Reduce your home office energy costs

With the words “cost of living” going round and round in the news and the price increases in energy most of us are looking to do what we can to save some money. With working at home, you might be concerned about your energy bills.

Heating your room

With the price of gas and other heating fuel being so expensive it is a key area to consider. If you are lucky enough to have a large property and you are at home on your own during the day you have some options. There is no point heating a large space with central heating if you are only using one room.

Electric heating might sound like an expensive idea but not if it means you can just heat one room. You will want to make sure the room is isolated and retains the heat. Check that your window and frame are not allowing heat to escape (and drafts in). Keep your door closed as much as possible.

Keeping the heat in

You might want to consider the use of a draft excluder if there is a space under your door. I have found the easiest ones to use are excluders which slide under the door. They have the added benefit of not normally needing to move them every time you open the door. You can also buy excluders which stick to the door. With a simple hook and loop system then the Fowong excluder is a nice stylish option for any office:

If you are looking for a simple “stick on” option, then the easiest way is a draft excluder which you can apply using self-adhesive tape. You need make sure you carefully purchase as some of the cheaper excluders may not stick well and come off. One of the advantages of a stick-on excluder is you can easily cut it to size. Here is an example of a quality stick on excluder:

Upping the temperature not your energy costs

You may already have a nice temperature in your room if you have some old screens and a desktop running pumping out heat. They are likely using more energy but do come with an advantage of heating the room in the winter. If you find your electronics aren’t already producing enough heat and you need to up the temperature, then an electric in-room heater could be a good option.

A small space heater should be enough to heat up most home offices. Our advice would be to buy the most energy efficient one you can afford. It might be a case of weighing up the energy consumption vs. the cost of the product. If you are looking for an efficient heater which won’t break the bank, then Hihhy produce an ideal desk-top heater:

If you are heating a larger area or want something off desk, then an oil filled heater can be another efficient option. The Mylek oil filled radiator would be a good energy efficient choice. They offer both a version with an in-built timer (good for heating up the office before you start) as well as a manual start. They all have an in-built thermostat so will automatically turn on and off when the temperature in the room changes.

Fancy a coffee?

If you are anything like us, then we are powered by coffee. If you aren’t careful, you could be boiling too much water. The most expensive electrical devices are ones which need to heat. So, anything from your tumble dryer to your kettle. If you are working at home on your own, then I would recommend treating yourself to a coffee pod machine. If you purchase one which will automatically fill your cup with the right amount of water, there is never a risk you might boil too much. The Tassimo machines have an intelligent feature where every pod as a barcode which tells the machine how much water to add to the cup. With just one press it makes the perfect strength cup of coffee. I recently upgraded to a Bosch Tassimo machine; I made sure I picked up a light weight small machine. That way it lives in the office with me most of the time but can be moved to the kitchen when guests visit. If you are interested in getting one yourself then here is the one sitting on my desk:

Home automation

The final energy saving purchase I have recently made was to add smart devices throughout the house. It allows me to control all the lights throughout the house plus some of the electronics I have on smart plugs. Obviously, this is a bit of an easy one in that when I’m at my desk I can turn all the other lights off in the house and electronics. Here are a few examples of the ones I purchased:

If you are like me then you probably have some Alexa enabled devices kicking around. If you find you don’t have one in every room (which I certainly don’t) then you can pick up an Echo Flex. It simply plugs into the wall and runs Alexa. It has a single speaker so you wouldn’t want to use it for music. It has intentionally been created for smart home use. Here is a quick link you can use to pick one up:

Hopefully you will have the chance to investigate some of the above, any little improvement you can make will help reduce your costs. Are you interested in more ideas to improve your setup then take a look at our other post Working from home – What’s your setup?.

Quick disclaimer, if you decide to purchase any of the suggestions I mentioned above (using the links on this page) then code monkey club receives a small amount of money as they are affiliate links, help keep us posting.