Many forms of insulation are relatively long term investments and almost all are permanent installations. Therefore, most people will only consider insulation when they know they’re going to be staying in the same place for a long period.

Insulating your hot water tank is without a doubt the simplest and easiest way of saving energy (apart, maybe, from remembering to close the front door). If you fit an insulating jacket to the accepted standard you will cut heat loss from your water tank by as much as 80%. A jacket of acceptable quality should be at least 75mm thick, and as they’re not particularly expensive, if yours is a little past it’s best, you should fit a new one.

Tank and pipe insulation is very simple. By reducing the heat lost through the walls of the boiler you keep your hot water hotter for longer with less need to keep heating it. This means that you need to use less energy and thus reduce your carbon footprint and your fuel bills.

For such a simple form of insulation it’s not surprising that the savings aren’t astronomical. A new jacket will set you back around £20 give or a take a few pounds and the saving on your fuel bill will be around £40 a year. Insulation for water pipes is another option and costs between £5 and £10 (these are the grey foam that you tie around pipes) and it saves around the same amount each year. The CO2 saving for tank insulation is around 190kg, whilst the saving for pipe insulation is about 60kg per year.

Fitting hot water insulation is easy enough to do yourself. Buy a jacket and make sure that it is fitted as tightly as possible. When it comes to fitting the pipe insulation you should only do it yourself if the pipes are accessible in which case you simply have to wrap the pipe in insulating foam. If the pipes are not accessible you can get a professional to insulate them, but the work might take several more years to pay for itself in terms of savings.

Of course, if you do have a little more money available and you have a particularly old boiler, it might be worth making the most of the government boiler-scrappage scheme to invest in a new boiler. The government offers to take £400 from the cost of a new boiler, whilst some suppliers, like British Gas*, are offering promotions that will double the government’s money. The scheme only applies to very old boilers, but if you think you fall into that category you should double check because in one year, a new boiler will save you massive amounts.

*Visit the British Gas website to see their full range of new boilers