THE GREEN APPROACH TO KEEPING WARM THIS WINTER – COULD A HEAT PUMP BE THE NEXT STEP?
I hate being cold but I try and stay cosy without it costing the earth. Quite literally I try and save money while also being aware of my energy consumption. With a young family, this isn’t always that easy but there are some simple steps you can take to make sure you are taking care of your bills and your carbon footprint. Have you considered an Octopus heat pump? That’s next on the list for us, fingers crossed.
5 WAYS TO KEEP WARM THIS WINTER AND STAY GREEN
Use Thermostats Appropriately
This may sound obvious but being aware of how your thermostat works and knowing how to turn down the heat automatically at times when you are not home can save you a small fortune. I recently moved into a new house and assumed I understood my thermostat. I was wrong!! The times that I assumed my heating was off it was in fact still on. All be it at a reduced temperature but it was on. Thanks to a service engineer I reworked my times and dramatically reduced my bill. I was so excited that I knocked on my neighbour’s door to explain how the thermostat controls work. (just in case they had been misguided too 🙂 So just a quick check or adjustment could make a big difference!
I also found that I could get away with having my hot water on for considerably less time. If you have a fairly new tank it should take just an hour to heat up a full tank of water. It should also stay warm most of the day. I did a test and halved my hot water heating time and we saw NO difference in access to hot water. Another fab saving for the family budget.
With tech in mind, you can take this to another level with Tado for instance and make it much more specific. Octopus has an offer at the moment with smart heating thermostats from Tado. I have them throughout my house and they have helped lower my bills by zoning areas of the house we only want to heat for a small part of the day.
With a heat pump installed, we’d be able to make use of the large hot water tank that we have preinstalled in the house. At least when the time comes to convert over from gas that will be one item we won’t need.
Layer up
It may sound obvious but dancing around in your shorts and t-shirt may keep you warm but once you sit down you will feel the chill. We love wool sweaters and cosy socks. I also leave a few woolly blankets on the sofa to snuggle up in the evening.
Stop the draft
If you can feel a draft block it. It doesn’t have to be a fancy draft excluder. We love Home Bargains (which is a little like the “old” Woolworths) and Dunelm. You can get lots of fun draft excluders and most are under £5. Keeping the heat you have paid for is the key.
My biggest nag at home is closing doors! I keep all doors closed in the rooms we use the most. The kitchen especially is a little haven if you keep doors closed after cooking dinner.
Open and Close Curtains
Another great green way to keep your house warm is simply to open your curtains when the sun is shining and close them at night when it gets dark. It isn’t rocket science but if you have blinds as well as curtains it is something you may overlook. Doing this allows the sun to heat the room in the day whilst retaining heat that may escape at night.
Ditching gas and switching to a heap pump.
This is something you can easily overlook but the biggest impact you can have to your carbon footprint is to switch to green energy. You can wear woollies all winter long and open and close curtains but the biggest impact you can have is to make sure your energy is green.
We switched from British Gas to Octopus Energy in early 2018. I had been with them for 10 years!! Not only did we save money but we now use 100% green energy. In my defense ten years ago 80% of Britain’s energy came from coal and gas. Times have now changed and green energy can be accessed far easier. It can be confusing, however, when you are researching green energy. How can gas associated with central heating be green? The answer is simply by using biogas or using a company that offset the carbon emotions.
We now have 100% green energy and we couldn’t be happier. Nothing has changed except our supplier and our energy bills.
In the longer term, we would love to install an Octopus heat pump. Then we could ditch the gas completely. At the moment I heat my hot water from either solar or off-peak electricty but we are still reliant on gas for our central heating. A heat pump is the obvious next step on our electrification journey.
Summary
Grab some great woolly sweaters, stock up on a few bottles of red wine and get ready to hibernate. Don’t feel guilty about using the heating when you have to. It is vital for us with a young family but try and make some considered choices when turning the heat on.
When the time is right you can look to a heat pump. With government incentives in many instances, it is cheaper than installing a new gas boiler.
Keep safe and warm this winter.
Other related posts by Sarah;
- Octopus Cosy tariff review.
- Which Octopus tariff is best in winter?
- Octopus Energy solar and battery installation review.
We switched from British Gas in spring 2018 to the Octopus Energy. I did loads of research before switching and we finally agreed on a fixed tariff for 12 months. We wanted to make sure we could budget following a house move. We are now on a slightly different deal where the prices fluctuate but we still have the super green tariff. We don’t have a smart meter. We don’t have solar panels (although they are on a wishlist) and sadly we don’t own an electric car. (just a bike 🙂 For these reasons, we are sticking with a simple and cheap green energy deal rather than one of the smart tariffs for now. This may change as I would love to try and use most of our energy off-peak. We have a young family so it isn’t always that easy but we are seriously thinking of giving it a go!
bulbs. They were so simple to set up. You simply download the app, plug the hub into your modem and locate the light bulbs on the app. The hub detects the bulbs and sends a signal to the app. I have my Philips Hue colour changing LED bulbs around my garden and over the front porch. I have them set to come on at sunset and go off at sunrise. They have worked amazingly well! The app even knows when sunset and sunrise are depending on the seasons. Most of the year they are on white and cost very little to have on all night. The quirky thing is at Christmas, Halloween or on any occasion you can change the colour to reflect the mood. So at Christmas, I had mine on in red and green. They were very pretty and saved putting the light Christmas up outside.
