Saving Energy in Your Living Room

Your living room may be the place you escape to at the end of a long day at work, or where you like to gather the family on a weekend; but have you had a look round to see where you could be wasting energy and consequently money with your energy bills?

There are many simple ways to ensure that your lounge is heated, and without costing you a small fortune. With a few simple yet effective energy-saving tips you could be heating your lounge for a lot less, and here’s how.

Get rid of draughts from your door

This is a common place to be losing the heat from your lounge from, particularly if your lounge is located next to a hallway or room that isn’t as well heated as your lounge. Make sure you and your family shut the door behind them whenever you leave or enter the lounge.

You should also look into draught proofing your door; this can be done by putting brushes at the bottom of your doors or using simple draught excluders that can be bought from most home stores. Or, if you want to keep costs right down you can make your own draught excluders using old tights or plastic bags filled with scrap material.

By draught excluding your loft hatches, doors and windows, it is thought that you could save approximately £55 a year on your heating bill.

Shut your curtains and get double glazing

Double glazing is a fantastic way of saving money on your energy bills if you only have single glazing installed at the moment. According to the Energy Saving Trust, by upgrading from single glazed to double glazed windows you could be saving £100 a year.

If you can’t afford to upgrade all of your windows to double glazing then you may want to upgrade your windows one at a time, starting with rooms that are used the most, e.g. your lounge. Equally, just by shutting your curtains as the night starts to turn could save you around £15 a year, which will add up! This is also the case if you already have double glazing.

Don’t forget about your chimney

If you have a fireplace installed in your lounge then you could be losing hot air up the chimney, which will make it more expensive to heat your lounge and to retain the heat within it. You can stop the heat from escaping my making sure the flue dampener from your fireplace is firmly shut whenever you aren’t using your fireplace. You can also purchase a chimney balloon, which seals your chimney – or look at having a pot cap fitted by a professional.

Heating your lounge

It has been suggested that just by turning down your heating by one degree you could save around £55 a year on your energy bills; so pull on that extra jumper and get the heating turned down by a couple of degrees if you can.

Try not to dry any laundry on your radiators too as this can make the room feel a lot colder and more humid, resulting in you needing to turn the heating up again. Even though this is tempting, particularly in the colder weather, it could increase your energy bills.

Energy-efficient lighting

If you’ve thought about it but haven’t actually changed your light bulbs to energy efficient ones then now may be the time. By swapping to LED lights from halogens and energy saving ones from old-fashioned styles you could be saving approximately £55 a year / £3 per bulb.

Be energy-efficient with your gadgets

Streaming the Radio on your TV – if you listen to the radio via your TV then try to put a blank background on your TV whilst you are doing this as this will save energy therefore saving you money.

Leaving on Standby – if you are in the habit of leaving all of your electrical appliances on standby then try to curb this habit by turning them off at the plug. Leaving appliances on standby could be costing a significant amount a year and figures produced by the Energy Saving Trust show that you could save £86 a year if you stop leaving them on standby. Try to get all of the family into the habit of turning things off at the plug.

Reducing the Brightness – on your TV settings try to reduce the brightness of your set; only a little so you can barely notice the difference. The brighter your TV set the more it will be costing you to keep it running.

Easier Unplugging – to make it easier to carry out the unplugging process so you don’t just leave items on standby, try to create enough room to unplug your TV etc. Move your TV forward slightly so you can easily reach round the back; or you could look into purchasing an intelligent mains controller which will automatically switch off any devices that are connected to your television set (e.g. DVD players, speakers and games consoles) when your TV is turned off.