Top 10 tips for reluctant landlords

From next Wednesday landlords must provide tenants with an energy performance certificate (EPC) or face a £200 fine. You have to provide an EPC only when you re-let to a new tenant. The EPC gives your house an A-G rating on energy efficiency and suggests ways to improve your rating. It costs about £100 and is valid for ten years. Find an accredited domestic energy assessor at hcrregister.com
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Fuel Bills Slashed for Heating and Cooling 300 Year Old House

The 300 year-old house has moved away from traditional oil-fired central heating systems and now benefits from an Ecodan air source heat pump system which uses free energy from the outside air to provide central heating and hot water.

Mrs Fox estimates that by converting to Ecodan system, the family should save around £500 a year on fuel bills, and reduce CO2 emissions from their house by 50%.

“We decided to look for an environmentally friendly alternative to our oil-heating system because it was proving costly, and as our village doesn’t have gas, we looked at alternatives such as wood, solar power and biomass-based systems, but many of these proved difficult to operate,” she explained.

“We are an environmentally aware family and try to do our bit, recycling as much as possible and insulating the house to the highest standards to preserve energy; so when we found Ecodan it made environmental sense, promising energy savings and lowering our carbon footprint.

“The Ecodan unit that is kept outside the house is a similar size to an old-style boiler, but it’s much quieter than our old oil-fired one and doesn’t blow out foul-smelling fumes,” said Mrs Fox.

“Since converting, we have a much more even temperature throughout the house and no longer suffer from drafts. The heat seems to be much gentler and there are copious amounts of hot water – even for my two teenage children who seem to live in the shower!”

By using free energy from the outside air to provide space heating and hot water, Mitsubishi Electric’s Ecodan, the easy to install, low carbon alternative to a traditional gas or oil boiler, can dramatically reduce home running costs and CO2 emissions.

With a conventional gas boiler, one kilowatt of energy delivers less than one kilowatt of heat to a building. With an Ecodan heat pump boiler, one kilowatt of energy delivers a heat output in excess of 3 kilowatts – that’s a 300 per cent increase in energy efficiency – and that is set to grow as the technology develops.

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Save Your Energy With A Bit Of Work

Gas prices have risen by an average of 52 per cent this year, while electricity costs are typically 28 per cent higher than in January.

That means the average annual bill has shot up by £380 in eight months.

Spiralling fuel bills have pushed many customers to switch energy suppliers, with comparison site moneysupermarket.com reporting a 39 per cent increase in visitors during the first six months of the year.

Consumers, however, are left in a quandary as to whether to move to a cheap online variable rate deal - knowing prices could rise again before the end of the year - or sign up to a fixed-rate deal.

The cheapest fixed-rate tariff in Scotland is the Scottish Power Fixed Price Energy 2009 deal, with a typical cost of about £1190.

However, the cheapest online variable rate deal is the British Gas Click Energy 5 deal, which costs about £855 for average consumption levels in Scotland.

nsulation is one of the keys to saving energy, as about 33 per cent of heat in a home disappears through the walls alone.

Cavity wall insulation can cost as little as £150, depending on the type of home you live in, yet could save between £130 and £160 a year.

Grants are available from the likes of British Gas and EDF Energy, and local authorities could pay 75 to100 per cent of the costs depending on your circumstances.

Loft insulation is another great way to save. Typically, it will cost about £200 to £250 if you install it yourself, or £500 if you have it done professionally. However, the savings can amount to about £155 a year.

A formof insulation that is often overlooked, but which can pay for itself very quickly, is floor insulation.

To lift floorboards and insert mineral wool insulation costs about £90 if you do it yourself, and could save you about £40 a year.

If you're looking for a cheaper method, use a regular tube sealant such as silicon to fill the gaps between the floor and skirting boards. At a cost of about £20, you should recoup yourmoney within the first year.

Another option to reduce heat loss is double glazing, with the two panes of glass creating an insulating barrier. This is expensive - installing double glazing for six windows typically costs around £3000 - but you can get secondary glazing, which is much cheaper.

Reducing the heat loss through windows should save you about £100 a year on your energy bills. But double glazing could also earn you a discount fromyour home insurance provider, thanks to the extra security it provides.

Draught-proofing is another wise investment. Filling gaps to stop cold air entering the home could save about £25 a year on energy bills, and most of the materials are available fromDIY stores.

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Brits would change energy supplier to save £200

Energy price hikes have brought people to feel the need for change. Approximately half of the UK's households have never changed their gas or electricity tariff but only 20 per cent of people surveyed now say they wouldn't change their tariff if an annual saving of up to £200 was on offer.

