30 Energy Saving Tips For Your Home

Here are 30 of our best energy saving tips to reduce your home’s energy consumption and save on your utility bills. Running an energy efficient home can save you between 50% and 75% on your utility bills, saving you hundreds of dollars a year.

General Home Energy Saving Tips

• Use energy saving lighting. LED lighting uses up to 90% less electricity than old incandescent light bulbs.
• Use a power strip for your related audio visual appliances so that you can save on phantom loads and turn them all off with one switch when not in use. Appliances in standby mode still use some electricity to keep running.
• Seal up any air leaks with caulk. Keeping your home sealed keeps the warm air out in summer and the cold air out in winter, saving energy on heating and cooling.
• You can avoid having to use your iron by folding clothes neatly as they come out of the tumble dryer.
• Paint your home in light colours, darker colours absorb the light which requires more lighting energy to achieve the same amount of light.
• Make sure that your air conditioners are appropriately sized for your living rooms and bedrooms. An air conditioner which is too large or two small uses more electricity than one which is correctly sized. You should also have your air conditioners’ filters cleaned out regularly to reduce the load on the motors and ensure that they are running efficiently.
• Make sure that your home’s central heating system makes use of a good quality central heating pump to ensure that the water in your central heating system is evenly and effectively distributed to all of the rooms in your home.

Entrance & Garden

• Don’t leave your lighting on while you are not at home. Use timers or smart home lighting systems to control your lights, some even have location based services to turn your lights off when you leave home and back on again when you arrive at home.
• Use day/night switches on outdoor security lighting which you leave on so that they are not left on during the day.
• Use motion sensor lights on path ways and around your entrance doors so that they are only in use when required.
• Close your curtains during summer when you are not at home, they block out the sun and help to keep your home cool. Conversely, keep them open in winter to let the most sunlight in and help to keep your home warm.
• Limit your pool filtration pump’s running time to 6 hours a day and try to set it on a timer during off peak times.
• A solar blanket or thermal cover for your pool retains your pool’s heat, making it warmer to swim in and significantly reduces water loss due to evaporation as well as algae buildup due to direct sunlight.
• Water your garden in the early morning or late evening to avoid evaporation.

Kitchen

• Replace your old appliances with energy star certified appliances as they fail. These appliances are designed to save energy and often pay for themselves in savings over the life of the product.
• Use sunny days to dry your clothes outside, but if you need a tumble dryer, invest in one with electronic humidity control, these tumble dryers will turn themselves off when your clothes are dry.
• Use a pressure cooker to cook food which takes a long time to cook to reduce the cooking time.
• Avoid using your microwave to defrost food. Rather take your food out of the freezer the night before and place it into the refrigerator to defrost throughout the day.
• Use a single larger refrigerator and freezer rather than multiple smaller ones.
• Let hot foods cool down to room temperature before putting them into the refrigerator.
• Do not fill your kettle if you only need a cup or two of boiling water. Always heat up the amount of water you are actually going to use.
• A gas stove or cooker is much more energy efficient than an electric one, costing you less to run. This is especially true if you live in an area with piped utility gas.

Bathrooms

• Lower your home water heater’s temperature to the lowest setting you can still enjoy a hot shower with, 55°C to 60°C is ideal. By just using the hot water when you shower, you save a lot of energy consumed in keeping a large amount of water stored at a high temperature.
• Even better than the above tip is to replace your existing water heater with an inline gas heater or a solar water heater. An inline gas water heater instantly heats the water up as your need it instead of keeping a large volume of water hot, and a solar heater uses energy from the sun to heat your water instead of electricity.
• Use infrared bulb heaters in your bathroom as a more energy efficient alternative to bar or fan type heaters.
• Install water saving shower heads to limit the amount of water consumed when you shower. Have a look at how easy it is to replace your shower head.
• If you do alterations to your bathroom, ask your plumber to plumb your bath water drain to an outdoor tank which can then be used to water the garden.

Study or Home Office

• Turn off your computer and printer or copier when they are not going to be used. Although standby modes save power, they still use some electricity to keep running.
• Use a laptop instead of a desktop computer. In order to run on a battery, a laptop is designed to be more energy efficient than a desktop computer.
• Use a small LED desk lamp for reading rather than having to put on multiple larger ceiling lights to provide the same amount of light on your work surface.

What are some of the tips and tricks you’ve used around your home to save energy? Let us know in the comments section below.

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