Great guide to keeping your house warm and using energy efficient heating systems.
How to prevent heat loss in your home
Heating your home is now one of the most expensive undertakings you will make. You want to live in a property that is warm and yet, with the cost of energy rising year or year – or so it seems – doing so cheaply is no mean feat.
We are all being encouraged to make our properties, both domestic and business, more energy efficient. In fact, for some heating systems, such as underfloor heating kits, without a higher level of energy efficiency cannot be enjoyed or used to their full potential.
Renovation, refurbishing or building new
These three activities – renovation, refurbishment or building from scratch – all offer you an opportunity to improve on the energy efficiency of your home.
The less heat that you lose from a room of space, whether installing underfloor heating kits or not, the less money you will spend on energy bills. And that can be no bad thing.
Who wouldn’t love to save more money?
According to the Neeeco’s Mass Save program, heat loss is when heat escapes from a building. In most cases, this is through windows and doors, more so through single pane windows and doors. However, there are other means by which heat can escape from a home.
Heat rises, thus if you have a poorly insulated loft then you may be losing more heat than you think. The floor can also be a source of heat loss and thus, the insulation provided with underfloor heating kits means that heat only has one place to go – up and into the room.
Will underfloor heating kits provide enough warmth in my home?
When people look into installing underfloor heat, they will come across words and phrases such as ‘a gentle heat’ or ‘background heat’. For people used to heat blasting from radiators, the thought of having a gentler heat may mean, or so they think, that they will be cold.
The truth is that underfloor heating can supply a fabulous level of heat but only if your home, or the room that it is in, at least, is well insulated!
Reducing energy consumption and heat loss – some top tips
There are many ways to reduce heat loss and thus lower energy consumption. These activities will fall into three broad categories thus, when it comes to installing new energy efficiency measures, you need to know exactly how they do save you money:
Reduce conduction loss
– that is, improve the insulation of a property
Reduce convective loss
– this means to reduce the amount of air leaked from your home
Reduce energy consumption
– by using more efficient heating methods, such as underfloor heating
If your heat loss is greater than heat output, then your money is literally disappearing through the roof as you are paying more to heat a room than what you need to.
Improving insulation
People are aware of the need for the loft to be insulated but did you know that improving wall and floor insulation can help even more?
Floor insulation ensures that there is sufficient insulation between the ground and the floor surface. In new buildings, this is done at the time of construction but in older buildings, insulation layers can be laid on existing floor surfaces.
Ensuring there is double glazing throughout the house is important but checking that it is still doing its job is just as important. People don’t realise that some very early examples of double glazed windows and doors are now no longer as efficient as they can be.
Newer, more modern example of energy efficient glass, for example, can reduce heat loss from a room far more efficiently.
Wall and loft insulation are an important part of energy efficiency. If you don’t have cavity walls, you can opt for wall insulation that is added to the outside of a property. Updating your loft insulation also adds to the energy efficiency of your property.
Underfloor heating is a great way to heat your home but…
… your home needs to be as energy efficient as possible in order that you retain as much of this heat as possible.
When you have a super-energy efficient property, you won’t need radiators blasting out heat. You will prefer the more pleasant, gentle, background heat that underfloor heating kits offer.
All of these improvements point to one thing – saving money. For many people this is the most important factor in improving their properties.
A happy by-product is that an energy efficient home uses less energy and, what it does use, it uses more efficiently. This is kinder to the environment, meaning you are pumping far lower levels of CO2 into the atmosphere – so you win and the planet wins too!
Underfloor heating trade supplies have a variety of solutions when it comes to underfloor heating solutions for your home. For great advice on the best type of floor insulation and underfloor heating kit, talk to one of our experts.
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