Pipes and Lagging

Make sure any external pipework, and any pipework in areas you do not want to heat, is lagged. You can do this yourself – buy the lagging from a DIY shop.

I can’t find reference to any specifically environmentally friendly forms of lagging – can anyone help?

Walls can be responsible for up to 40% of heat loss from a house. Cavity wall insulation can reduce this loss by up to two thirds. This depends on many factors, including the type of house – a detached house has more to gain than a terraced as it has a greater proportion of external walls.

Brick houses built after 1920 usually have a gap between the two layers of bricks in the external walls, which can be filled with insulating material. This is easy and cheap to do.

Glass / Mineral Wool

Mineral wools are fibres made from minerals or meal oxides. They have insulating and sound-reducing properties due to their ability to hold air within their structure. They are also fire-retardants. They can irritate eyes, skin and respiratory tract, and may be carcinogenic.

Around 7% of heat loss from a house is through the roof – this is down from around 17% in 1970, due to more houses having roof insulation..

It might cost you £200-£300 to insulate your roof, but the savings could be around £100 a year, which makes just about the best investment option for saving energy.