How do I reduce my heating costs?

Space heating dominates most household energy bills, so it is where the savings are. A surprising amount comes from controls being set wrong rather than from the house being poorly insulated — heating an empty house all day is common and entirely avoidable.

What you'll need

• Programmable or smart thermostat (optional)
• Thermostatic radiator valves (optional)
• Radiator bleed key
• Boiler manual (optional)

Step by step

1. Check when the heating actually comes on and match it to when the house is occupied.Many systems are set once and never revisited. Heating an empty house is the most common avoidable cost.
2. Turn the room thermostat down by one degree.Widely cited as saving a meaningful percentage of heating costs, and usually barely noticeable.
3. Fit thermostatic radiator valves and turn down radiators in unused rooms.Heating rooms nobody uses is pure waste. Do not turn them fully off in rooms prone to damp.
4. Check the boiler flow temperature — for a condensing combi, many are set higher than necessary.Running a condensing boiler at a lower flow temperature improves its efficiency. Check your boiler's own guidance or ask an engineer.
5. Bleed radiators and balance the system.A radiator that never gets properly hot is usually starved of flow rather than too small.
6. Draught-proof and close curtains at dusk.Both cheap and both make a measurable difference to how warm a room feels at a given thermostat setting.
7. Service the boiler annually.An efficient boiler uses less gas, and servicing is a condition of most warranties.
8. Compare tariffs periodically.Savings vary with market conditions, so it is worth checking rather than assuming.

Tips

• A smart thermostat helps mainly by making it easy not to heat an empty house. If your existing controls already do that well, the saving is smaller than advertised.
• Heating water accounts for a significant share of gas use — a shorter shower and a lower cylinder temperature both help.
• Do not turn heating off entirely in rooms prone to condensation; a low background temperature prevents damp problems that cost far more to fix.

Common mistakes

• Heating the whole house all day — It is the single largest avoidable heating cost in most homes.
• Turning radiators fully off in unused rooms — Cold rooms attract condensation and mould. Turn them down, not off.
• Blocking radiators with furniture or long curtains — The heat goes into the furniture or straight up the window instead of the room.

Questions people ask