The way that you heat your home will make a huge difference to your energy bill, as well as the health of the environment around you. One way to improve the energy efficiency of your home is to practice zonal heating. But what exactly is it, and what are the benefits of zonally heating your property? Let’s find out.
What is zonal heating?
Zonal Heating is a term that captures a range of actions, such as turning off heating within an unused room permanently, or warming rooms to different temperatures, reflecting occupancy and use throughout the day, night or week. It can be achieved by manual adjustment to heating appliances, adjusting radiators and using smart thermostats.
Ultimately, zonal heating is the practice of using a variety of tools to efficiently and effectively heat your home. This can lead to a range of benefits for all homeowners, as we explore below.
The benefits of zonal heating
Given the continual rise of energy prices and the cost of heating your home, it’s imperative to take steps to ensure your home heating system is efficient and cost-effective. Let’s take a closer look at how you can use zonal heating to your advantage:
Cost-effective
When you zonally heat your home, it means that you direct heat only to areas that require it at any given time, which is a cost-effective way to heat your property. Statistics show that UK customers can save between 8.4% and 16.5% of their heating bills by using a smart thermometer, which is an effective way of directing heat to specific zones within your home.
Smart thermostats can be linked with radiator valves to enable you to control the temperatures of individual rooms and turn each radiator up or down, depending on your needs. While you do need to invest in a smart thermostat from the outset, it is likely to save you money on your energy bills in the long run.
Environmentally friendly
Research shows that the UK electricity system loses up to £9.5 billion every year on wasted energy, with the majority of this lost through heat. Simply turning on the heat and hoping for the best is not only draining financially, but it’s also really bad for the environment. Researchers from Loughborough University highlight that heating and hot water for our homes make up 40% of the UK’s energy consumption and one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions.
As such, if we’re to meet the ambitious 2050 targets we’ve set, every homeowner must take responsibility to reduce the amount of energy they use. Again, zonally heating your home is an effective way to do this, as it ensures that you only heat the areas of your home that you are using. This is particularly important for people with larger homes.
Enhanced control and comfort
Another thing to realise about zonal heating is that it allows you greater control over how energy is used within your home. You can adjust the settings in every room at all times of the day, ensuring that you create a comfortable environment for yourself and your family. With such impressive advances in technology in recent times, you have the opportunity to take full control of how you make use of the energy within your home, and it’s something that you should take full advantage of.
Improve your home’s energy efficiency today
There’s no getting away from the fact that zonal heating can improve the energy efficiency of your home. If you haven’t done so already, take the necessary steps to improve the way that you heat your home, to protect yourself from the increasing energy prices that we are all currently facing in the UK.
