Make Energy Efficiency your New Year's Resolution | Glaze & Save

Today is Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day ; that’s right, the 17th of January is officially the day where most of us pack in our promises of being perfect people in 2018 and go back to our old ways. While we’re not here to tell you to go to the gym or start cooking gourmet meals seven nights a week, we would like to encourage you to keep your New Year’s resolution to be more energy efficient. After all, we spend 80-90% of our time indoors and 100% of our time here on planet earth, so focusing your resolution on energy efficiency will give you the most bang for your willpower buck.

1. Increase the value of your home

What if there was a way to increase the value of your home that didn’t involve shelling out tens of thousands of pounds on a new conservatory or a loft conversion? Save yourself the headache of building or extending your property to increase its value, and invest some of the cash and time into energy efficiency measures. This Is Money reports that the energy efficiency measures could add 16% onto the value of your home, and could even help you sell your home in the first place. Ed Mead, at Douglas & Gordon estate agency, says: ‘Green measures are starting to have an effect, especially if buyers are torn between two similar houses.’

2. Improve the quality of the air in your home

There’s a good chance that your indoor air quality is contributing to allergies , asthma, and even the spread of the cold and flu. Consider the moisture that is expelled into a room by its inhabitants, along with appliances such as kettles and irons. Add to that the pollutants that are expelled by everything from microwaves to carpets to air freshener and you have a potentially unhealthy mix. Investing in energy efficient mechanical ventilation not only reduces your energy consumption, but it also ensures that your home experiences the correct number of air changes to keep the air fresh without becoming draughty. Plus fresh air takes less energy to heat than air which is saturated with moisture and pollutants!

3. Save money

It’s surely on everyone’s New Year’s Resolution list to save a little bit of money. And it goes without saying that if you use less energy, it will cost you less money! The BBC reported back in 2011 that the average home could save £280 per year, or around 20% of their annual energy bills through employing some basic energy efficiency measures. Fancy saving a bit more? Several households shared their stories in The Guardian in 2016 about slashing their energy bills, with the energy bills for one family’s three bedroom house costing just £530 per year, all through adopting stringent energy efficiency measures. How much could you save?

4. Improve the comfort of your home

Home comfort and energy efficiency are two peas in a pod. Whether you find yourself shivering over your morning coffee in a house that takes two hours to heat up; toss and turn at night in a hot bedroom while the thermostat is turned up high; or can’t enjoy your favourite telly programme because of a draught that insists on catching the back of your neck: energy inefficient behaviours cause us to be uncomfortable in our homes while paying through the nose for the privilege! Improving the comfort out your home by adopting some energy efficient measures could be as simple as carrying out a few DIY jobs around the house. RESNET, the Residential Energy Services Network have some great tips on the types of tasks you can get to work on to improve the thermal comfort of your home.

5. Contribute to a greener society

Fossil fuels provide 66% of the world’s electricity output and 95% of the world’s overall energy demands. Burning these fuels leads to an accumulation of carbon dioxide in the air, which is a driving force behind climate change. These resources are also finite, with scarcity looming and increased destabilisation of many oil producing areas. This situation cannot continue. By making a commitment to become more energy efficient, your actions reduce the demand for fossil fuels and decrease emissions, slowing climate change and creating a better environment for future generations. While your actions as an individual may seem insignificant, they are part of an overall trend to become more resource efficient and greener.

Glaze & Save InvisiTherm ™ reduces heat loss through windows by 63%, slashing heating bills by 22.5%, all without harming your original windows. Find out more about our award winning, virtually invisible secondary glazing systems by calling us on 01738 562 068 or email us here.