Many of us are keen to live a life which is as environmentally sound as possible. The good news is that this is always easier than you might think, and doing so often brings about benefits for your own personal life as well as for the planet itself. One of the key areas to focus on here is energy-efficiency, and as with charity, this is something that begins at home.
Here are some of the most effective ways to considerably improve the energy efficiency of your home, helping to ensure you are doing your part for the environment in general.
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Find Your EPC
The first thing you will need to do is to find out how energy efficient your home is at present, and where you might want to change things in order to ensure that you can improve this. One way to do that effectively is to find your EPC — this stands for Energy Performance Certificate, and it contains a lot of useful information about how energy efficient your home is at present and what you can do to improve it. You will probably have an EPC if your home has been marketed for sale or rent any time since 2008.
All you need to do is look online at the EPC register to find yours. This may or may not be up to date, and probably not if you have made a lot of changes recently since it was drawn up. These certificates also last a maximum of ten years, so you will need to check the date on it too to make sure that it is not out of date. If it is, you can simply get a new one for a small fee.
As part of this, you might want to look for an assessor who can carry out a home energy audit. That is a really reliable and powerful way to find out about everything you need to know about your home’s energy usage.
Check The Insulation
One of the main things to focus on as you work towards improving your home’s energy efficiency is the insulation of the building. This is both an easily fixable solution and also one of the main ways in which you can expect your home to be as energy efficient as you would hope. You will want to inspect the floors, walls and loft, as well as any insulation that might be around the hot water tank and any relevant pipes connected to it. All of these should have up to date insulation, and if not then you should look into replacing it or installing it for the first time as soon as possible.
Once you have insulation in place, your home will instantly be a lot more energy efficient, as heat will be kept in much more effectively and you will not need to use as much heating to keep it warm in winter. The home will also keep cool in summer, as insulation works both ways.
Replace Your Windows
As well as that, it is going to be necessary to take a look at your windows and see whether they might need replacing. If you have windows which were installed a long time ago, there is a good chance that the technology has improved greatly since then, which means that you will be able to make your home a lot more efficient by upgrading and replacing them. A good window replacement service will consider what solutions are possible for your home, in order to make it as energy efficient as possible.
Draught Proofing
Next up comes draught proofing. This essentially means that you are checking your home for any airflow that is not expected, and then providing solutions to ensure that these draughts are dealt with and removed as fully as possible. In general, it is possible to make your home completely free of draughts — and again, this will ensure that your home is a lot more efficient on the whole. Pay particular attention to doors, windows and other similar openings, as these are parts of the home which are generally prone and vulnerable to these kinds of draughts. You will even want to check keyholes and latches, if possible.
If you do all that, you are going to be in a much more energy-efficient home in no time, which is good news for your wallet, your lifestyle and your home. Of course, it is also good news for the environment and the planet, which is the main reason that you should make sure not to overlook this.
