With sky high energy prices are you interested in saving money and reducing your carbon emissions?
Read on if you would like to know more about a recent service I commissioned at my home. I think I’m quite energy conscious but there is always more you can do to reduce heating bills. I paid £250 to a small community interest company called Energy Tracers to help me find where energy is leaking from my house.
They ask you to put your heating on full to create a big temperature difference between the inside and outside of your house. They install a big fan on one of your doors to blow air outside. This creates a negative pressure in the house which leads to cold air entering your house through every weak point in your home insulation. The technician uses a thermal camera to ‘see’ all of the places where cold air is rushing in. The sorts of places will include things like:
- Opening windows,
- Gaps around window frames,
- Doors and letter boxes,
- Loft hatches,
- Cellar doors,
- Skirting boards,
- Air bricks,
- Cupboard doors in a loft conversion,
- Open chimneys, etc.
The thermal camera will also pick up areas on walls and ceilings that are poorly insulated. In my home I had the following problems:
- Two bay windows where the construction was just one brick thick.
- Ceiling above bay window had no real insulation.
- Party wall in our loft conversion where the wall is shared with our neighbour who has an unheated loft space.
There are lots of things that can be improved with a modest investment in things like sealing around doors and windows. Obviously more major investment in things like insulating bay window walls etc are going to cost probably hundreds of pounds. I have no plans to move home and Katey and I are probably only going to move when we get taken out in a box so I’m happy to invest. With the high energy costs even the more expensive insulation things I expect to get a payback in probably a couple of years.
Just one word of warning. The energy trace takes quite a bit of time to complete – the company are real enthusiasts – be prepared for the energy trace to take several hours. If anyone living in Worcester who vaguely knows me and would like more information please contact me.