When I was a teenager, I studied behind my desk in my bedroom. Sometimes it was so cold, that I used a little electrical heater. Especially warm feet helped. Saving money on your energy bill is difficult? The prices for gas and electricity increased a lot last months. But there are also cheap and easy ways to reduce your use of energy.

1. Apply radiator foil

Do you live in a rental house? And still want to save some money on your energy bill, radiator foil can be a good solution. The foil reflects the heat, instead of the heat will warm up the wall, it heats up the air. Simple and very cost-effective. You can buy this at any construction market like Praxis or Gamma. 

2. Heat locally

Are you working the whole day from home? Just only heat the space you are working. And maybe if you are cold really easily, you can look for Infra-Red panels. These panels only heat surfaces and yourself, not the air.

Do you want to know more about heating your house in winter? Check this blog

3. Turn off the heating an hour before going to bed

What are you normally doing an hour before going to bed? Take a shower, clean your house, walk with your dog? So why not turn the heating off a bit early? And reduce your energy use at the same time. 

4. Ventilate your house 10 minutes a day

This one sounds odd, but let’s explain. With ventilating your house, the moisture in the air will leave your house. And humid air costs a lot more energy to heat up. Just 10 minutes is enough.

5. Close all doors in the house

By closing the doors, the air circulation in your house is stopped. When you heat the rooms locally, this can help to limit the use of gas.

Together with putting your thermostat low, you can save up to €240 a year (source: Milieucentraal). 

6. Close curtains

The air circulation is also reduced by closing curtains. It also adds another layer of insulation in front of the windows.

7. Insulate warm water pipes

The warm water pipes you are normally close to the hot water boiler. And a hot water boiler is mostly situated in the attic or in the hall. In both places, you don’t need so much heating. By insulating the pipes, the water stays warmer. And the radiators, elsewhere, heat up more easily.

8. Open curtains when the sun is shining

I love light in the house. Especially in the winter, when the days are short. So let’s use the sunlight when the sun is shining. Our living room easily heats up 2 degrees on a winter day.

How much the sun is shining is difficult to forecast. However, in December 2020 the sun only shined 42 hours.

9. Use energy-saving LED-bulbs

To my surprise, a lot of people have still the old energy saving bulbs in their house. Or use a lot of halogen light. While LED-light is saving so much energy.

10. Shower shorter or with less water

Normally, 20% of the energy used in a house is used for warm water. And on average, a shower is taking 9 minutes.

This one is really difficult for me, as I love to take showers. What I do is use a water-saving shower head. This helps too to reduce your energy use.

11. Check the rubbers in the door- and window frames

Ventilating your house is a good thing to do. However, losing a lot of energy through the gaps and seams is not necessary. By checking the condition of the rubbers, you can see if they need replacement.

Bonus: 12 keep your feet warm

If I have cold feet, my whole body is cold, and it takes ages before warming up. Maybe, you have the same experience.

Other ideas to reduce energy use this year?

Feel free to post in the comments. Love to hear from you. 

Of course, there are a lot more ways to reduce the use of energy, like insulating your house. In this blog, I focussed only on easy and cheap ways. Insulating is a good investment, but not very cheap. 

 

 

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