5 Energy Saving Tips to Help Make Your Home as Energy Efficient as Possible
With energy prices rising significantly, it’s now more important than ever to make our homes as energy efficient as possible. This will help make your home more environmentally friendly and help you save money over the coming year.
The average UK household is now spending around £2,499.87 a year on energy, with an average of 13 appliances being used. Fortunately, there are several simple and easy ways that will help you stay on top of your energy use and spend. Check out GROHE’s 8 energy saving tips that you can start using today!
Turn the thermostat down by 1 degree
Did you know that turning down your thermostat by one degree you can save up to 10% on your heating bill?
The World Health Organisation states that a home at 18° is fine for a healthy adult. So, if you tend to set your thermostat to 20 or 21 degrees, try setting it to only 18° as this reduction could help you save energy and money.
Turn Off Stand-By
The best way to save energy is to make sure that switches and are completely turned off when not in use.
Although modern electronics use less energy in standby mode than their older models, having electronics constantly left on stand-by mode can make background energy use balloon.
Televisions can be the main contributors to excess energy wastage as people rarely turn their TV’s off at the wall. Making sure that electronics are turned off at the plug will help reduce any background wastage and spend.
Wash Laundry at Colder Temperatures
Washing your clothes at a lower temperature is an easy yet effective way you can reduce your energy use and spend.
Reducing your regular wash to 30° or even 20°can help reduce your electricity usage by up to 40% over the course of the year compared to higher temperatures. Fortunately, most laundry detergents still work just as effectively at a cold wash as they do at higher temperatures, so not only are clothes kept nice and fresh, but your energy bills are kept feeling fresh as well!
Use your Tumble Dryer Efficiently
Tumble dryers are a big source of energy use in the home. The cheapest and most energy efficient way to dry your clothes is to hang them up outside or use clothes dryers in your house.
However, if you’re concerned about damp or mould then these 5 tips will help you give the most efficient use of your tumble dryer:
- Use your washing machine’s spin cycle to get rid of excess water.
- Keep your dryer free of lint and build up
- Dry similar clothes fabrics together – Similar fabrics will roughly take the same amount of time to dry meaning that your clothes will be ready at the same time
- Don’t overload or underload the drum – overloading your drum means that more energy or heat needs to be used in order to dry the clothes. Underloading means that energy is being wasted on a near empty drum
- Use a sensor cycle instead of a timed cycle. If your tumble dryer comes with a sensor cycle option, this can be an easy way to reduce energy usage as it senses how many items are in the drum and will update the cycle time accordingly.
Use cold water for brushing teeth or washing hands
Did you know that you could be using unnecessary energy when carrying out daily essentials like washing your hands, or brushing your teeth?
Standard single-lever mixer kitchen and bathroom taps tend to sit with the lever in the middle position, meaning that when the tap is ‘turned on’ (the lever is lifted) a mix of hot and cold-water flows. Opening the tap in this positions kickstarts your boiler into action, to provide you with the warm water it thinks you require.
GROHE’s Cold-Water-Start taps feature Energy Saving technology which limits the tap’s range of movement so that only true cold-water flows when the tap is opened in the middle position. This means that when you turn on your tap, you’re not also turning on your boiler, helping you save usually wasted energy and money.
When hot water is truly needed the lever can be turned 90° to the left, to allow you to access the hot water you require.
Choose Energy Efficient Appliances
Looking to get a new household appliance, like a washing machine or oven? Then make sure that you choose appliances that have an energy efficiency rating of A or above to make sure you’re getting the most out of your new appliance with minimum energy use. The more energy efficient the product, the less energy it takes to get a job done.
Thinking of getting an Instant Hot Water Tap?
Instant hot water taps are incredibly popular as a way to save time and space in busy kitchens. But many consider them to be a huge drain on energy resources, and therefore must be expensive to run.
However, GROHE’s instant hot water tap, the GROHE Red, combats this theory.
With an A energy efficiency rating the GROHE Red provides you with 99-degree hot water at the touch of a button. This not only means that you’re saving time when preparing the evening meal, but it also means that you’re not using extensive energy to get the water you need to your desired temperature (on average it takes 7 minutes for water to come to the boil on a ceramic hob!)
