Don't be stupid!

How stupid we can be at times! With the happenings of the last few years, one might say that we Irish are stupid in many ways. Borrowing too much, paying too much for homes, cars, clothes – you name it and we’ve paid over the odds.
These vague thoughts enter my head as the evenings get shorter, the kids are back at school and winter is fast approaching. My thoughts turn to preparing a budget for the heating over the winter.
Our house is a modern house with lots of electronic controls to check and monitor our oil heating. Our neighbour across the road lives in an older house with oil-fired central heating. Visiting one evening the talk turned to home heating and he complained how expensive it was even after the recent falls in oil prices.

Further discussion elicited the information that he had absolutely no controls on his heating system other than the ON/OFF switch. All his radiators came on together and heated the entire house at once. It is not a big house but it was sheer waste of money heating it all and you using only one or two rooms. No wonder his bills were out of control. The individual manual controls on the radiators were seized so he couldn’t even turn off some of the radiators.
I told him to buy one thing only and see a plumber. What was that thing? A blooming thermostat! The simplest little piece of energy efficiency you ever seen.

Did you know that properly using a programmable thermostat in your home is one of the easiest ways you can save energy, money, and help fight global warming? A qualified programmable thermostat helps make it easy for you to save by offering four pre-programmed settings to regulate your home’s temperature in both summer and winter — when you are asleep or away.
The average Irish household spends more than €2,500 a year on energy bills — nearly half of which goes to heating. Homeowners can save about 10% of that a year by properly setting their programmable thermostats and maintaining those settings. That’s €250 for about €20 of an investment. And if we all look closely at our heating outgoings and general energy expenditure, we will find dozens of ways to achieve small savings that all add up to a substantial sum in the end.
The pre-programmed settings that come with qualified programmable thermostats are intended to deliver savings without sacrificing comfort. Depending on your family’s schedule, you can see significant savings by sticking with those settings or adjust them as appropriate for your family. It is amazing to see what you can save with reduced and controlled temperatures that work for your family.
Thermostats are available from all plumbing and hardware outlets throughout Ireland including Woodies and Homebase.

Don’t be stupid! Go buy one.