You could save over £700 on bills by checking your home’s energy efficiency – how to check | Personal Finance | Finance

Nicola Battey, product director at the boiler and home emergency insurance challenger, Hometree highlights a few steps people can take to check the energy efficiency of their homes. Once people know, they are then able to take the appropriate action to improve it. Ms Battey first recommends people check the direction of their windows in each room of their house as the direction of the sun will impact how warm each room will be, this could be useful in deciding what each room in the property will be best suited for.

She said: “Rooms with south-facing windows get lots of natural sunlight, making them ideal living rooms, assuming that’s where you spend most of your time in the home.

“East-facing windows are far less likely to let in natural light, so it’s better to utilise these rooms as kitchens since kitchen appliances can release a lot of heat.”

As well as windows, Ms Bettey recommends people should also take a look at the roof of their property as the type of roof a person has could allow for the option for solar panels in the future.

Ms Bettey added: “This would mean it should be a pitched roof, not flat, and ideally not in the shadow of another house.

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“Another thing to consider about your roof is the direction it’s facing. The best orientation in the UK is to have a south-facing roof, to make the most of the limited UK sunshine!”

People should also take the time to take a look into the materials used to build the house as older buildings tend to have less insulation throughout their structures, as well as “very old” and “inefficient” radiators and heaters.

Ms Bettey highlighted that this can make it difficult to insulate a room to keep it warm.

However, people can then take steps to then improve the insulation of their home by improving their home’s loft insulation, replacing windows and doors with draft-proof versions, and insulting pipes and radiators.

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Ms Bettey said: explained: “The EPC will give your property an energy rating, from A, which is efficient, to G, which is inefficient and is valid for 10 years.

“You can access any home’s EPC through the government’s website, and are usually attached to the home’s listing. The most common efficiency rating in the UK is band D, which means a lot of homes could improve their insulation to use less heating in the first place.”

Ms Bettey recommends people also check the appliances, such as the oven, washing machines, fridges, and boiler in their home as they usually come with a different rating for their efficiency.

In this rating system, A is the best and anything further down the alphabet is progressively worse.

Ms Bettey said: “A lot of money can be saved simply by switching from a low-grade boiler or fridge to a high-grade one, despite the fact that this would initially require you to spend more money in one go.

“However, in the long run, hundreds of pounds could be saved throughout the months, compared to your bills being astronomical due to your appliances being old. Newer appliances are also a lot better for the environment.”