Everybody knows that the more efficient your boiler is the lower your energy usage and subsequently the more money you save on your gas bills. But how do you increase the efficiency of your boiler in the first place? Below are the top five ways to make your boiler as energy conscious as possible.

1. Replace it with a new SEDBUK ‘A’ rated condensing boiler! Obviously this isn’t the kind of thing you can do on the spur of the moment and it is a big expense but some new combi boilers have an efficiency rating of over 95%. This means that you can probably recoup your investment within a few years simply by lowering your gas bills.
2. Have an annual service. Some companies, such as British Gas, have monthly plans that protect your boiler against breakdowns and as part of the plan you get a free annual service. This service checks the main parts of your boiler and makes sure it is working at an optimum level of efficiency.
3. Arrange to have your entire system power flushed. Power flushing is a great way to remove all of the debris and limescale from your radiators and pipe work so that hot water can flow freely around the system to warm the house. The freer the water movement, the more effective the heating system is and the less your boiler has to work. In simple terms, you get the same level of heating but using a lot less energy. Unfortunately power flushing is a little on the expensive side however it does increase your boiler’s efficiency quite dramatically and it will save you money in the long run – especially if you have an older boiler and heating system.
4. Fit a magnetic filter and a limescale filter to your heating system. The magnetic filters available today are great for removing iron oxide from the system and this alone can improve your boiler’s efficiency and lower your energy consumption. If you then add to that a limescale filter you can improve the quality of the water entering the system and remove the majority of the limescale before it reaches the boiler and starts to effect its performance. Both of these additions are relatively cheap and can increase your boiler’s efficiency by quite a considerable amount.
5. Fit thermostatic radiator valves to all suitable radiators. These fantastic little pieces of equipment allow you to vary the radiator temperature in each of the rooms in your house so you can turn those you don’t use down and those you do use up. By turning little-used radiators down you use less energy and increase boiler efficiency – another easy way to save money.

There are plenty of other ways to increase your boiler’s efficiency so you end up saving money however the five above are easy to do and relatively inexpensive – with the exception of number 1! If you did all of the things mentioned above then you would have one of the cleanest and most energy efficient heating systems on the planet and it wouldn’t take that long to recover your investment.

Guest Article by Clare Lynock

Right, this sort of question is one of those tricky little conundrums that really depends on various factors and your personal situation.

And like most insurance situations, you have to weigh up what suits you in terms of the risks involved.

Let’s take the boiler. Nowadays they are quite complicated pieces of kit and whereas one might last 15 years without a hitch, another one might break down on regular intervals. And who’s to stay why. Take cars for example. We’ve all known cars that go on for mile after mile without so much as a kind word. Yet we’ve known others that breakdown if it’s raining.

So, if you own a modern, latest specification boiler with a nice guarantee, then maybe you are safe at least for the first year. But do read the small print on the guarantee as, let’s be honest, a number of companies have a way of getting out of any commitment if they can.

But once out of the guarantee period, you are then starting to run the risk of what happens if a major failure occurs? Modern new boilers can cost anywhere from £250 to £3,000, depending on the size of your property. So, if you have an expensive boiler, then you might want it covered. Mind you, even if you don’t have an expensive boiler, the cost of replacement could still be, in relevant terms, a fortune, given your own personal budget. What effectively an insurance plan does, is to spread the cost of a new boiler over a number of months, if you assume the worse and think that your boiler will inevitably breakdown. And, that’s assuming it requires a complete replacement, rather than just parts.

So lets say you take out a monthly policy of between £10 and £15 a month, which will cost you between £120 and £180 a year; it’s cheap if you’re boiler breaks down. But let’s say it doesn’t break down for five years, then the total cost would have been £600 to £900, maybe twice as much as a new boiler for an average house. But, who can say? It’s your judgement and your risk.

But, if there’s one strong argument for getting insurance, it’s that you have someone else paying your boiler attention. Boilers should be serviced once a year, otherwise you not only run the risk of having an inefficient boiler which is costing you more money than it should, but you are risking your own and your families’ lives. A faulty boiler can kill; it’s that simple. Carbon monoxide poisoning from faulty boilers kills around 30 people in the U.K. every year.

Now, to get your boiler serviced, you have to remember to book and arrange a Corgi-registered engineer to do the job. Boiler servicing is, by law, a job for a professional. DIY servicing certainly is not allowed and should not be tried, nor can some odd-job man do it for you.

