September 2026 · UK Edition
Insight, opinion and reporting on the UK eco-home transition — fresh thinking on energy, home performance and sustainable living.
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Most of the heat escaping from UK homes right now is leaving through gaps you could seal with a £3 roll of brush strip, not through the walls and windows that tend to get all the attention. I have spent fifteen years visiting homes across the UK for this site, from draughty Victorian end-of-terraces in […]
The temperature dial on your washing machine is the single most powerful energy lever in your home that most households never fully use. Dropping from 40°C to 30°C cuts the energy consumed per wash by roughly a third, yet the majority of UK washing machines default back to 40°C every single time they are switched […]
Most households with loft insulation installed before 2006 are sitting on material that has never been inspected since it went in. Yet the Energy Saving Trust estimates that a quarter of all heat loss in an uninsulated home escapes through the roof, which means degraded insulation, performing at a fraction of its original capacity, could […]
Thousands of eligible UK homeowners are leaving free insulation on the table right now, simply because they assume they won’t qualify. The schemes running in 2026 are broader than most people realise, and the gap between a well-insulated home and a draughty one can amount to more than £600 a year on energy bills, according […]
Most homes I visit with solar panels installed in the last five years have the same conversation at some point. Someone, usually the person who manages the bills, asks whether they should add a battery. Their installer has mentioned it. A neighbour has one. They’ve seen the adverts. And they genuinely don’t know whether the […]
Up to 35% of the heat produced by a radiator mounted on an external wall can disappear straight into the brickwork behind it. Radiator reflector panels cost less than £20 for a whole-house pack and take under an hour to fit. That combination sounds almost too good to be true, and in some homes, it […]
The average UK household tumble dryer adds somewhere between £150 and £200 to annual energy bills, yet most owners have never once checked the energy label, let alone questioned whether a cheaper alternative might do exactly the same job for a fraction of the running cost. I’ve been in hundreds of UK homes over the […]
