 and it's getting colder apparently we're in for the the coldest blast in four years according to the papers today so a good time to have a booklet landing at the house that will help us to hopefully reduce our use this is our use of energy and to stay warm and well it's being delivered to every house in Donegal and it contains practical information on how to reduce our use of energy where safe and possible and it outlines the supports as well that's available to stay warm and well a professor Ifa Foley is an expert in energy systems and has produced this together with a research team at Queen's University in Belfast and Ifa joins us now Ifa this is timely well I suppose it is but that's why I was thinking ahead as they're not up in Queens you could see this coming yeah yeah I did see you coming yeah it's it's developed by the Department of the Environment and it outlines one of the great things I found about it is that it outlines some of the appliances in the house that use the most energy and it also tells us exactly you know how much our our oil central heating costs it does it does and I put it together with my team up above in Belfast and we've been working on it and we were approached by the Department of Energy in Dublin and Climate Change and we were also approached by SEA and they asked us could they use some of our information and the graphics that we put together so what they did then was they used our work to formulate the document well it stands out very clearly just how heating is the single biggest energy user in our homes and you know especially at a time like this we're going to need it and the last thing anybody wants to hear is about turning off the heat so are there any ways that we can save energy there there is there is I tell you now at the moment looking at like um you know even with your like I know no the most adjoining God would be on a kerosene oil central heating and you know people did of their own and did of their own battle gas but in terms of oil and even you know your own battle gas the same principles apply so for every one degree you come down you reduce your energy consumption for heating by about 10 but in tandem what you need to do is you need to think about your own comfort level so if you're an elderly person and you're in a room and you spend most of your time in in your TV room in your kitchen and you've you know turn up the radiators there and 1920 21 degrees Celsius and those rooms would be very comfortable for the day any rooms that you're not using around the rest of the house turn off the rads are turned down the temperature so 19 degrees where you're going sleeping at night if you want to heat it up for a few hours before you get into bed or an hour or two that's the kind of temperature we're talking about because when you're going to bed obviously you're keeping yourself warm so actually you don't need to have the the temperature dial set up high the next thing you need to do is when you turn on your heating leave it out for about an hour go around and feel all the radiators and if there's any cold spots you know you can get a radiator bleed key it's something that anybody could do I myself do it once a year and it's a little key you get them in the co-op or in woody's in one of those places they're about five euros and it's a five mil square little sort of an allen key nearly almost and if you go up and just slightly open it where where you felt the cold spot leave on that radiator it's normally on the left hand side the valve will be on the right to regulate the temperature and you just leave it up you'll hear the the air hiss out like leaving the air out of the tire and just gently close it don't ratchet it open because actually it can be quite hard to get it back in so just gently do it and when a little bit dark water comes out then close it and you've actually read the the radiator you've released the air there's an air lock in in in the radiator somewhere and you've released that and actually that will improve your boiler balancing then around your your pipe system at home so that's another thing you can do and that's that's done when the boiler is that done when the system's on it is you do what when the system is on not when it's off because what it is is the pressure builds up in the system and it releases then it you force out the air you it won't it won't work at all when you have the radiator off the other thing you should do as well as you know if you have an old heating system get it serviced you know and another thing you could do is you could speak to your but your your plumber don't do it now it's during the winter but you could speak to your your plumber about maybe in the spring coming and desludging your your your network so your pipe system so what happens is you get a minute bit of minimization in the internal pipe from the heat from the water and in the radiators and a bit of sludge will build up it's sort of black dirty matter and in the spring or in the summer what you could do is you could get them to flush out the system for you and actually your heating i got it done there last year my boiler i actually changed my boiler was i had an ideal boiler was at the end of it of its legs and i changed it and it packed up a few times actually it was really chugging along and we got i said to the plumber i said would you would you sludge the system for me they did and it's after making a huge difference now to my heating and i can see my prices have gone down but other things people could do is and they could make sure that if they've if they've a crack playing a glass or something like that and they can't afford to get it changed get a bit of all um you know um sell a tape are a bit of masking tape are a bit of plumber's tape and just see the window you know and if you get them i know now people will laugh it's a simple thing you see what you're trying to do is you're trying to block the draft now obviously you you need to have a certain amount of air circulating in your home for your your well being and you know and and for carbon monoxide if there's any issues or anything like that so you just you need to have a little you need to have some air circulating and and it's better for your health as well but another thing you could do with to reduce your bills is you know like i wouldn't be a big advocate now of using the tumble dryer but i know in certain locations people tend heavily on the tumble dryer they live in an apartment blocks and are they're living in you know in a smaller home and they don't have any place to hang out their clothes but what you could do is you could put on a put on another spin on your on your washing machine get out as much water as possible and then if