Latest news...

24-January-2012
Following useful feedback from users the following pages have been updated: Balancing and Setting up a central heating system, radiator efficiency, radiator fault finding and thermostatic radiator valves.

19-January-2012
Saving heat in the greenhouse and radiator efficiency have been updated with new information.

10-January-2012
Balancing and Setting up a central heating system and central heating electricity use have been updated.

05-January-2012
The water section has been updated with revised information on dishwashers and toilet cisterns.

31-December-2011
Electrical section updated including adding new information to saving electricity with computers and finding the hidden consumers.

14-December-2011
The lighting section has been updated with more information on CFL and LED bulbs plus various other bits of information have been added.

01-December-2011
The balancing and Setting up a central heating system record sheet is now available as a pdf download. Check out the Record Sheet Index for more record sheets.

23-November-2011
Links page updated with links to two useful sites: Green Choices and Sust-It.

16-November-2011
Tips how to save computer energy use updated with new information.

How to save money on your water, heating and electricity bills at the same time as saving the environment by saving energy....

Practical Home Energy Saving is all about the practical aspects of home energy saving with the emphasis on saving money and energy at the same time. A lot of the tips in these pages are simple and can be implemented for little or no financial outlay. Often it is the simple things that give the greatest energy savings and in a lot of cases anyone can do them. To achieve the maximum energy savings with minimal effect on your lifestyle the subject of saving money and energy needs to be approached in a logical way, however significant savings can be obtained just from following the simple tips or the room by room tips in each section without spending large sums of money. It is important to get all members of the household involved if you want to maximise the benefits.

Before rushing out and spending large sums on things like solar heating, solar electricity, new super efficient boilers and gas fires or wind turbines think carefully whether it is a justifiable expense. The more you reduce energy use by simple cost effective means the harder the more expensive items are to justify and the pay back time could well exceed the life of the equipment, this is especially true if significant maintenance is involved.

If you just want to find the easy wins to save money check out the simple Electricity, Heating and Water saving tips or look at the saving energy room by room pages for Electricity, Heating and Water to get an idea of everything from the simple to the complex. Further information can be found on many subjects in the relevant section or by following up the useful links. Information on rechargeable batteries can be found in the rechargeable battery section.

In May 2004 we decided that the household bills for electricity, water and oil were costing more than they should, and I set out to identify the items costing the most and where the greatest potential for savings were. Initially electricity use was the biggest concern so for the first year we concentrated on that. As part of the exercise we decided the maximum payback time on any money I invested should be around three years. One of the goals of this project is that it should have minimal affect on our lifestyle, so far we have achieved this. Around 22% of all greenhouse gases emitted in the UK come from domestic energy use which means domestic energy saving can have a big effect as well as being kind to your pocket. The savings quoted above all relate to our first house where the project began.

In November 2009 we moved to a new house on the Welsh border so the whole project started all over again with new challenges and opportunities for saving money and energy. During 2011 we will continue gradually restructuring parts of this site to cope with results from two houses. The difficulty with the new house is that there is no history to compare with so we will have to be a bit creative when working out the savings once there are over a years results to analyse, this will be made more difficult by the energy saving measures we are continuously putting in place. It is unlikely the savings will be as much as the first house because we are all now in the habit of switching off things we don't need.

This web site is the result of the project and a desire to share the results which to say the least are staggering with big savings in electricity costs despite the massive rises in electricity cost over the last few years. In addition we have made big savings in water use and significantly reduced our heating bills. These pages provide tips and ideas for saving money we have picked up as part of this exercise plus some of the details of our own experiences.

Monitoring and measuring energy use is a vital part of saving energy and money, to aid this there is a small collection of record sheets developed as part of this project. In addition there are pages with measurement tips for electricity, oil, water and temperature.

A small collection of home grown free for personal use utilities and calculators associated with computer control and energy saving that were developed as part of this project can be found at jsutils.com.

If you have a web site dealing with the reduction of energy use or your own software related to energy saving and would like us to feature it then feel free to contact us. To keep up to date with all the news from Practical Home Energy Saving subscribe to the RSS feed below.

This web site is totally independent with no commercial affiliations. The information presented here is all based on my own personal experiences and may not be directly applicable to all situations.

Have your say on the EnergyMiser Blog