It is also important to ensure that your house is well ventilated - this is just as important as draught proofing and it is essential if you have solid fuel fires, gas fires or a boiler with an open flue. Good ventilation is especially important in kitchens and bathrooms; you could open a window when cooking, running hot water or drying clothes, or fit an extractor fan in these areas.

Insulation

There are different ways of insulating your home:

• Loft

  Insulating your loft is one of the easiest ways of saving money and you can install it yourself. Loft insulation acts as a blanket, trapping heat rising from the house below. Without it, you could be losing as much as 15% of your heating costs through your roof. In a year, installing insulation to the recommended 270mm depth could save you as much as £110 on heating bills and nearly 1 tonne of CO2 every year.

  Insulation is laid over the floor of the loft, in between and over the joists if they are visible. This is a job that requires protective clothing, gloves and masks but is fairly easy to do, provided that care is taken not to insulate below the cold water tank, if this is in the loft, and not to compress the insulation in tight corners and eaves.

• Cavity
  
  
  In most homes built after the 1920s, the external walls are made up of two layers with a small cavity in-between. In homes with unfilled cavity walls, a significant part of the energy bill will be spent on heating the air outside. Cavity wall insulation works by filling the gap between the two walls with an insulating material and this decreases the amount of heat escaping through the walls by around a third. It helps to create a more even temperature in the building, preventing condensation on walls and ceilings and reducing the heat build-up inside buildings in hot weather.
  
  Insulating your wall cavities could save you around £90 a year on energy bills, reducing heating costs by 15%. It is quick, clean and fairly inexpensive to install: material is injected into the cavity from the outside; the job takes about two-three hours for an average three bedroom house and costs about £500. The energy savings that result means that it pays for itself within 5 years.
  
• Solid wall
  

  Solid walls lose even more heat than cavity walls. If you have solid walls, then you can install either internal or external insulation.

  External wall insulation involves adding a weather proof insulation treatment to the outside walls, to a thickness of 50-100mm. It is usually considered when other repair work on the exterior is being done anyway, or if the house has severe heating problems. External insulation can save up to £300 on bills and 2.5 tonnes of CO2 a year. However, it is more expensive than cavity wall insulation, costing around £1,900 to insulate a 3 bedroom semi-detached house if other repair work is being undertaken, or about £4,500 if the installation work is being done on its own.

  Internal wall insulation consists of either plaster board laminates or wooden battens in-filled with insulation then covered with plasterboard; or alternatively, flexible linings can be used. Insulation/plaster board laminates are fitted to a 90mm total thickness; costs start at about £42 per square metre and can also result in savings of up to £300 a year on energy bills. Flexible insulating linings can be bought in rolls like wallpaper and are much cheaper and easier to install but result in lower cost savings, of around £95 a year.

• Floor

  You could save yourself £40 or so a year by insulating your floors. This can be easy to do - lift floorboards and lay mineral wool insulating material, supported by netting, between the joists - it costs about £90 for an average three bedroom house and it can save half a tonne of CO2 a year. Gaps between floorboards and skirting boards can lead to costly draughts but can be very easily prevented with a tube of sealant that can be bought from most DIY stores, costing about £15 but leading to cost savings of £15 a year. Do remember not to block under-floor air bricks in outside walls though, as reduced ventilation for wooden floors can cause them to rot.

• Tanks and pipes

  Both tank and pipe insulation keeps your water hotter for longer, by reducing the amount of heat that escapes. Insulating your hot water tank is one of the simplest and easiest ways of saving energy and money. Fitting one that's a least 75mm (3 inches) thick could cut heat loss by over 75% and could save you around £20 a year. The jackets themselves cost half that and cost nothing to fit; insulation for hot water pipes will cost about £10 and save you around £10 a year, so you could recover the cost of fitting within one year. It is a straightforward job if the pipes to be insulated are easily accessible. Hard to reach pipes may require professional help in order to insulate them.

Energy saving light bulbs

An energy saving bulb uses up to 80% less electricity than a standard bulb but produces the same amount of light. They last up to 10 times longer than ordinary light bulbs and each bulb you fit could save you up to £60 on electricity over the lifetime of the bulb. Even taking into account the cost of buying the bulbs, fitting low energy bulbs throughout your house could save around £600 over the lifetime of the bulbs.

Modern energy saving bulbs come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and fittings - stick or candle shaped, with screw or bayonet fittings. Look for the Energy Saving Recommended logo - this means the light bulb meets the strict energy efficiency criteria set by the Energy Saving Trust and that it has been independently tested by an accredited test house. As well as energy consumption, criteria cover how long they should last, quality of light, packaging information and safety. The criteria are reviewed on a regular basis and standards are constantly being raised to make sure that energy saving bulbs keep improving in terms of efficiency and performance.

Glazing

Double glazing works by trapping air between two panes of glass, creating an insulating barrier that reduces heat loss, condensation and noise. Double glazing your windows can save £80 - £100 a year on your heating bills and cuts heat lost through windows by half, saving 0.75 tonnes of CO2 a year.

Fitting double glazing is a professional job and you are advised to look for the Energy Saving Recommended logo when choosing your windows, to ensure that both the window frame and glass are as energy efficient as possible. Secondary glazing is a less expensive option than replacement double glazing and will still save you money by reducing heat loss and draughts. Alternatively, you could double glaze only the rooms that you use the most; where you need to be warmest and where heat loss may be the greatest.

Switch to high efficiency boilers

Your boiler is likely to last for 15 years, so if yours is older than this, then it's probably time to replace it. Installing a high efficiency condensing boiler with the correct heating controls can save significant amounts on your fuel bills, as these types of boilers waste the least amount of energy. They convert over 90% of the fuel they use into useful heat, compared to around 60% for an old conventional boiler.

About 60% of your household's CO2 emissions come from your boiler. Fitting a condensing boiler will save between £100 and £120 a year on your energy bills and will reduce your CO2 emissions by more than 800Kg a year.

Buy an Energy Saving Recommended boiler and look for the logo on heating controls, guaranteeing that the products are the most energy efficient in their category. If you are fitting a gas boiler then make sure that your installer is Corgi registered.

There could be grants and offers available to help you pay for draught proofing, insulation and so on, please contactALIenergyon 01631 565183 for more information, E mail us at , or visit our section on grants.