So, a boiler service can set you back at least £95, so if you think that an insurance plan can start from £120 (and includes a yearly service), then it would make sense to pay that bit extra, spread over monthly payments anyway. And apart from the economic argument, you also have someone who will remind you about your service and arrange to do it. Which saves the hassle of you remembering your annual service and having to negotiate a service price.

Right, you pays your money and takes your choice, but on balance, a good boiler insurance seems sensible not only for your wallet, but also for your health.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

Virtually everyone I know is dreading winter because of the extortionate energy bills that will come through the door in the spring. There are ways of cutting the amount of energy you use through the winter though and when used as a plan they can save you a decent amount of money. Below are ten good energy-saving tips to help get you started.

1. Have your boiler serviced during late autumn so that it is running efficiently for the start of the winter. This can also identify any problems that may arise when it’s being used day in and day out.
2. Bleed your radiators so that they warm your house as efficiently as they possibly can. If you have unused rooms in your house then you might want to manually turn the radiator off and keep the door of the room closed.
3. Draught-proof your external windows and doors to stop cold air coming in and warm air going out. This is an easy DIY job and all you need is some quite inexpensive weather strips and maybe a tube of caulk. You may also want to use good old fashioned draught excluders at the foot of your doors.
4. Turn your thermostat down by a degree or two and wear an extra jumper! A single degree can save up to 5% on your energy usage which can in turn save a good few pounds each month.
5. Insulate your loft and walls if you can afford it. There are government grants available to help with costs in most homes. In fact, many people can get full insulation for free if they receive specific benefits, and even if you don’t you can still save around 70% on the normal price.
6. Some say that keeping your home at a constant temperature of about 68 degrees costs less than letting your home go cold during the day or through the night and then turning your boiler up to re-warm to a comfortable temperature. This idea is often debated by gas engineers so please don’t take it as gospel.
7. Switch off any lights when they are not being used as light bulbs can use a fair amount of energy without you realising it. As an additional point you might want to think about using energy efficient bulbs as they are often less than £1 each now.
8. Have showers instead of baths whenever you can, especially if you have a shower that heats the water itself and doesn’t involve the boiler. It has been estimated that a family of four can save up to £90 per year by taking showers instead of baths.
9. Check online to see if you can save money by changing to a different energy supplier. Some may offer the same prices but will guarantee a price freeze for the next few years – which will save you in the long run.
10. If all else fails, visit as many of your friends and relatives as you possibly can each evening and make use of their energy instead of your own!

Guest Article by Clare Lynock

See also: Top Ten Tips for Saving Energy Around the Home

Let’s face it, energy costs a fortune and even if the credit crunch brings a respite to the oil and gas prices, once things recover economically, then they will go up again.

So, whatever steps you can do around your property, then it will undoubtedly save you money, not just for this winter, but for many winters ahead. What you need to do is a personal property energy audit. Take a couple of hours to have a look at your flat, or your house, and make a list of things that need attention.

And bear in mind that the Government is encouraging you to save energy. There are many organisations out there that will help you if you need advice on the grants and financial support packages. If you don’t ask, you don’t get, so make sure you claim for all that you are entitled to.

And here are ten things to have a look out for when you’re doing your own audit.

If you have one, start with your loft. A loft which is not insulated is literally throwing money away; over £200 for an average sized house. And even if you have insulation, check that it is in good shape and that it is the improved thickness of 270mm. It may well be that you had yours done some years ago and it needs sprucing up. And have a look at the vast range of products that are currently available on the market; get the best you can afford, it will pay back the investment in the first year.

Take a look at your hot water tank. Make sure it is well insulated. If it’s jacket is hanging off, then get it a new one.

Next have a look at your water tank and pipes, especially those exposed in the attic, or outside; make sure they are all lagged and not suffering from corrosion.

Once you have the insulated the loft, how well is the rest of the house insulated? Have you considered cavity wall insulation for example? Again, as with the loft, heat pours out of a house through a wall which does not have the benefit of being insulated.

Another great bonus is double glazing. This can be a pricey option, but well worth it if you need your windows replacing either as one job, or section by section. If you don’t want to spend a fortune on double glazing, then consider a DIY window insulation kit through the winter as this could have the same effect.

Have a think about draughts. Look around the window frames, around the door frames and any holes (not ones that are there to allow the house to breathe) that allow cold air in. It’s amazing what gaps you might find that is letting your precious heat out. Gaps under doors are big culprits, so think about using curtains, door insulators, or bolsters to keep out the icy cold air.

