40% of your electricity cost comes from heating and cooling -- two activities that are active throughout the year, irrespective, or rather, dependent on the type of weather and climate you are living in. To add to it, around 50% of the energy used to heat or to cool your home can leak out, in absence of proper insulation.
Let’s look at a few heating options for you:
Passive Design
Without any active heating equipment, you can opt for a smart way out -- passive design. It can be done via insulation, draught proofing, and installing shades. This will help you to reduce the amount of energy required for heating. You can insulate the walls, ceilings and floors; buy a house such that it is sunlit, and seal the draughts around the windows and the doors. But be sure that it is in sync with the Australian climate!
Heating Choices
After taking steps to smartly design your home, you need to opt for appropriate heating options. Your heating bill is affected by the climate, type of the heater, usage of the heater, and positioning of the heater. You can save on the power bill by choosing the correct size of heater for your room and house - Central Heating for the whole house and Space Heating for a particular room.
Central Heating
Central heating keeps the whole house warm via ducts or pipes and uses gas, boiler, or heat pump for its power. It uses a LOT of energy because it tries to keep all the rooms warm. You can control which areas you want to heat by shutting off heating in a particular room. It uses efficient energy sources and tech, per your climate. The output of this heating system also matches your need so you will be able to reduce the cost.
Gas Space Heaters
When it comes to gases produced by standard electric heaters, Liquefied Petroleum Gas and Natural Gas produce just 25 to 30% of it. When it comes to gas space heaters, you are spoilt for option and can opt for:
Radiant or Convection
Fixed or Portable
Flued or Unflued
Gas Space Heaters are mostly used to warm the living rooms. All the gas heaters need to be serviced every 2 years by a licensed gas fitter.
Electric Heaters
As compared to conventional electric heaters, if you were to opt for reverse-cycle air conditioners, they use just 33% of the power consumption and produce less amount of greenhouse gasses. Other options that you can consider are split systems, electric portable heaters, electric column and flat panel heaters, convection heaters, radiant electric heaters, fan heaters, and radiant lamp heaters.
Wood Heaters
This is not an energy-efficient option when it comes to heating, even though many Australian homes use it. An open fireplace is very inefficient as a heating option because 90% of the heat is lost via the chimney. As opposed to this, you can opt for slow combustion heaters as they produce a lot less pollution. Along with a wood heater, you can also use a heat shifter so that you can get distribute the heat throughout the house is an organised manner.
Which of the above discussed heating options would you consider? If you need any help with setting up your home's heating system, then please know that our team of efficient and licensed Perth Electricians are just a call away.