THEY say charity starts at home – and in many ways, so too do our efforts to live more planet-friendly lifestyles.
Here Grand Designs' Kevin McCloud, shares his tips on how to keep your home warm.
Insulate and ventilate
For McCloud – known for his passion for eco-builds – good insulation and ventilation are both important and ideally go hand-in-hand.
"This means double secondary glazing, extra insulation in the loft, more insulation in the walls, if you can get it," he says. "Insulation under a suspended timber floor, over a cellar, draft proofing, and all the time making sure the air changes are good, the air quality isn't being compromised, and you're avoiding condensation.
"All of this is actually very easy to do in a new home, it's slightly harder in an older home," he adds.
Innovations set to feature at Grand Designs Live, in London on April 30, which McCloud is hosting include Inno-THeRM, a low-carbon recycled acoustic and thermal natural fibre insulation, that's easy to install and acts like a hydro regulator by absorbing and releasing water vapour. While CorkSol is an eco-friendly spray cork which can be used to coat surfaces, help solve problems of thermal insulation, and is great for treating timber, walls and cracks in old houses.
As well as showcasing solutions in new builds, McCloud says they'll have lots of experts on hand to help people understand "how it's possible to retrofit some of these into an existing home, to reduce your energy bills, dependency on fossil fuels and energy consumption".
Recycling heat
Having a recycling bin in your kitchen, and looking at ways to reuse materials before chucking them out is one thing. But what about recycling and reusing heat? It's something that's increasingly being looked at - on a bigger scale, as well as via smaller home technologies, such as heat exchanger/recovery fans for kitchens and bathrooms.
"For example at the exhibition, we have a number of technologies designed to extract waste heat from the home, which is mechanical ventilation and a heat recovery system - a fairly common piece of tech now [which] simply reacts like a heat exchanger [essentially a device designed to efficiently transfer heat from one place to another]," says McCloud. "You're saving energy, reducing dependency and reusing the heat in that air.
"This technology of mechanical ventilation and heat recovery is becoming smaller, it's becoming cheaper, and it's becoming more flexible," he adds.
Next level tech
When it comes to home tech, McCloud says one of the newer options is a monitor that tells you about the the condition of your home's air quality - such as the Amazon Smart Air Quality Monitor (£52.99, Amazon), which is easy to install through the Alexa app and cited as one of the cheapest available.
"It tells you what the nitrous oxide level is, or the carbon monoxide level, it tells you to open a window and explains why you might have a headache," says McCloud. "These bits of technology 20 years ago would require complex wiring throughout the building and be hugely expensive. Now you buy them in a box online. They all have an app and are connected by Bluetooth."
In fact, consumers have more options than ever to engage with home tech via apps - lighting is another example. As McCloud notes: "It used to be the case you'd get a specialist company in to produce wireless or controllable lighting in each room. Now you can buy Philips light bulbs with Bluetooth, so the light bulb itself is the way you control the lighting."
Energy efficient household appliances
The Energy Saving Trust, who'll be offering tips and advice at Grand Designs Live, suggests looking out for the energy label when buying new household appliances.
Appliances are tested for how much energy they use (during typical use) and given a rating on a scale of A to G - with A being the most efficient product in its class, and G being the least efficient. Some appliances use an older scale, from A+++ to G.
Designs are evolving too in a bid to create appliances that are more energy-efficient than their predecessors - such as instant hot water taps.
"It's across the whole scale, from white goods and fridges that monitor their own performance, through to things like hot water taps, which are far more efficient than kettles," says McCloud.
"It's taken a long while for this stuff to make it to market... The intelligent fridge that monitors its own energy performance has been a long time coming."
Grand Designs Live returns to Excel London from April 30-May 8
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here