Tips for green living
London refurbishment does not refer only to intelligent property management, design dedicated to saving space, building side extensions and doing loft conversions. It is about smart home extensions, smart living and using eco friendly solutions to improve architectural design. At Build Team, we're committed to helping our customers enjoy eco friendly homes and in doing so, to save money on heating and energy bills. Here are just a few simple tips to help reduce your carbon footprint and benefit from simple options for green living:
Switch to energy-saving bulbs
They cost £3, but last eight times longer than ordinary bulbs. Replacing an old 100W bulb with a 20W green bulb should save you £7 a year: not much, until you add up the number of bulbs in your environmentally friendly house.
Insulate
Installing the recommended 270mm of loft insulation alone can save you £110 a year. If your house was built after 1920, a third of the heating is lost through the walls. Let us know if you need help, and we will happily provide you with a quotation to supply new insulation, or upgrade your existing. Put an insulating jacket on your hot water tank. This should cost less than £10, yet if everyone in the UK fitted one then Carbon Dioxide emissions would be cut by 0.45 million tonnes (source: Centre for Sustainable energy). If you do have a tank jacket, fit another over the top. This is not about what you can do to help our planet, but what every one of us can do to help our eco friendly home.
Draught-proof any gaps
There are lots of inexpensive draught-excluding measures you can use for a green building, including weather stripping, draught-excluder brushes, long, lined curtains (though don't cover warm radiators with them) and fabric "sausages" for the bottom of doors. Draught proofing your doors and windows will save you around £20 and 140kg of CO2 a year.
Fit energy efficient doors
Around one fifth of the heat in a home can be lost through the doors or windows and it is vitally important that when you are replacing these you choose products that offer the best energy efficiency. Most manufacturers publish the U-Values of their doors and windows, which is the rate of heat loss through the product's surface. Green technology can be a fancy name for eco friendly products widely available on the market. It is up to us to make eco homes energy saving.
Double glazing
This can cut heat loss by half, and Build Team can supply and fit replacement double glazed windows in a wide variety of finishes - including period sash windows if your home is listed or within a conservation area. The most efficient windows for eco housing carry the Energy Saving Recommended logo and they are the best choice for a first step in green living.
Save Water
About 40 per cent of water used daily in the home goes down the pan. A low flow toilet reduces this, and recycling systems for rainwater can cut mains water usage by half.
Trap the sun
Solar panels will heat up your water, but photovoltaic (PV) panels can convert the sun's energy directly into electricity. This is a slightly expensive solution for green living, but if you think about it well enough, in the long term, you are certainly making a step towards greener living and recycling all the energy we are given by nature for free.
