There are many suggestions for saving costs on your energy bills; these include installing an up-to-date boiler, relying on a smart thermostat and having your boiler serviced regularly to ensure it is functioning at optimal level. However, one question we come across regularly in online forums is whether or not turning down our boiler will actually save money on heating.

According to the Centre for Sustainable Energy, turning down your thermostat does, indeed, save money on heating; so does turning your radiators down low. Put your thermostatic radiator valves to good use by setting different rooms to different temperatures. If you are not in a room, set the radiator very low if you wish but do not turn it off completely.  This could lead to the formation of damp and mould. Close the door so that the rest of the house stays nice and warm.

Smart Thermostats

Smart thermostats will help you keep your energy bill down. Just by ensuring that your boiler adjusts your energy consumption depending on the temperature and humidity.

The best of these devices will actually analyse your personal energy consumption and programme themselves to keep heating levels down when you are not at home. Some even allow you to programme the temperature remotely, via a smartphone app. This is ideal because life does not always permit us to follow a strict routine. Unexpected plans can meant we need to change the time at which the heating comes on, and being able to control our energy needs remotely is just another bonus of ubiquitous connectivity.

If you are programming your boiler yourself, choose a cold night and test how quickly the house heats up to an acceptable level. Turn the heating off and see how long it takes for your home to feel too cold. When you programme your boiler, take these times into account. Consider insulating your home as well, since insulation ensure that a house warms up faster and cools down more slowly.

For every degree you set back your thermostat by just one degree can reduce your heating bills by up to 10 per cent and save you a little less than £100 per year.

Help the environment

You also do the environment plenty of good, by reducing your carbon emissions. Just one degree of heat less a year will reduce your carbon footprint by 350kg. As the Department of Energy & Climate Change notes, “Nearly a third of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the domestic sector 3. It’ll be almost impossible to meet our target of cutting GHG emissions by 80% without reducing energy use in homes.”

Don’t feel like you have to make a radical change; take it one step at a time.  Turning down your thermostat by just a few degrees in some rooms and keeping others at the level you have become accustomed to. In living rooms and bedrooms, you may start out by lowering the thermostat by just one degree; most people say that the difference is too insignificant to note.

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