Find your Local
We're a national brand with a local team in your area.
Select the location below that's closest to you:
How should I be heating my home or business responsibly? It’s a question we are hearing more and more often. And it’s not just homes and businesses – it’s churches, community facilities, sports clubs that could all benefit – with benefits to the environment too.
The best advice is to find ways to heat our work, play and living environments that align to the way we use them. That’s number one. Even before you get to looking at alternative energy sources, just thinking carefully about how your heating is programmed can cut emissions – and save money.
Heating accounts for the highest proportion of UK household carbon emissions – higher than transport and aviation.
*Yearly carbon dioxide emissions in kilograms
*Data from Energy Saving Trust, based on household emissions in 2017.
Around 14% of the UK's carbon emissions are from home heating, according to government figures. Of course, many of us are using spaces where heating systems are old and inefficient. What is perhaps worse is, the heating programmer may be past its useful working life, or even left to its own devices, with programmes not adjusted.
Installing and correctly using a programmer, room thermostat and thermostatic radiator valves could reduce your home's carbon emissions by 315kg a year according to Energy Saving Trust.
New technologies will do more.
You can reduce energy consumption without losing out on a comfortable environment.
Updating your boiler and heating controls, cleaning your radiator system, checking your radiators are balanced, turning down the flow temperature of your combi boiler, re-looking at your programmed timings and zoning your heating are all good plans. Zoning gives you heat where you need it – when you’re using the space. One of the worst culprits for inefficiency are night storage heaters in bedrooms – either domestic or holiday lets/group accommodations. While storage heaters consume low-tariff energy at off-peak times and store it, they offer heating during the day. If those heaters are in sleeping accommodation, then the energy output is wasted, creating warm spaces no one is using and chilly nights when bedrooms are occupied.
So controlled heating built around a plan for how the space is used is key.
From the mid-2030s the government plans to phase out the installation of fossil fuel gas boilers. All newly installed heating systems must be low carbon or offer the opportunity to switch to using clean fuel. These steps have the potential to yield big savings on energy bills.
Low-carbon options, heat pumps for example, are a more expensive up-front cost to install, generally higher than new boilers.
Self-sufficient sustainability for zero carbon emissions is the gold standard, but it doesn’t have to be delivered all in one hit. We take a very practical approach to achieving alternative energy goals for businesses, public spaces and homes. Every incremental step away from fossil fuels reliance, facilitated by a cleaner, greener element capable of working with existing infrastructure, is a step in the right direction.
Our technical advisors offer no-obligation free consultations. These enable people to find out more about how integrating some of the smartest alternative energy-powered technology with existing systems can help achieve lower bills/emissions for them. They also offer a view of how, a little further down the line, they can be added to for energy security, cost control and, ultimately, energy independence.
Things are changing. It’s good to be informed and in control.
