If you’d like to keep your home warm without imposing a burden on the natural world, then there are several different options you might consider. New building regulations are constantly being brought in to bring down emissions in the UK, so, if you’re starting from scratch, then you might have no choice but to go eco-friendly. This is an area where it’s worth consulting with energy efficient home experts.
So, what are the options when it comes to green heating?
Heat Pumps
A heat-pump works a little bit like an air-conditioner, but in reverse. It’ll take the heat energy from outside of your house and funnel it to the inside.
These devices come in two different kinds. There are air-source heat-pumps and there are ground-source heat pumps. The former tends to be a more affordable option in the short-term, as it doesn’t require digging up the ground. In the long-term, however, a ground-source pump will tend to be more efficient. You can think of it as anchoring your home to the temperature of the earth, which tends to be more stable over the course of a given year than the temperature in the air.
Biomass Boilers
Rather than using natural gas or electricity to heat water, a biomass boiler will use sustainable materials like logs or pellets. When you burn timber, the carbon released is exactly equivalent to the carbon absorbed by the tree while it was growing – which makes it hugely more efficient than oil, provided that replacement trees are planted to replace the ones that you’re burning.
Solar Panels
Increasingly, houses in the UK are coming with solar panels attached to the roof. For the most part, these solar panels come in two varieties. There are solar thermal panels, which absorb heat and transmit it straight into the house, and there are solar photovoltaic panels, which take incoming light and turn it into electricity (which can in turn be used to heat your home).
Photovoltaic panels tend to offer greater versatility and a longer lifespan, but they’re not quite as efficient as thermal panels. Both are clean and reliable, however.
Wind Power
You can mount a domestic wind turbine either on the side of your home, or on top of a pole. In either case, you’ll need to invest a sizeable amount up front, and expect to recoup the money only in the very long-term. There are government incentives in the form of the Smart Export Guarantee to make the deal that little bit more attractive.
Featured image credit: Photo by Spacejoy on Unsplash
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