Saving the planet

We all want to do our bit to cut down our carbon emissions, don't we? But, like me, you may be a little fed up with the obvious things like turning down the heating thermostat by one degree and putting in energy saving light bulbs and only putting in the water you need when you boil up a kettle. After all, we're doing these things already, aren't we?

But hang on a minute. Going back to turning the thermostat down one degree. In our current house and in our previous house, there wasn't a room thermostat to turn down! Both houses had a new boiler recently fitted and thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) on each radiator. This means each room can be controlled rather than one thermostat for the whole house.

BUT the room thermostat works by turning off the pump. Even if all the TRVs are off, the pump is still working. This has two consequences that occur to me. Firstly, because the pump is on all the time, it will need to be replaced sooner. Secondly, you are wasting electricity by having the pump working all the time the boiler is on.

During autumn and spring, our boiler may be on for the usual 3 hours in the morning and 6 hours in the evening, but for a maybe half that time, the house is warm enough and the room thermostat would shut off the pump. That's the equivalent of at least two NON-low energy light bulbs on for about four and a half hours a day!

So don't worry about all your items on standby if you're wasting that kind of power each day!

Actually it's easy enough to install a room thermostat if you are able to do that kind of thing, because boilers normally have the required electrical terminals there ready.

So there you are. Today's tip for really getting to grips with your carbon footprint!