Latest news...

03-February-2010
Example of insulating central heating pipes added. Further updates added to the 2009 electricity survey and survey notes for the new house.

25-January-2010
Heat survey results completed and notes updated for the new house.

16-January-2010
New page on thermostatic radiator valves added, bleeeding radiators page updated.

08-January-2010
Balancing and setting up the central heating system updated with some user feedback.

01-January-2010
Further updates added to the 2009 electricity survey and survey notes for the new house.

24-December-2009
Initial heat survey results and notes added for the new house. Heat section restructured to allow for new house.

16-December-2009
Further updates added to the Initial electricity survey and survey notes for the new house.

How to save money on your water, heating and electricity bills at the same time as saving the environment by saving energy....

Tip Of The Day: Save Electricity - If away for over a day switch off everything you can

This web site is all about the practical aspects of home energy saving with the emphasis on saving money and energy at the same time. A lot of the tips in these pages are simple and can be implemented for little or no financial outlay. Often it is the simple things that give the greatest energy savings. To achieve the maximum energy savings with minimal effect on your lifestyle the subject of saving money and energy needs to be approached in a logical way, however significant savings can be obtained just from following the simple tips or the room by room tips in each section without spending large sums of money. It is important to get all members of the household involved.

Before rushing out and spending large sums on things like solar heating, new super efficient boilers or wind turbines think carefully whether it is a justifiable expense. The more you reduce energy use by simple cost effective means the harder the more expensive items are to justify and the pay back time could well exceed the life of the equipment, this is especially true if significant maintenance is involved.

In May 2004 I decided that the household bills for electricity, water and oil (we don't have gas apart from a propane hob unit) were costing more than they should, and I set out to identify the items costing the most and where the greatest potential for savings were. Initially electricity use was the biggest concern so for the first year I concentrated on that. As part of the exercise I decided the maximum payback time on any money I invested should be around three years. One of the goals of this project is that it should have minimal affect on our lifestyle, so far we have achieved this. Around 22% of all greenhouse gases emitted in the UK come from domestic energy use which means domestic energy saving can have a big effect.

In November 2009 we moved to a new house on the Welsh border so the whole project has started all over again with new challenges and opportunities for saving money and energy. During 2010 we will be gradually restructuring parts of the site to cope with this.

This web site is the result of the project and a desire to share the results which to say the least are staggering with big savings in electricity costs compared to 2003 despite the massive rises in electricity cost over the last few years. In addition we have made big savings in water use and significantly reduced our heating bill. These pages provide tips and ideas for saving money I have picked up as part of this exercise plus some of the details of my own experiences.

Monitoring energy use is a vital part of saving energy and money, to aid this there is a small collection of record sheets developed as part of this project.

This web site is totally independent with no commercial affiliations. The information presented here is all based on my own personal experiences and may not be directly applicable to all situations.

A small collection of home grown freeware utilities and calculators associated with computer control and energy saving that were developed as part of this project can be found at jsutils.com.

If you have a web site dealing with the reduction of energy use or your own software related to energy saving and would like us to feature it then feel free to contact us. To keep up to date with all the news from Practical Home Energy Saving subscribe to the RSS feed below.

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