• Window Duvets/Wooden Shutters - draw the curtains at dusk to stop heat escaping. If you don't have double glazing (see below) consider the use of 'window duvets'. We have these here, they are made from hollowfill insulating material, cut to the window size and covered with cotton material. During the winter when we draw the curtains these are hooked onto the frame right up against the window and insulate the room from the coldness of the glass. Much cheaper than double glazing and much more efficient at insulation. If you are lucky enough to have some wooden shutters use them, they are more effective than double glazing since they are much warmer to the touch than glass.
• Double Glazing - if you heat your home in the winter to the degree that you're walking about in t-shirts, double glazing will work fine for you. If you prefer to spend less money on heating by having a cooler home and wearing a sweater, it could cause more problems than it solves unless the house is adequately ventilated. The reduced air flows due to double glazing, coupled with low internal temperatures can result in a large increase in damp and mould. This is excacerbated by any moisture created within the property from showers, cooking or drying clothes inside. By making sure your house is ventilated in an efficient manner you can still have a lower internal temperature with double glazing. If you don't have it, go for the 'window duvet' option or invest in heavy, lined curtains. Triple-glazing is now becoming popular in some European countries but we feel it still can't beat the duvets!

• Gaps in floorboards - draughts get in through gaps in floorboards and skirting boards. Fill them with newspaper, wool insulation or draught excluder strip.
• Doors and letter boxes - install easy to fit brushes on the bottom of your exterior doors to stop draughts. Check the insulation strip that runs around exterior door frames and replace it if worn flat. Letterboxes can also be fitted with draught eliminating covers.

• Concrete floors - notorious for being cold, you can buy insulating material on a roll to place on the surface underneath the floor covering or use insulating board but this can be damaged since a 10 stone woman in stilletoe heels exerts around 500lbs per square inch and can punch holes in it. Castors as well have a very small load displacement factor. Alternatively, a couple of layers of corrugated carboard boxes, flattened out, will help although these will need replacing eventually since they will compress under daily use. You can also use heavy carpet as underlay. If replacing a concrete floor, insulating material can be introduced before the final screed is laid.
• Wooden floorboards - although warmer than concrete, draughts can emerge through ill-fitting floorboards or under skirting boards. Fill these gaps with newspaper, wool insulation or draught excluder strip.

• Fit a jacket - if your cylinder does not have a sprayed-on foam coating, fit an insulating jacket to keep the heated water hot.
• Check the thermostat - you may be heating your water to a hotter temperature than you require, you shouldn't need to have your cylinder thermostat set higher than 60°C/140°F.

If you want your home to be comfortable enough for you to walk about in t-shirts or thin clothing all year round it costs you and the planet.

The simplest energy tip to save money on your heating costs is to wear more clothing!

Obviously, if you are elderly, disabled or ill then you have to keep yourself as warm as you need to, but for the vast majority of the population do you really need your house as warm as you have it?

• Add an extra layer - what does 'thermal longjohns' conjour up for you? Uncomfortable, saggy, bulky underwear? Think again . . . with the desire for some of us to jet off on skiing holidays you can now get snug fitting, warm and silky longjohns which even look good on their own! Long-sleeved thermal t-shirt/vests are also available. A few loose, thin layers will insulate your body with the warm air trapped between them. Top them off with a warm and sumptuous woolly jumper and you'll save yourself a small fortune.
• Wear a hat - statistics vary on how much heat you lose if you don't wear a hat. We know from experience that a hat is more effective than an extra layer of clothing on the body in keeping you warm. The problem is that hats sold for outdoor wear can be uncomfortable indoors and actually make you too hot. Time for an old favourite. We wear home crocheted 'indoor' hats if there's a really cold spell. Made in a lattice design in a fine Alpaca wool they are practically undetectable to the wearer. They are extremely light and whilst keeping your body temperature up they allow air to circulate the head - perfect!
• Chimneys - if you've got one, use it! - our heating is supplied by our wood burning stove (complete with back-boiler). There's an old Chinese saying: "Man who chops wood for fire gets warm twice". This is very true. Unfortunately it would appear that a great swathe of mankind has forgotten how to swing an axe. If you have to chop wood daily to heat your home, you are mindful of how much you burn.
• Reduce your main thermostat temperature setting - if you take heed of these tips you will be able to reduce the temperature setting on your thermostat. If we lived with a thermostatically-controlled central heating system we would be blissfully warm at 15°C.
• Individual radiator thermostat valves - before main thermostats were introduced, each radiator could have a thermostatic valve. If you don't have these, get them fitted. If you do have them, set them low in bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchens, only turning them up if and when you need extra heat in those locations.
• Do something active - a productive kitchen is a warm kitchen. Why not cook a pot of soup or broth, or maybe try baking some bread? You'll end up with a warmer room full of lovely smells and a more nourished you and you'll also save yourself loads of money on processed food. Take up gardening, there's always something that needs doing, and you'll keep warm into the bargain - digging, snipping, raking up the autumn leaves, etc.

