Adapting your home to improve its efficiency

Many people are aware of the need to reduce our collective impact on the environment, by reducing pollution and living sustainably. In an ideal world, we would electrify everything by installing solar panels and a storage battery, using heat pumps for space heating and hot water, replacing gas cooktops with induction heating, and switching from fossil-fuelled vehicles to electric vehicles. However, as worthwhile and money-saving as many of these initiatives are, their upfront cost is higher than many people can afford and government assistance to households is limited.

However, there are initiatives that you as a householder can consider that are more affordable, and will help to both reduce your impact on the environment and save you money. These include:

• Increasing the insulation of your home

• Filling any gaps around windows and doors

• Utilising daytime passive heating in winter and reducing night-time heat loss

• Reducing heat gain in summer with shading