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A Simple Guide to lowering your heating bills, going green & reducing your carbon foot print.

Wood stoves ----- Wood boilers ----- Pellet Boilers ------ Solar panels

A lot of nonsense has been written about reducing fuel bills, carbon footprints and going green. A simple subject has been unnecessarily complicated. Following is a simple guide to show you the way forward and the order to do things in to get the best return for your pocket and the planet.

1. Insulation, insulation, insulation. It's much better not to use the energy in the first place. Roofs need 300mm or equivalent, walls should be cavity filled, see www.rockwool.co.uk, or insulation added to external walls, see www.kingspan.co.uk. Thermally lined curtains should be used and, or, double or secondary glazing added.
2. Fit a wood stove. Especially if you are currently using an inefficient open fire. A simple log stove will save about 20-40% of your fossil fuel heating bill, depending on how much you use it and the quality of the wood you burn. At the time of installation all unused chimneys should be capped and vented to prevent excessive drafts and heat losses.
3. A wood fired stove or cooker boiler fitted as per the COSI Hybrid system see page  Wood Stove Boilers. With this system you can easily reduce you carbon footprint / fossil fuel costs by 50-75% and still wake up to hot water and a warm house, and be able to go away in winter without the house freezing.
4. With the above system solar hot water can be added at a relatively cheap cost if you have a SE to SW facing roof. This will provide all your hot water from the end of May to the beginning of September even on a cloudy day.
5. If you not on mains gas and want to go the whole hog and replace your oil boiler (not viable if you've got natural gas it's still relatively cheap), you can fit a wood pellet boiler see wood pellet and log boiler page.