Of course it you are utterly convinced that you need a home heated to 25°C during the British winter then you should probably consider emigrating to somewhere with a warmer climate.

There are many people in this country who have never seen the magnificence of the milky way stretching across the sky on a clear night, because of the light pollution generated by the over-use of lighting in areas of high density population - a great pity.

In towns and cities however, it would appear that it's not the dark that people are afraid of, but other members of the population. For the many rural dwellers in Britain, stars are a common sight. So too, is the Petzl headtorch - a totally reliable and massively efficient lighting device.

• Fit energy saving bulbs - although these cost more than traditional bulbs they last up to 12 times longer and can reduce your lighting costs by up to £100 over the lifetime of the bulb.
• LED lighting - new advances in the manufacture of LED lights means that you can use these and save even more energy than you do with traditional energy saving bulbs, and these generally last for over 40,000 hours of use. These are also very well suited to low voltage situations and, unlike other forms of lighting, waste no energy in giving off heat.
• Switch off lights - don't leave lights on in rooms you are not using.
• Keep lights clean - dirty bulbs give off less light, especially check the reflectors behind fluorescent strip lights. Be careful when handling energy saving bulbs which don't enclose the fluorescent element since greasy fingermarks on these can develop 'hot spots' which reduce the life of the bulbs, just wipe them clean with a soft cloth.
• Outdoor lighting - at the latitude of the UK, if we are perfectly honest, individual solar powered garden lights are not that efficient, particularly during the winter months. This is probably the time you would most need them, with darkness falling in the early evening. Widely available, low voltage, energy efficient lighting for paths, etc., which are powered via a transformer, can be a good solution. If you do want to bathe your garden, patio or other large area in light the commonly available halogen floodlights are fairly power hungry. We have found the best solution is a high-pressure Sodium lamp. These use around 70watts of power and spread a bright, yellow light highlighting a much wider area and producing a far more comforting effect than a halogen flood and using far less energy.
• Christmas outdoor lighting - just don't . . . OK? If God had meant us to have Christmas outdoor lighting she wouldn't have given us the stars.

• The Toilet - unless you have a modern loo you generally use around 2 gallons of water each time you flush. If you must flush at every visit find an object, such as a brick, which will fit in your toilet cystern to reduce the amount of water it will hold. Alternatively follow the adage 'If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down'.
• Washing the car - using brushes and the like which attach to hose pipes to wash your car waste a large amount of water as the water is running constantly. Wet your car, use a bucket of warm soapy water to wash it then just run the hose to rinse.
• Pressure washers - like hosepipes, these use a lot of water. Use them for the really difficult jobs - to save you getting down on your hands and knees with a scrubbing brush to attack the patio slabs, for example. Tackle easier jobs with a bit of elbow grease - it'll give you good exercise.
• Watering the garden/greenhouse - invest in a water butt (or two) to collect the vast amounts of water which pour off your house roof when it rains instead of just letting it enter the already stressed drainage systems in most towns and cities. Simple devices are available which intercept the water in your downpipe and direct it to a storage vessel.
• Case scenario - If you live, for example, in a modest bungalow that has a floor area of 8m x 12m, and you experience a rainfall of 10mm then your roof will feed, to your guttering downpipe, approximately 1 cubic metre of water. Bearing in mind that Britain has an average rainfall per year of about 1 metre, this amounts to 100 cubic metres of water falling off your roof per year. This amount would cost you around £100 to buy it back on a metered water supply. DEAL WITH IT!

