Borrowing to save

HOME New energy saving kit to be rolled out across Cavan Libraries

A new kit which aims to help home-owners reduce energy use and save on household bills is set to become available to borrow from libraries in County Cavan.

On Wednesday afternoon Laura Carey of Clones Library provided a brief demo of the ‘Home Energy Saving Kit’ for about a dozen people at Cootehill Library.

The kit appears simple to use, and provides data needed to uncover energy wastage particular to each person’s home – draughts, shortfalls in insulation, high energy use devices. In many instances homeowners can apply quick fixes to make swift savings. And with a winter unlike any other in recent history looming large, many homeowners will believe keen to cash in on any possible savings.

Monaghan Libraries have already stocked the kits for the last year, so Laura was well versed in how to use the five devices, and their merits.

“With the cost of living crisis, we see a big increase in demand for the kits,” Laura told the Celt.

In addition to being a librarian, Laura is also manager of the regional Europe Direct office covering Cavan, Monaghan and Louth, which is housed in Clones Library.

“The [EU] institutions wanted people on the ground to feel they had a say in what happens in Europe,” she explained of the motivation behind Europe Direct. One of the EU’s major programmes is the Green Deal to tackle environmental degradation, a core part of which is “the ‘Renovation Wave’ – renovating public and private buildings”.

“The home energy kits are our starting point because we all depend on energy every day of our lives,” she says, cradling the blue plastic briefcase.

Clicked open it’s not quite James Bond level of sophisticated gadgetry – for example a radiator bleeding key is one of the ‘devices’. While the bleeding key is certainly the low-point from a technological point of view, for some it may well present their greatest saving by making their heating system much more efficient.

At the other end of the gadgetry spectrum is the handheld ‘Thermal Leak Detector’. You direct a green light onto a wall to get a baseline temperature, and then compare it to other parts of the house. The device can be set to detect changes anywhere between 0.5-5.5 degrees Celsius and the light changes colour; the light turns blue for colder spots, red for hotter spots. In this way, areas of the walls where insulation may be lacking, or draughts from under skirting boards or around windows will be easily identified.

Another nifty device is a ‘Plug-in Energy Monitor’. This is simply plugged into a wall socket, and you can then plug, say a hairdryer or kettle, into the monitor and it reveals the units of electricity the appliance uses.

A digital temperature or humidity metre allows homeowners to check if they are heating their rooms efficiently. Simply leave it in the rooms you want to measure to check they are within the recommended temperature range: 18-20 degrees for occupied rooms (livingroom/kitchen), and 15-18 degrees for non-occupied (hall/bedroom). Humidity levels should ideally be between 40-60% - above that and your home may have ventilation problems which could cause mould or damp.

Fridges and freezers use a significant amount of electricity so it is good to have them set at the correct temperature. One of the tools is a thermometer which should be left in the fridge or freezer for 30 minutes. The ideal temperature is between 3-5 degrees C for fridge and -15 to -18 degrees for freezers. Adjusting the temperature should then be a matter of turning a dial.

Those who have borrowed the kit from Clones often gave feedback on how they got on.

“Some people were very shocked by how draughts were coming in through their window boards in particular,” says Laura, noting skirting boards are also a frequent problem area.

There’s any number of effective solutions for closing off draughts without calling In a builder. As Laura observes, “Simple things can make a big difference.”

Having tried it out at her own home in Lavey, Laura found that the kettle’s “the big one” for her. She adds that any appliance with a heating element will use significant energy.

“It's all about increasing awareness about where we are using our energy, and where we are wasting it, because we do waste an awful lot of energy without realising - leaving items on standby, filling the kettle when we don't need to, or heating it up several times when really it was fine the first time you boiled it,” she says.

Laura also suggests that by involving the family in using the kit could help share the burden of cutting energy waste.

“We took the kit home and let the children go around the house to do the worksheets where they plugged in different items to see how much energy each of those items were using. We now have a few energy wardens at home who go around the house and keep us on our toes - lights are switched off in rooms where they are not needed and things like that. It creates awareness among the whole family which is really good.”