many homeowners when considering either upgrading or building a home are aware that heating their home will be a very expensive running. Cost over the years of occupancy. The common mistake is focussing on the actual heating system rather than allowing an equally amount of research and money in how they are going to insulate their home. I often say that you can heat a field if you put in enough heaters to do so, however as you will probably instantly agree a field would be very quickly clod again once the heat source was switched off .
Your home is the same, whilst the source of your heat and the cost is very important , it is much more important to retain that expensive heat within the habitable area of the house when you remove or turn of the heat source. As we move towards passive homes the importance of really good insulation is becoming more and more important.
For example; an A rated home which would have really good insulation, a top class heating and ventilation recovery system and first class air tightness would have no heat loss and require no traditional heating system as we know it. We cannot all build A rated homes but we can take steps to deep retrofit our existing homes and dramatically improve our energy efficiency whilst reducing our carbon footprint and saving money in the process.
Typical measures which are relatively inexpensive to install are, cavity wall insulation, attic insulation, heating controls and energy saving lightening. We can also be more vigilant in running our homes by switching off lights, turning down our thermostats by even one degree and having showers instead of baths. We in Ireland have not been particularly good at playing our part in a voluntary capacity to reduce carbon emissions and with a little better housekeeping by everyone we can play our part and enjoy monetary saving whilst doing so .