Research by price comparison site moneysupermarket.com shows energy users could save a whopping £483 by swapping - well over double the saving that most people crave.

Scott Byrom, utilities manager at moneysupermarket.com, said: "The hammer blow of two rounds of price hikes so far in 2008 means people are in more need than ever to tighten their purse strings. Gas has risen by 52 per cent since the start of the year and electricity by 28 per cent. Every pound counts at the moment, especially with other day to day living costs on the rise too.

"With winter looming, it's encouraging to see a large proportion of bill payers are actively looking to save."

Londoners and the Welsh are keenest to save, with only 17 per cent of them being unimpressed by a saving of £200. Those in East Anglia though are least likely to change, with 25 per cent unmoved by a £200 cut, including an astonishing 16 per cent saying they would never change.

Scott Byrom added: "The survey found 11 per cent of people would never swap supplier, which is quite worrying. I would have thought a potential saving of £200 would have been enough to convince everyone to take that simple step.

"British Gas Click Energy 5 is the cheapest tariff on the market at present, but its price might increase soon. Even if it does, virtually all online, monthly direct debit tariffs will still be cheaper than any Standard deal.

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Digging deep for home heating

Alternative energy As the cost of fossil fuel climbs, interest is growing in geothermal systems, which take heat stored beneath the Earth's surface and moves it above to furnace units and distribution systems inside buildings

Tapping the Earth's energy is a hot topic and getting hotter as the cost of fossil fuels rises.

"It's the best thing we ever did," says Pat Dobben of Drayton, Ont., as she describes the geothermal system she and her husband, Luke, installed in their 120-year-old farmhouse three years ago.

At that time, she says, only a quarter of the 1,900-square-foot house was insulated.

"The rest was double brick. That was how they did insulation years ago. With the oil furnace, our bills were atrocious - over $4,000 a year - and the house was still cold."

They decided to bite the bullet and invest $20,000 in a water-based geothermal system.

"Now, I have a warm house in winter and a cool house in the summertime," says Dobben, "and we don't have much of a hydro bill."

According to NextEnergy Geothermal, the company that installed the system, "the Dobbens are saving approximately 65 per cent annually on their heating bill and, with the additional savings on air conditioning and hot- water bills, can expect a full return on their investment in eight years - at current oil prices. The Dobbens were also eligible for a federal grant for installing a geothermal system."

A geothermal system takes heat stored beneath the Earth's surface and moves it from underground pipes to a furnace unit and distribution system inside a building, where it is dispers edevenly.

To cool, the system works in reverse, returning heat to the soil.

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Crash Gordon's plans are cold comfort

So Gordon Brown has decided that the best way to reduce energy bills is to provide free cavity wall and loft insulation to the poorest households. Discounts on household improvements are on offer to everyone else. Laudable as this is, the big question remains: will it work? The Government's record of running schemes to promote energy efficiency is not encouraging.

One of the central planks of Mr Brown's plans is to extend the existing Warm Front programme to an extra 40,000 households. This is supposed to provide pensioners and those on benefits with help to make heating and insulation improvements.

However, shoddy workmanship and poor management has left thousands of vulnerable individuals, who have already attempted to claim, out in the cold. Age Concern, the charity, says that it has come across many cases in which delays to work have left pensioners without heating. Others have had to pay to remedy poor workmanship.

Alternative schemes have also been plagued with problems. The offer of grants to help households to generate their own power had to be suspended because the Government underestimated its popularity. The fear is that the Prime Minister's latest plans will descend into similar chaos, meaning that it will be years before households receive help.

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Better off pay for energy efficiency

Insulating your loft can be a hazardous affair. Gordon Brown appeared to put a foot through the ceiling yesterday as he scrambled to prevent an escape of voter warmth over soaring energy prices.

The Prime Minister denied it and Britain's big six power companies sought to play down the idea, but the truth is that most of the £910 million cost of the Government's new fuel poverty scheme will ultimately be shouldered by consumers in the form of higher gas and electricity bills.

While nobody would argue against the merits of improving energy efficiency, it would be naive to believe that this money can be rustled up out of thin air.

The Government has simply created an additional cost for power companies - which they will try their utmost to recoup.

They will pass on as much of the expense as they can, either by raising prices again next year by more than they might otherwise have done - or, in the event of a future fall in wholesale prices, by delaying price cuts for longer.

The scheme will thus be paid for by those wealthier households who won't quality for the benefits.

