Electric Heating Systems

If you were one of the people who have felt the cold in the UK in the past week, like myself, then you also decided to switch on your central heating. It's predicated that this Winter is going to be one of the coldest yet and if this is the case then once again we'll be faced with vast expense of heating our homes to make them relatively habitable throughout the Winter months.

How can we bring this cost down? Well, there's not much chance of the electricity and gas suppliers lowering their costs to what we all like to pay, but you can make sure that you're on the fuel tariff most suited to cater for your consumption. Using websites like money saving super market to compare your local suppliers will make sure that you're with the cheapest supplier and on the lowest cost tariff.

Also, making sure you're savvy with being energy efficient will help with your bills. Instead of turning your home into a furnace, why not turn the temperature down on your central heating thermostat? On average, for every 1ºC you turn down your heating, you'll save £50 per year and also 1/3 of a tonne of carbon! If you're wearing just a t-shirt inside on the coldest of winter days, you're probably running your central heating too high.

If you don't have a timer, you can cut your bills by investing in one. In my home, I have a 24hr timer. This timer allows me to turn the heating on and off automatically at set periods in the day, and have that setting repeat daily. I have it set to turn the heating on about an hour or two before I wake up in the morning, so the process of getting out of bed is slightly less painful. My boiler is set on a low temperature setting for the heating, so the flat is gradually warmed in the morning, making it just warm enough without over heating the property. As I'm at work in the day there is no point heating my home, so the heating comes on in the evening for 2 hours just to keep the place warm whilst I'm there.

Often the approach taken to heat a home is to constantly heat it at a low temperature. This isn't really helping your energy efficiency when using gas or electricity. It's best to use it only when you need it and when you do turn it on, have it turned up to the lowest setting possible for your desired comfort.