How To Decrease Your Home Heating Oil Consumption

Tips to Help You Lower Your Heating Oil Costs

Our list of the top four things you should do to reduce your home heating oil consumption. Believe it or not, but because London and South-East England are very close to continental Europe, snow is more likely to fall there than in other urban areas in the UK.

All homeowners are concerned about their home heating oil consumption, especially in the months of winter, as everyone wants their home to be comfortable and warm over the festive period. However, making a few changes to your normal routine can decrease your home heating oil consumption. Here are four things you can do to lower your energy usage.

Keeping your boiler in good shape will decrease consumption

Make sure your boiler is serviced and inspected on an annual basis. This will make sure that you keep your costs down, and you will spot any problems early so you can nip them in the bud.

Put your curtains and blinds to good use

As many people know, when the sun is out during the day, it can help to heat our homes. But it also has the added benefit of helping to kill bacteria and mould in our homes. So you should always ensure that your curtains and blinds are left open during the day.

Just ensure that you remember to close them in the evenings when it gets dark in the evenings. Even the most energy efficient windows will lose some heat through the glass, so if you have curtains or blinds, you should ensure they are closed in the evenings to try to retain as much of the heat in your home.

For those with older homes, especially in conservation areas, where modern UPVC windows might not be allowed. It’s even more important to ensure curtains or blinds are closed at night, especially if your windows are old and drafty.

Thermostat Controller

When you are away from home for the day or a weekend, it might be a good idea to get a programmable thermostat to keep the temperatures in check.

You can save a bit of energy by lowering the temperature of your thermostat. Your bill could see a big difference even if you reduce it by a couple of degrees.

Modern thermostats can be controlled remotely over wifi and typically through an app when you’re away from home. So if you’re going to be away from home for any length of time, you can adjust the thermostat remotely.

Check for drafts around your home

Drafts can occur all around your home, making it much more costly to heat your home if much of it is lost due to poor insulation in your home, especially in your walls and in your loft.

However, if you’re looking for ways to improve the insulation of your home today. There are other areas of your home you can focus on today, such as your doors and windows.

If replacing drafty, poorly fitted or old windows and doors isn’t possible right now. You can still consider other options for sealing up gaps in the windows and doors. If you don’t already, add blinds or heavy curtains (or both) to help reflect the heat back into your rooms.

If your external doors are drafty and cannot be replaced, a door curtain or draft excluder could be an option to help block out the drafts. Even for internal doors, such as in your main living room areas, a draft excluder could help you to keep the heat from the fireplace or radiators within the room.

Cut the costs of your home heating oil

We’ve discussed ways to help lower your home heating oil consumption to help to lower your bills. But of course, there may be people who are unable to put into place all of these suggestions for one reason or another.

Or maybe you’ve already made many of these improvements to your home, but are now looking for other ways to cut down on your home heating oil costs.

Unlike gas and electricity prices, the price of heating oil isn’t fixed, so it can be difficult to predict when to buy your oil. Many factors impact the prices throughout the year, but typically, the demand for oil is very seasonal.

If you have an oil storage tank with enough storage space for the colder, winter months, when you use your home heating oil the most. You should consider buying your oil during the summer or warmer autumn months before the colder weather rolls in and demand increases.

As demand increases, the price of a barrel of crude oil typically increases, leading to inflated prices for fuels and oils, so buy early to save money if you can.