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Home microgeneration tariffs: win-win

To date, the average take-up of microgeneration technologies across European households has been relatively insignificant; the main detractor being that microgeneration hardware is uneconomical and that the supply of power it generates is poorly matched to typical household demand. Therefore, the majority of microgenerating households still need to be connected to the local supply grid, or opt for energy storage and standby power systems, the size and inefficiency of which often makes standalone microgeneration inefficient.
Microgeneration is often touted as a costly and less reliable alternative to grid energy that can only provide a small fraction of the energy consumed by a typical domestic property. However, driven by the supply side, new market initiatives are boosting the appeal of microgeneration technologies.

However, in Germany - which has the largest solar market in Europe - the affordability of microgeneration was tackled by reducing payback time through two main initiatives: government-underwritten loans at a fixed interest rate, and regulation ensuring consumers were guaranteed a decent price for excess electricity exported back to the grid, far in excess of what consumers in the UK can currently expect.

In isolation, and without other incentives, microgeneration in the domestic market is unlikely to be economically viable in the short to medium term, and possibly even in the long term. There are too many significant hurdles in the current environment - including an inadequate energy export market, and a lack of guaranteed pricing propositions - for a viable market to emerge through natural market forces.

In addition, a lack of consumer awareness is preventing demand from being converted into actual purchases, and high front-loaded equipment and installation costs are acting as a deterrent to mass market demand. Various issues regarding metering, connection to the distribution network and balancing/settlement issues are also preventing widespread take-up of electricity generating technologies, as is the problematic design, management and regulation of energy networks.

Not only this, but the insufficient skills base for the future, combined with the lack of engagement with the construction industry, are undermining the feasibility of domestic microgeneration. There is also a pressing need for a more supportive legislative environment which embraces change affecting all aspects of the energy generation and usage model to create real economic incentives and true demand pull.

However, over the past few years, several new UK market initiatives have emerged that go some way towards counteracting the key limiting factor: inadequate direct legislative and regulatory environment support.
A good example of such initiatives is Good Energy's Home Generation offering, which is designed to support people with microgenerators - such as solar panels and micro wind turbines - by paying them for every unit of electricity that they generate, including those that they use themselves. The scheme also requires the microgenerator to be a supply customer of Good Energy, meaning that any power consumed by the customer from the grid will be supplied by Good Energy's 100% renewable electricity.

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50 easy ways you can live green (and save money while you're at it)

Being energy-effcient and eco-friendly does not have to be a hassle. Sarah Lonsdale shows you how

1 Light pipes: Light from outside, captured through roof-mounted domes is 'piped' into rooms via reflective tubes. One 12 inch diameter pipe can deliver 400 watts of light. From £198; www.sunpipe.co.uk.

2 Freecycle: A wonderful way of getting rid of unwanted household goods, and acquiring wanted ones for free. Saves millions of tonnes of household waste from landfill. Find your local freecycle group from www.freecycle.org and post wanted or unwanted items which are circulated to group members via regular emails.

3 Clay-based paints won't fill your home with chemical fumes in conventional paints which contain toxic solvents, arsenic, formaldehyde and heavy metals. Earthborn paints use clay and natural pigments and contain zero Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). £22 for a 2.5 litre pot; www.earthbornpaints.co.uk.

4 Ditch those energy-guzzling outdoor Christmas lights and festoon your garden with firewinders. The wind turns the spirals which power the 14 LED lights and create a magical glow at wind speeds as low as 4 miles per hour. The faster the wind, the brighter the light. Available at £99.95, from end October; www.firewinder.com.

5 Sheep's wool insulation: 100 per cent recycled, breathable, completely natural and giving Britain's hill farmers a market for their products. Approved for loft and timber-framed cavity wall insulation. From £9.50 per square metre for 100mm thick; www.secondnatureuk.com.

6 The Roberts solarDAB is the world's first solar-powered digital radio. Sit on a sunny windowsill and enjoy digital radio quality - powered by the sun. Display includes a 'light meter' to help you locate it in the sunniest part of the house. £80 from www.robertsradio.co.uk.

7 Energy efficient washing machines save on electricity and water too. New ones use 40 litres per wash, compared to 100 litres in older models. A spin cycle of at least 1200 rpm obviates the need for a tumble drier. Latest Energy Saving Recommended model (ESR) is the Hotpoint AQXXD169, retailing at around £335; www.hotpoint.co.uk.

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Solar panels are a 'waste of money', says Rics

Installing “green” energy saving measures in the home is so expensive it can take more than 200 years to cover the cost.

