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Five steps to make your home energy efficient

Further to the previous article regarding on how to make your home energy efficient we’ve identified the following stages in the process.

1. Assess

Assess the home’s current energy use in relation to your family and lifestyle. Consider the use of water, electricity, gas, solid fuel (eg fire wood, coal) solar energy and waste disposal.

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2. Decide

Having assessed how you use energy in the home, decide on the critical changes necessary to improve the home’s efficiency. When assessing your home don’t restrict your ideas as to what can be done as it is important to look at the home as a whole. Once you have the ultimate wish list you can then decide on what is practical to your own situation and financial considerations.

3. Plan

The order in which you make efficiencies is material to the final result. Imagine, for instance, that you decide you need better heating and install a massive heat pump only to discover that once you’d improved the heat retention through insulation you could have installed a smaller unit and saved yourself some money.

4. Implement

This is the action stage whereby having assessed your current use, decided on which efficiencies you can implement and then planned the practical aspects, you now go ahead and renovate. This stage is potentially the most challenging particularly if you are living in the home while renovations take place however remaining focused on the end result can help.