you don’t block any intentional ventilation, such as under-floor grilles, air bricks or vents though.
Draught-proofing around windows and doors could save around £25 per year. And as draught-free homes are comfortable at lower temperatures, you may be able to turn down the heating, saving more on energy bills. For more information on saving energy, visit energysavingtrust.org.uk. Looking for a good installer? The National Insulation Association is a member organisation for the insulation industry in the UK. For details of local installers, visit nia-uk. org