Staying Warm During Winter

It is very important to keep your self warm during winter but with expensive energy prices you may be worrying about how you are going to afford to.

There are some basic things you can do to boost your home’s energy efficiency. We want to give you some tips that might be able to help you save money on your bills this winter and also make sure you are getting the support you are entitled to.

Simple tips

• Make sure you don’t leave electrical items on standby. If they are on standby, they are still using electricity, make sure you switch them off completely. (except for your Nottingham On Call base unit! This needs to remain on but as we mentioned in our blog before Christmas, our base unit costs 11p per month to run.)
• Turn down your thermostat by 1 degree. This small change can make a difference to the amount of energy used each month.
• Make sure your light bulbs are LED instead of traditional halogen bulbs. Ask someone to help check for you if you are unsure but LED bulbs use much less energy than halogen.
• If you take a nice long shower in a morning, you can save money on your water bills by cutting it down by just 1 minute!
• When making your favourite cuppa, be sure to only boil the amount of water needed. Boiling a full kettle each time will waste a lot of energy and cost more pennies over the month.
• Power cuts- it can be worrying when a power cut hits. Make sure you have a torch in the house to help you get around the house safely. If you rely on electricity for medical equipment you can speak to your service provider to be added to their “Priority Service Register’. People on this register will be prioritised to be reconnected quickly.
• This one may seem like common sense but wear plenty of layers. Make sure you are wearing socks around the house and slippers if you can. Wear long sleeves and layer up with thin layers. Your body heat will be held in between the layers of the clothes to keep you extra warm.
• Reduce heat loss from your house. Close curtains and blinds at night to keep heat in. If you have draughty doors and windows you can get draught proof tape to place around them to hold more heat in. Also draught excluders at the bottom of doors can be effective.
• Try not to have big pieces of furniture such as sofas in front of the radiators as this can block a lot of the heat from filling the room.

These are all fairly simple measures you can take to stay warm at home and try to reduce your energy bills.

When going out it is also important you wrap up warm. At this time of year the difference in temperature from your home to outdoors is much bigger so make sure you are prepared.

As well as wearing layers as mentioned above, add a big coat, scarf and gloves and maybe even an extra pair of socks! Make sure the shoes you wear have good grip on the bottom in case there is any ice or slippy surfaces when out.

Don’t forget about the Nottingham on Call GO! It's a revolution in Care Alarm technology. The GO! is a personal alarm you can take everywhere with you and is worn around the neck. It is very discreet but if you was to become ill when out, you can press the alarm and speak directly with our call centre team within a few seconds. If you were to fall, it has a built in falls detector which will automatically alert our team.

If help is needed we can arrange that and even if you are unsure exactly where you are, if we need to we can use GPS to find where you are and get help to you as soon as possible.

If you would like to know more about this or any of our services then call us today on 0115 746 9101.