The best time to incorporate Energy-efficient and money-saving features in your home is at the design stage. But what if you already own your home and are not even planning on renovating? How can you improve the comfort and energy cost-savings in your home?
Here’s five things you can do right now:
1. Insulate your ceilings.
This will give you the most bang for your buck, as it will keep your home cool from the hot summer sun in your roof, and it will stop the heat escaping in winter. If you don’t have insulation in your whole ceiling, or if you suspect it might be only a very thin layer, it is worth investigating the safe installation of ceiling insulation that is appropriate to your climate.
As a rough guide, the materials cost for installing bulk insulation of R3.5 in a standard ceiling of 250m2 is about $1,600.00. This will pay for itself in heating and cooling cost-savings in about 5 years.
2. Draft seal your home
Many older homes do not have doors and windows that are very well draft sealed. In summer this leads to cool, air-conditioned air leaking out of your home (picture little dollars flying our your gaps), and in winter it can lead to uncomfortable drafts flowing through your home and taking all that warm air out with them.
Draft-sealing tape (also known as window sealing tape) only costs about $1 per metre. It’s has a foam on one side and a peel away sticky back on the other. It’s quite quick and easy to install yourself. You simply peel away the tape and stick it around your door and window frames. When the door or window shuts on the foam, it compresses it and stops most of the draft.
3. Install ceiling fans
Ceiling fans can be purchased for less than $100, and are very cheap to run, and yet in summer they can make you feel significantly cooler due to the wind chill factor that is at work. In a hot climate, fans see most householders not turning their air-conditioning on at all on those borderline temperature days, and then turning them on later and off earlier on hot days.
Feels like too much effort because you would have to call an electrician? Go on, you can do it!
4. Evaluate your Internal Window-Coverings
Blinds and curtains are of course a great feature for privacy and for creating a look that you love in a room, but they are sometimes overlooked in terms of comfort and energy-efficiency.
On hot days, you want to stop any sun coming into your home, as this sun not only heats up the air, but it also heats up the surface that it falls on. The warm floor, walls and furniture in your home will then release that heat over time, increasing the temperature in your home. This is not what you want on a hot day! So go around your home in the morning, and make sure there is not sun entering your home. Don’t forget little used rooms like the laundry, as they can increase the overall heat in your home. Then in the afternoon, you can open all those Eastern blinds and curtains, but make sure all the ones on the West side of your home and all closed to shut out the arfternoon sun.
In winter of course, it’s the opposite. Make sure all your blinds and curtains are open or tilted to allow the sun in, and enjoy all that free energy warming your home. Then when the temperature drops in the afternoon, close your windows and curtains to keep all that warmth in.
Interestingly, the actual material of your window covering is not that important, as it is the air-gap between your curtains or blinds and your window that will most insulate your home from unwanted heat gain or loss.
5. Know your home in all seasons.
In order to make the most of ‘passive’ cooling and heating design priciples, it helps to know what the wind, temperature, and sun are doing throughout the year on your particular house block. You’ll need to consider any ‘micro-climates’ around your home, such as a cool and shady tropical garden which may bring cool breezes into your home, or a large slab of open concrete or asphalt that will reflect and radiate heat into your home.
Did you know that wind doesn’t blow through a building — it is sucked towards areas of lower air pressure? To draw a breeze through in summer, you’ll need to open doors and windows on the leeward (low pressure or downwind) side of the house and utilise smaller openings on the breeze or windward (high pressure or upwind) side. It sounds counter-intuitive, but trust me – this one works!
Your home can be comfortable and energy-efficient. If you would like some further advice on this topic, or expert advice on your particular home, please contact BERA.