A warmer and comfy home is every ones dream for the winter and colder months. A Warmer home is not a difficult target to achieve. Only you need to invest in a few improvements to your home. But who has that kind of money in these difficult times?

On the other hand weaknesses in your home design and construction may be robbing you of millions of costly kilo joules every day and you may find it difficult day by day to meet your fuel and electricity bills. You won’t be alone in this predicament. There are 60,000 Irish homes which suffer from absolute fuel poverty and further 160,000 more intermittently affected.

Interestingly only a few low cost improvements are needed to improve the situation to manageable levels. Still you’ve got to find some hard to come by Euros for this exercise. That’s where the SEAI Warmer Homes grant scheme comes to your help.

What is Warmer Homes Scheme?

It is a grant scheme fully administered and partially funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. The intention is to prevent wastage of valuable energy, thereby helping the home owners home economy, minimise unwanted CO2 gas emissions to the atmosphere, elevate the inhabitants home interior comforts and the health.

Incidentally the scheme is meant only for owner occupied homes.

What makes a home with a heating system feel cold?

Weaknesses in your home design and construction may rob you of millions of kilo joules of costly energy. Needless to say, along with it would drain out your already battered purse too. How does this happen? There are several ways. For example your home may be insulated poorly or not at all.

On the other hand your home may be installed with an out dated or a poorly functioning heating system. The electrical appliances you use in your home may be of an older vintage and not of the correct energy rating to suit the needs of the day.

A homes lighting system consumes a thick wedge of the energy pie. Where you have what type and capacity of lights may have to account for the energy bill excesses.

However it may not be fair to blame the above alone for a poor energy rating of your home. How you operate your energy consuming equipment, in other words your habits may offset much of what you hope to gain from very good equipment and improved building construction.

The crux of the matter is that a few simple measures and changes to the home envelope may bring about unprecedented energy and money savings along with much hoped for comfy interiors.

When your energy bills strangle you

When you find the energy bills are all out to get you and you are unable to warm the home enough to keep your family happy even though it is freezing cold outside it’s time to take stock of where you stand with your energy usage and wastage. It’s not as if you have to spend a fortune to plug the wastage and harm to the environment thanks to the Warmer Homes grant scheme.

The available assistance

Through the Warner Homes grants you may get assistance for the following improvements.

• Attic Insulation – Through Roofs and Attics you lose the most thermal energy than from elsewhere in the building envelope. If your existing insulation thickness is at least 50 mm you may get assistance to increase it up to 200 mm.

• Draught Proofing – Through the building roofs and walls, windows and doors, cold draught may enter your home to over work your heating system. The cold draught entering also expels warm energy laden room air.

• Jacketing Hot water Cylinders –A simple process, where the cylinder is insulated with a material such as pink glass wool and kraft paper vapor barrier. A further sheet aluminium cladding may be added against mechanical damage to the insulation.

• Low energy light bulbs – Low energy bulbs such as CFL lamps reduce energy usage drastically.

• Cavity wall Insulation – When your home walls are constructed with continuous cavities in them, filling the cavities with blown in glass wool fill or EPS or XPS plastic beads/foam will reduce the heating system running time saving you quite a sum in terms of energy and expenditure.

• Energy advise – You will get assistance to learn how to optimize and maintain the use of your insulation, heating system, best ways to improve the home comforts etc.

It is estimated thousands of dwellings in Ireland are subjected to persistent and intermittent fuel poverty. This means that these dwellings are unable to heat their homes adequately to a safe and comfortable level due to low income levels and the energy inefficiency of the house.