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All heaters burn some sort of fuel — either in your house or at a power station — so your choice of home heating will have an environmental impact. Smart choices will keep you warm, save you money and reduce your ecological footprint. Shireen Baguley investigates your options.
Before you even consider more sustainable heating options you should make sure you keep any heat you do generate inside your home and cold air outside. After all, there’s no point in heating up your neighbourhood is there?
To maximise your home’s thermal performance, ideally you should have:
- Ceiling insulation
- Wall and floor insulation (can be difficult to fit to existing houses)
- Pelmets and curtains or blinds on all windows
- Draught-proofed doors and windows
These items will reduce heat loss, so you won’t need to run a heater for as often or as long. In the long run, this could mean you can choose a smaller-sized heater, saving you both capital and running costs.
One of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to make your home warmer is to insulate. It’s relatively easy to insulate your roof with thermal batts and check what you can do for your walls and floors as well.
CONSIDER YOUR WINDOWS
Windows are one of the main areas you can lose heat but there are lots of things you can do about it. You can install thermal drapes or blinds to prevent heat escaping from windows. Energy efficient glazing of your windows — such as double glazing or low-E glass — is very popular now as it will help your home retain heat.
If you’re looking for more low-cost options than double glazing, a new DIY window treatment called ClearComfort will help homes with lots of single glazed glass windows. The system uses a transparent membrane to keep an insulating barrier of air next to your window to keep heat where you want it — inside your house during winter and outside in summer. A ClearComfort SuperKit is designed to meet the needs of an average 3-bedroom home and costs $180.50 including delivery.
AND DRAFTS…
Most existing homes have way too much airflow through them, especially on windy days — so take the time to check if there are gaps under doors (door snakes are a cheap and an easy fix) or around windows. Use a candle to check where air is getting in. As far as heating goes, it is obviously better to have a relatively airtight home.
Even your exhaust fan in the kitchen or bathroom could be allowing warm air to constantly escape into the room cavity. If this is the case, you may need a product called DraftStoppa which is easy to install and opens and closes the ceiling exhaust fan without making extra work for the exhaust fan motor. Some testing has shown that if you have exhaust fans, DraftStoppacould give you an energy saving of up to 30 percent. For more info go to www.advantec.com.au
LET THE SUN SHINE IN
Solar is the cheapest, most environmentally-friendly heating option there is — after all, the idea of using the sun to keep your home warm is not new! If you are building a new home or extending your current home, you should use passive solar design principles to capture the sun’s warmth on sunny winter days.
Passive-solar heating is based on the simple idea of using north-facing windows to catch the sun. Sunlight warms the interior space and thermal mass, such as tile floors and interior masonry walls, store the sun’s heat and release it when room temperatures fall.
How well your home catches the sun’s warmth will depend on factors such as placement and orientation of windows, insulation, and use of materials such as concrete which can store heat in the day and release it at night. In a well-designed home, solar energy should be able to provide sufficient warmth day and night, throughout most or all of the year, in most locations.
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