Solar panels are one of the least cost effective upgrades, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics), which today published The Greener Homes Price Guide.

The cost of adding solar panels to the average home is between £4,000 and £5,000, but the energy savings are worth as little as £24 a year, according to Rics, meaning it would take about 208 years to pay back the price of installation.

The report also reveals that the average cost of replacing a wall-mounted boiler with a more energy-efficient version is about £1,700. But with expected savings of just £95 a year, it would take up to 18 years to offset the cost.

The most cost effective energy saving measure is cavity wall insulation. At a cost of between £440 and £2,400, depending on the size of the home, and an average energy savings of as much as £145 a year, the cost could be paid back over as little as three years.

A large free-standing wind generator can cost anything from £12,000 to £24,000 to install. But they are only really economic or practical for people in rural areas, particularly those not connected to the electricity grid. Even then, and taking account of electricity fed back into the grid, it would take at least 15 years for them to pay for themselves.

The same goes for ground-source heat pumps. They take natural heat from the ground and boost it to useable levels using a small amount of external electricity.

The Energy Savings Trust, a government-backed group that promotes better energy use, says that a six-kilowatt ground-source heat pump will cost up to £10,000 to install and save as much as £750 a year in energy costs. But heat pumps work best with under floor heating, which can cost a further £20,000 to install.

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Heat on Brown over cost of energy

The prime minister has been accused of letting Scottish households "plunge into fuel poverty" by not acting to address rising energy prices.

It comes after Gordon Brown told business leaders in Glasgow he had decided a one-off cash rebate would only be a gimmick.

First Minister Alex Salmond said the windfall gains of energy giants should be used to help people with bills.

Mr Brown has indicated the focus should be on improving energy efficiency.

Mr Salmond said this showed the prime minister was out of touch with real people.

He said: "Gordon Brown may think that helping people with their fuel bills this winter is a 'short-term gimmick'.

"The reality is that it is a pressing need for households which have been plunged into fuel poverty by soaring energy prices."

Energy efficiency

A UK Government statement on energy prices is expected next week, but it is thought a windfall tax will not be among the measures announced.

Ministers were hoping to unveil a package of help with fuel bills, including payments of between £50 and £100 per head.

But after energy firms refused to help provide the cash, the focus is now being put on improving energy efficiency, rather than securing immediate savings.

Accusations of "caving in" to the energy companies over cash rebates have been denied.

Fuel poverty is defined as when more than 10% of household income is spent on fuel bills.
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A step-by-step guide to cutting all your bills

As the outlook for the current economic climate shows little sign of improving, increasingly hard-pressed households will be looking for ways to tighten the financial belt as incomes continue to be ravaged by mounting food, fuel, mortgage and motoring costs.

New findings from consumer body Which? show that 46 per cent of people plan to reduce spending in the coming year in the face of these increased demands on their finances, with half planning to cut back on non-essential items, such as clothes, DVDs or books – while many are holding off on buying big-ticket items.

At the same time, there are no signs of the current inflationary pressures easing over the short term, so it's time to look at ways of trimming your monthly expenditure on the basics, in order to balance the books.

The good news is, there are some simple bill-busting steps you can take to economise and offset rising household costs.

UTILITY BILLS

The price of utilities such as gas and electricity have rocketed of late, and many of us have seen our bills go through the roof. Almost every household across the UK has been hit by the soaring cost of oil, and felt the pinch as gas and electricity providers have put up their prices.

In the latest round of hikes, Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) and Eon both increased their gas and electricity prices; SSE introduced hikes of 19.2 per cent on electricity and 29.2 per cent on gas, while Eon introduced increases of 26 per cent to its gas and 16 per cent to its electricity prices.

"These hikes are a hammer blow to households," says Scott Byrom from the price comparison service Moneysupermarket.com. "They show that the energy giants are reeling from the rapid spike in wholesale gas prices."

Given that things only look set to get worse, now is the time to take steps to keep a lid on your bills, and one of the simplest ways of cutting costs is by switching supplier.

If you have never switched before you could save nearly £300 by moving to a better deal elsewhere, according to price comparison service Confused.com – although the amount will vary according to your supplier and tariff, and the size of your bill. The whole process is very straightforward, and most of the legwork – and paperwork – is done for you.

Consider switching to an online tariff, which tends to be cheaper than a standard tariff, and opt to pay by monthly direct debit, as providers tend to reward customers who do this with a discount. You may be able to make savings by buying your gas and electricity from the same provider – known as a "dual fuel" plan; these deals typically include discounts or reduced prices.

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