July 11, 2022
Energy prices are rising at an extra-ordinary pace at the moment and are set to carry on increasing. Add to that the global drive to reduce carbon emissions and we have two extremely persuasive arguments to do everything we can to reduce energy use.
It’s a real double whammy, save the environment and save money at the same time. It might seem, as a tenant, though, that there is little you can do: Your landlord is responsible for things like loft and wall insulation, new windows and upgraded boilers, which are the bits that lead to the biggest energy reductions. So, what can you do as a tenant to reduce your energy usage? Actually, quite a lot, in this article we share our top energy saving tips for tenants!
- Spend less time in the shower. Most modern showers can use around 5 – 13 ltrs per minute depending on the type of shower. A bath uses around 80 ltrs in total. So, you can see that a 15 minute shower at the lowest use uses almost as much as a bath. At the top end, with modern power showers it takes just 6 minutes to equal the amount of water used in a bath.
- Use your fridge freezer more efficiently! Don’t leave the doors open any longer than needed, defrost the freezer regularly to keep it working well, defrost food in the fridge, the cold from the frozen food will help cool the fridge, never put hot food in the fridge and keep your fridge freezer as full as possible. The more cold things that are in there, the less it needs to work to keep things at the right temperature.
- Only use your washing machine and dishwasher when you have a full load. This reduces the number of times that they need to be run, saving energy and water. Run both on the lowest temperature settings that you can. Modern washing machines can be run as low as 30°C
- Don’t keep all your appliances on standby, turn them off completely when not in use. Although having appliances on standby is a low energy drain, the sheer number of appliances we have in our homes is increasing all the time meaning that the overall energy use is actually pretty high. According to the Greenage, around 9 – 16% of energy use comes from appliances on standby.
- Keep the heat in. This seems obvious, but heat can escape through all sorts of places. Place reflective panels behind your radiators. This way the heat only goes into the room and not the walls, put rugs on wood or concrete floors, use draft excluders at the base of doors and put-up heavy curtains to keep the heat in.
- Get an energy monitor. Although this won’t save energy directly, it will allow you to analyse where you use most so you can target areas for improvement.
- Although it sounds cliched, turn your heating down. According to this is money, thermostats should be set at around 19°C for young healthy people. Just turning down the Thermostat a couple of degrees, at the prices being charged at the end of 2021, could save around £128 per year.
- Move furniture away from radiators. We can all be guilty of putting our sofa in front on the living room radiator, but if it is too close, all it does it suck up the heat and stop the rest of the room being heated effectively.
- If you have thermostatic valves on your radiators, turn them down in rooms that aren’t used all the time and close the doors in the rooms that are to keep the heat in.
With just a few changes to how to use energy, you can make significant savings and see no significant difference in the way you live and enjoy your life.