So once you think you’ve covered the insulation and draught issues, turn your attention to your boiler. Is it serviced once a year? If not, it really must be looked at as soon as possible. Four out of ten people don’t give their boiler an annual service. So four out of ten people are risking theirs’ and their families’ lives to the dire effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. Over 30 people a year die of this and it’s all down to faulty boilers. And even this horrendous risk to one side, an unserviced boiler is an inefficient boiler. It won’t work as well and will cost more to operate. Get it looked at.

Staying with the boiler, is it of the latest design and type. The law says now that when replacing a boiler, you should buy, if appropriate, a High Efficiency (HE) boiler. These are called condensing boilers and are over 90% efficient. They achieve this by capturing the heat not only from the fuel combustion process, but also from the exhaust gases. And because this dual process requires an outside wall situated flue and drain pipework, they are not appropriate for every property (and so the law in that case will let you off). But if you have an old boiler it might only be just over 50% efficient, so try to replace it with a new one and it will be twice as efficient, making your fuel go further.

Right, boiler issues over, think about your central heating system. First, have you bled your radiators recently? If they feel cold halfway up, then find the plug key and bleed them. This removes the air locked in the radiator and allows the hot water to flow freely. If you don’t do this regularly, effectively all radiators could be working at half capacity.

Also, you could consider flushing out your heating system if it hasn’t been done for a few years. Water within the system can turn into a horrible black sludge, especially if it hasn’t been operating at its optimum level for some time. And this black sludge slows the system right down, meaning that it quickly becomes far less efficient. So, a power flush is often a sound idea as it will literally blast your system free of most of the dirty sludge and residues. It’s not cheap and should be done by someone who knows what they’re doing, but well worth it.

Finally, make sure you properly understand your thermostats and boiler controls. Thermostats allow you to judge the temperature in your rooms. But make sure they are sited properly – not in a cold room which gives the impression the whole house is cold, or not near a fire, which makes it think the whole house is warm. And check that the boiler settings are correct (they usually have few controls, but do check it’s on the right season – winter, summer – for example) and that the system is timed to come on and off at the right time.

So there you have it; a bit of attention to your property could save you a lot of money.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

See Also: My Winter Energy Saving Plan

Despite what they might claim, builders are rarely central heating experts and one Christmas period, this was brought home to me quite forcibly.

We were having an extension built to our house and the work was scheduled to run over the festive period. And the Christmas in question was a particularly cold affair.

And as always with these cases in these situations, the builders had reached a key stage the day before Christmas Eve, and the day before their fortnight’s holiday.

So, as the temperatures began to drop to the minus part of the gauge, the builders made their temporary adjustments to mothball the extension, but keep the main part of the house intact. To cut a long story short, there was lots of plastic and pieces of two by one holding up the walls. A typical building site in other words.

The trouble came when shortly before leaving the site, they had to make safe the flue from the gas boiler. This was situated in the kitchen and the flue ran from there, up on the old outside wall and upwards. As this wall was going to become an inside wall of the new extension, the flue was going to have to be moved anyway, but it had been taken off the wall to allow work to be carried out then fixed back again with duct tape. Duct tape might not last while the builders were away and snow falling, so they took it off the wall and ran it horizontally away from the house; a run of about eight metres, a little shorter than it’s previous run up to the sky.

Fine you might think and the builders answers to my worried protestations that it all looked a bit unstable, was the inevitable, don’t worry, we know what we’re doing.

As it turned out, they didn’t know what they were doing. Within hours of their leaving the fumes pouring out from underneath the boiler were unbearable. With the builders long gone, the gas company came out, took one look at the flue and closed the boiler down, and said in no uncertain terms it should not be operated again until a properly qualified engineer had fixed the flue; sometime after Christmas. They explained that the siting and type of flue is matched exactly to the type of boiler using it. You cannot simply play around with flues and expect them to operate efficiently. And if you do play around with them, you can easily gas yourself and the whole family.

So, there you have it. We spent the Christmas nearly freezing to death in a house which had no gas, and therefore no heat. And although we had an electric cooker, friends took pity on us and we stayed away quite a bit of the time.

But I had learnt a valuable lesson. Get the professionals in when it comes to the specialist jobs. And your boiler and central heating system, like nowadays the wiring in your house, should only be tackled by trained professionals who are legally entitled to do such work. And if that might mean health and safety gone mad, bear in mind that a boiler can as easily kill as a un-earthed cable.

My builders were decent blokes doing a great job, and had just done what they thought was best to get us through the fortnight when they would be away. But, I should have called in a Corgi qualified engineer to check the boiler and flue, making separate arrangements.

So, you live and learn. Don’t mess with you boiler.

Guest Article by Neil Camp