you have a bathroom in the house that you're not using are you with a shed a little small shed put the clothes in the clothes horse and you know leave the the the window open a little bit so you're leaving any mildewy smell out you know because you don't want that that's bad for you and then there's a few other things you could do as well your hot water tank you know if you're a one person or you you know there's only two people in your home then you don't need to have the full heating up the full tank so just check how many liters have you gotten your full tank and have you you know in the olden days that you'd be sink sink and bat you may only need to have it i'm sink if you're only having a shower maybe every second day you know some people now have themselves washed away it depends on your age so you know everybody needs to think about their own circumstances and for christmas now coming up to christmas but i'd say to people as well you know if you've elderly relations are you on well friends you know think about buying them a thermal vest or a nice fleece blanket or an electric blanket or a draptic schilder for their door or one of those new energy efficient kettles there's a whole load of things you can do to reduce your energy consumption and if you bring your energy consumption down by about 10 percent you could save up to 700 euros over the year and and people that's a lot of money that's a lot of money and you know i'd say to people as well if you have an electric shower get an eco shower head it's quite easy to change the shower head over the year actually you could save up to about 130 euros if you put on them they cost about 11 euros you know you can obviously get fancy pants ones as well for about 40 euros but go with the you know the cheaper one will do you the same job if you have your water tank as well in your hot press make sure there's a there's a lagging jacket around it it costs you about 20 euros and don't forget to check out the seai page in relation to last insulation and insulate your home they have other things there as well you know and there's other bits and pieces that you can get from seai to to reduce to help you be more energy efficient in your home you get timer plugs don't go around switching off all your life and please um you know if you're elderly at home and even older you know younger people if you've new modern light bulbs energy efficient light bulbs they're very efficient the led ones for example now you could have one of those lights on for seven hours it's only it's only 10 10 cent you know so we don't want anybody tripping or falling and and breaking their hip or breaking the leg you know i'm an arm there before christmas so just there are the sort of things you can do the tumble dryer is about a euro 85 to euro depending on your tariff so just watch that guys and another thing is you could get an electric heater so if you're in one room the television room and you don't you know you don't have a chimney or you know you'll find you the bags of coal are getting a little bit expensive and it's harder to put on and it's more work what you could do with or even would you could get an oil filled a little electric storage heater there for about maybe 40 50 euros and actually they're made by you could there's a few models they're by glendimplex and sure they're you're buying Irish then you know okay so um are they not a wee bit are they not a wee bit soaring energy too well i tell you what the thing if you get the convective there's there's about three different types okay so there's a ceramic electric storage heater or an electric heater there's a convective one where basically it's a little plate and they can be expensive because anything where you're generating a lot of heat okay the convector radiator one they generate a lot of heat so anything that's a lot of heat could be expensive those ones i know the ones you're talking about the one i'm actually talking about is an oil filled one and what happens is the oil builds up a critical mass of of um heat in it and it it's it's slow so it's it's it's it's it's it's quite efficient um in comparison to the other ones i know the ones you're talking about now you know the the the electric store one where it looks like a flame yes they can be quite energy intensive as well but the little one i'm talking about now it comes with a little thermostat and a timer on it i actually bought one for my my my parents below and cork in their house and they use it and actually what it does in the morning if it's cold for them to on it just gives the place a little bit of a boost and it's not as expensive while you're waiting for the heating to put on as well as that no elderly people setting the fire it's much more work you know than it was previously you know as you get older and if maybe you can answer me this because here in Donegal well it's it's mostly oil central heating the lucky ones might have an air-to-water system but when it comes to an oil central heating system are we better to turn the thermostat down a degree or two and leave it on for longer or should we still be you know turning it on and off and on and off which is more efficient i tell you what now let's don't don't be switching it on and off at all now okay don't right because once you start switching it on and off what you're trying to do is you're trying to get it up so if you set it at 20 odd or 19 degree celsius it's going to burn more fuel in the actual boiler to get you up to your 19 once it gets up to the 19 and you've thermostat around the house it uses actually it'll actually it'll use less yeah yeah yeah so it's nice and steady slow and steady wins the race good on you so you know you know what i mean that's one good that's at least one good takeaway from that ifa thanks thanks a million all right uh those booklets are going to be arriving if they haven't already done so in every house as they're called reduce your use stay warm and well thanks ifa don't worry all right come here can i do one thing you can can i say hello to jam door and above he's retired from um lesher kenny introduced technology i do a new name no atu now atu exactly i want to say hello to all the colleagues up there that we work with above in um in johnny gall and i want to say hello to some of the lads as well that i know and johnny johnny gall county council just to say hello to them as well so keep well and and and look safe safe and keep warm this winter no bother happy christmas eve cheers bye bye bye it's not just that sarah count rely on the rains to come this year it's not just that the only water left could cost her her life it's not just that she has seen all her crops destroyed and she is struggling to feed her little