Is it worth spending money insulating my home?
It's never worth spending a lot of money insulating your home or any energy saving device, unless you want to spend the rest of your life earning it back or it becomes an especially good plus when you selling your home. The estimation is it adds back perhaps a 1000 pounds to the sale price. You can try to get a grant; though in practice I find this depends on you income that but ask the engery saving trust. Elderly people can check with help the aged. Some local authorities have special skems for elderly people help install insulation for you at a fixed price. You can't always insulate you home as people pretend that you can. For instance, in a period house you can upset it or dry it out by changing its structure, but if it's suitable cavity wall insulation can cost around 260 pounds per room and save up to 160 pounds. Perhaps it will take you two years to earn that money back. Loft insulation can cost around 230 pounds to install and earn back about 220 pounds. So you might break even in a year or eighteen months. Again, I feel that you don't want to get into the grip of eco campaigners then rubish ordinary insulation and suggest you use wool and goodness knows what at massive expense. Draft proofing can save from 20 pounds a year. You can use tight stuff with newspaper to do that and duct tape around the windows for what, two pounds fifty. I also make a special lining for my curtains in the winter which I velcro onto the inside and that sweeps down to the floor and looks absolutely lovely and it really keeps the drafts out. A hot water tank jacket can cost about fifty-five pounds at B & Q or at any of the big shacks and save you twenty pounds a year. Water pipe insulation cost around ten pounds and saves the same in a year.
