By Hannah Phillips
Image: blog.visafirst.com
With the festive season behind us and the inevitable January blues creeping in with all this cold winter weather, no one can really blame you cracking the heating up a few extra degrees or taking extra long hot baths to rid your chills… brrr!
While the weather is more suitable for polar bears than human beings, it can be really easy to overuse energy in your house to stay warm, without thinking about how much that endless cycle of lovely hot water bottles might be costing you.
Of course, we understand that being a student comes with a tight budget. To help make sure you don’t break the bank while Jack Frost is spreading his winter cheer, we’ve put together some handy energy saving tips that you can easily incorporate into your student lifestyle to help save you a few pennies… and prevent the nasty surprise of an over-usage bill.
1. Turn your heating down by 1⁰c:
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Turning your thermostat down by 1⁰c can save you around £60 a year.
2. Replace your light bulbs with energy saving bulbs:
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Energy saving bulbs use 90% less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs so it’s well worth swapping to more efficient bulbs.
3. Switch it off:
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When you leave a room, remember to flick your lights and appliances off. There’s no point keeping a room lit if you’re not in there.
4. Wrap up warm:
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Put on a few extra layers rather than cranking up the heat to help save on your heating bill.
5. Cook together:
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Get your housemates together for dinner. This will save you heating up the oven several times a night.
6. Clever kettle:
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Don’t fill the kettle right up when making just a single cuppa as this will take more energy to boil.
7. Leave the washing up:
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Not forever of course! We mean wait until you have a good amount of dirty dishes and wash everything together to save you filling the bowl several times. Or, if you’re lucky enough to have a dishwasher, fill it up and let it do the hard work for you as they’re more energy efficient than washing by hand.
8. Wash at 30 degrees:
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Washing at higher temperatures is unnecessary now thanks to washing powder technology so you can put your wash on at 30, still have a clean load and save on energy. This tip is actually a good one to think about all-year-round.
9. Forget baths, showers are the way forward:
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Take a quick shower instead of filling the tub, this will save you a huge amount of water.