One way to keep your power bills down is to shop around for the cheapest prices.
You’ve come to GloBird Energy for your electricity, so we can safely assume you’ve done that!
The other way is to be a lot smarter about how much power you use around the house.
You’d be surprised how every little bit of adds up over the course of a year.
Get ready for winter by employing as many of these tips as possible.
1. Heat efficiently
Heating your home in winter accounts for up to 40 per cent of your annual energy use, so get the most efficient heater and only heat the rooms that need it.
2. Shut up that room
Close internal doors, particularly to rooms you rarely use and especially to bathrooms and laundries, which are almost always colder.
3. Adjust your thermostat
Even when it’s freezing outside, you don’t need to be super toasty inside. Keep your thermostat set between 18 and 20 degrees. Every degree above that could add around 10 per cent to your heating costs over time.
4. Heat when needed
You only need the heater to come on 10-15 minutes before you get out of bed. The house doesn’t need to be at maximum heat the moment you lift the covers. Then switch it off 20 minutes before you leave for the day and again 20 minutes before you go to bed.
5. Rug up
Rather than turning up the heat, wear some extra winter layers. Get yourself some fleecy tops and tracksuit pants and some warm indoor socks. And you don’t have to be a granny to put a nice rug over your legs when you’re being a couch potato!
6/ Get the right showerhead
If you still haven’t installed a water-efficient shower head, your money is going down the drain. However you heat your water, why use up to 25 litres a minute with an unrated shower head when you could cut that to just 7 litres per minute with the right one?
7. Show some shower will power
We all know how amazing that hot water cascading down over you feels when there’s a chill in the air, but resist the temptation to have longer showers. Even if you cut down your shower time by only a minute, that’s about six hours per year less hot water usage!
8. Let the sunshine in
If you have any windows that are exposed to the winter sun, make sure you don’t block them. Even a couple of plants on the window sill are in the way of you maximising that natural warmth.
9. Curtains to cold
By closing your curtains at night and even when it’s just grey, cold, and miserable outside, you aren’t wasting energy heating those freezing windows (because, you know, they’ll never warm up).
10. Have a good vent
Keep all heating vents clear to maximise the amount of heat getting out and ensure that it’s being circulated as efficiently as possible.
11. Remove dust
If there’s any build up of dust on a heater or radiator, it’s effectiveness is reduced.
12. Arrest that draught
Any doors to the outside world tend to have a bit of a gap at the bottom (if you live in a unit or apartment where the living room is right inside the front door, you’ll know this all too well). Get yourself a couple of old-school sausage-shaped draught arresters (also known as draught stoppers, draught excluders, or door snakes) to plug the gap and stop that flow of cold air.
13. Keep the kettle under control
Here’s a random fact: it costs more to boil a full (electric) kettle than to run a ceiling fan for an hour. So, don’t fill the kettle and make it do more work than it needs to. If you’re just having a cuppa, boil one cup’s worth of water. If you’re filling a teapot, figure out how much you need for that. A little trial and error and practice will be well worth it.
See if you can put all 13 of these tips in place and we guarantee you’ll save on your bills.
Meanwhile, stay warm and enjoy a wonderful winter.