• Choose the right pan size for the food and the cooking ring - small pans on big rings allow heat to dissipate around the sides whereas large pans on small rings are simply inefficient.
• Make sure your pans conduct heat well - this ensures even cooking. Don't use aluminium as they can, over time, deposit aluminium residues into the food.
• Cut food into smaller pieces - it will cook quicker.
• Use pan lids - this contains the heat and allows you to cook quicker at lower heat settings.
• Use a steamer - you can stack food up in two or three layers in a steamer and with just a small amount of water boiling in the bottom pan, cook it all in one go. The water in this bottom pan makes a good basis for a stock. When compared with boiling, far less nutrients are lost from the food with this method and you don't need a pan full of boiling water for each.
• Use a pressure cooker - this marvellous device allows you to cook food at a fraction of the time it takes in a conventional pan and at a far lower heat setting. Pressure cookers also retain all the goodness of the food in the food, especially vegetables which, if boiled, lose nutrients to the water in the pan.
• Use the oven on full load - try to plan your menus so that if you use the oven, you use it to cook most of the meal, or you also cook a tray of biscuits or cakes at the same time. Don't put the oven on to cook just one garlic baguette. Modern ovens circulate the air within to make sure there is no flavour contamination from different foods cooking at the same time.

• Ensure the seals are sound - they should be tight enough to securely hold a piece of paper placed between the seal and the unit when shut.
• Location of freezer - freezers are best kept in a cool utility room so they don't have to keep working against the artificially high ambient temperature of your central heating system.
• Defrost every year or sooner if needed - frost-filled freezers use more energy to stay cold.
• A full freezer needs less energy - fill unused space with empty cereal boxes or plastic ice cream containers.
• Buying a new freezer? - we recommend a chest freezer with an 'A' Energy Rating or higher.

• Switch off at the mains plug - when not in use, your TV, VCR, Set-Top Box and DVD etc., all pinch several watts of power when left in 'standby' mode.
• LCD TVs - these do use less power than traditional CRTs but they are being developed in such a way that any energy saving is becoming a marginalised aspect, especially if they have built-in digital receivers (see below) and cinematic surround-sound facilities. It is also worthy to note that if previously you needed a 28inch 4:3 ratio screen to enjoy the TV at your chosen viewing distance, then you will probably need a 32inch widescreen (16:9 ratio) to achieve the same vertical height of picture. In general, the bigger the screens are, the more power they consume.
• Analogue switch-off - the appliances needed to receive digital TV consume far more energy than traditional analogue receivers since they rely on sheer processing power to decompress the data stream. Can't do anything about this when the switch-off happens other than stop watching TV. This increased power consumption applies even more to digital radios (DAB) and the 'pips' will never be exactly on time with these systems due to decompression lag times. It has been estimated that the energy produced by all the wind turbines erected in this country in the past decade will be negated simply by the government's decision to force digital broadcast technology on the nation's TV viewers.

• Only boil the water you need - always ensuring that the kettle element is covered, or alternatively fill a thermos flask with boiling water. A thermos uses no energy whatsoever to keep the water hot.
• Hard water limescale deposit - if your kettle gets 'furred up' it takes far more energy to boil the water in it. Leave a mixture of vinegar and water covering the element overnight to remove limescale. Remember to rinse thoroughly before use.
• Chlorine in water supply - if your water smells of chlorine and you don't have a water filter, never fill the kettle straight from the tap. Instead fill a jug and keep it next to the kettle for 20 minutes or so to allow the chlorine to dissipate. This will also bring the water temperature up towards the ambient temperature of your kitchen thereby needing less power to boil it.

• Only use for full loads - or if you must use the dishwasher and it's not full, make sure you use the economy or half-load setting.
• Wash at low temperatures - modern, environmentally-friendly cleaning detergents such as those produced by Ecover are designed to clean at low temperatures.
• Don't use the drying cycle - air-dry the contents of your dishwasher or, shock horror, use a tea-towel.
• Buying a new dishwasher? - look for the highest energy rating, A or above, and make sure it has a half-load or economy setting.

