How To Make An Old House Green

Energy Usage & Insulation
Sourcing Responsibly

Most of us pay little attention to the environmental impact of running our homes when we turn up the central heating or turn on the tap. In fact, homes are responsible for around a quarter of total carbon dioxide emissions in the UK. At the same time rising utility prices make saving energy and water in the home good for our pockets as well as for the environment. So what can you do?

By Josephine Smit, editor, www.building4change.com

Old houses can be draughty and waste a lot of heat and aren't built to anything like modern construction standards. Nonetheless, there are things that you can do to make your home more eco-friendly. Here are six simple ways to get started.

1 Understand Your Home And Your Use Of Resources

If you're going to make your home more eco-friendly, you have to know how it is built and how efficient or inefficient it is to start with. If you don't already know, check out whether your house has cavity walls or single-skin brick walls, whether there is already insulation in the lofts, and so on. Knowing how your house is constructed and what energy-saving measures have already been implemented will help you to plan what you should do in the future. Log onto a web-based home energy efficiency tool like T-Zero to check out the options for your home.

It can also be helpful to look at where and how you are using energy in your home. Electricity monitors will tell you how much energy you are using - you can even log the price of your electricity into the monitor and see exactly how much it costs you to boil a kettle and carry out a host of other daily household chores. Once you've got your monitor running, it will make you aware of your energy guzzling ways.

Armed with this information you can make instant changes in the way you live, switching off appliances on stand-by, turning the central heating down a degree or two, and making sure you do a full load of washing in your machine.

2 Wrap Your Home Up

What's the point in heating your home, when you are losing a lot of that heat through the walls and roof? Many homes in the UK still do not have insulation in their lofts and cavity walls. It should be a priority to make your home as energy-efficient as possible to bring running costs down to the minimum. DIY stores often have special offers of insulation products and a number of big retailers are also now marketing insulation together with energy saving advice - look up Marks & Spencer Energy, Tesco Home Efficiency and Sainsbury's Energy. You may also want to think about repointing brickwork or applying render to the external walls of your house if your budget runs to it.

3 Keep Out Draughts From Doors And Windows

You need to make sure that your doors and windows are doing their job effectively to really keep the cold at bay and make sure the heat stays inside your house. Double or even triple glazing, secondary glazing and even closing your curtains at dusk all make a difference - which one you choose to do depends on how much you want to spend.