• Wash full loads only - or use the economy or half-load setting.
• Wash at low temperatures - washing at 65°C will require twice as much energy than washing at 40°C. Modern, environmentally-friendly cleaning detergents such as those produced by Ecover are designed to clean successfully at 40°C.
• Buying a new washing machine? - look for the highest energy rating, A or above, and make sure it has a half-load or economy setting.
• Dry full loads only - dry towels and heavier cottons in a separate full load from lighter-weight clothes.
• Use the cool-down cycle - if your machine has one as this will allow the clothes to finish drying with the residual heat in the dryer.
• Don't over-dry clothes - use the shortest programme for the type of clothes, or if your machine has a moisture sensor, use it.
• Dry clothes for free - try using a washing line outside on dry days or drying racks in a utility room. If your hot water cylinder is located in an airing cupboard, use this space to dry clothes. Even if the cylinder has a sprayed foam coating on the outside, heat will still emanate from it. Additionally the cupboard will receive some heat from that which is given off from the plumbing when hot water is drawn off. This space can also be utilised for propagating seeds and brewing wine, among other things.
• Inspect your dryer vent - to ensure it is not blocked. This will save energy and increase safety as a blocked vent may cause a fire.
• Buying a new tumble dryer? - look for the highest energy rating, A or above, and make sure it has a half-load or economy setting, a moisture sensor and a cool-down cycle.

• Unplug when not in use - these little 'wall warts' can continue to draw power when not in use. Most get quite hot if left plugged in, even when they're not charging anything and, apart from wasting energy, can be a fire risk. Alternatively keep them on a power extension block with individually switched outlets, one for each charger, and switch them off at the block when not in use.

• Buying batteries - try to never buy a battery that's not rechargeable, we can't yet recharge the coin-shaped Lithium types although it is now possible to get rechargeable PP3s which are commonly used in answering machines and other applications. Avoid NiCADs which contain Cadmium and go for NiMH or similar types instead. Cadmium is a serious pollutant in landfill and even has a radioactive half-life.
• Battery charging - it's good to have a couple of battery chargers. It is important that these have the ability to sense the requirements of each battery and reduce charging to a trickle once the battery has reached optimum voltage level. Without this facility, if you forget to remove the batteries once they are charged they can over-cook and will be rendered useless.
• Unplug battery chargers when not in use - they may continue to draw current otherwise.
• Fast or slow chargers? - using a high speed battery charger is OK for convenience sometimes but consistent use can reduce the rechargeable life of batteries due to the high temperature they reach when being recharged. It's better to use a slow charger most of the time. You can even get excellent chargers which take the power from a 12volt source such as a car cigarette lighter socket, and also solar powered ones but sadly the solar panels are not big enough for year-round use in the British climate - excellent for holidays in hotter climes though.
• Disposal of batteries - don't throw redundant batteries away with the normal rubbish. Check with your local council or landfill sites to find out where they have facilities to take batteries and dispose of them safely.

• Use your car less - walk, cycle or take the bus for short journeys.
• Share transport - when going out with friends or family use as few cars as possible. Take a look at the National Carshare website to see if you could make use of their service.
• Drive sensibly and smoothly - be consistent, using higher gears when you can. Aggressive driving (speeding, rapid acceleration and braking) wastes fuel.
• Avoid high speeds - driving at over 60mph causes fuel mileage to drop rapidly, driving at 85mph instead of 70mph uses around 25 per cent more fuel.
• Tyre care - keeping your tyres properly inflated and your wheels aligned can improve your fuel mileage by around 3 per cent.
• Servicing - badly tuned engines, worn spark plugs, dragging brakes or transmission problems all reduce your fuel economy.
• Carrying loads - place items inside the car or boot rather than using a roof rack as they significantly increase air resistance causing drag which decreases fuel economy.
• Clear out your car - extra weight increases fuel use.
• Don't keep the engine idling - switch your engine off if you are going to be stationary for more than a minute or two.
• Air conditioning - use sparingly and only when necessary.