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Can you get cracking with Plan A and help cut your home carbon emissions? We know there is no Planet B and there is no time for draft plans … and that means no time for draughts at home either …
Do you sometimes forget to shut the back-door when you go outside to play? Have you ever stopped to wonder why we really need curtains… just another job like making your bed? Drawing your curtains at the appropriate times of day can help reduce your carbon emissions – saving electricity used for lighting, and reducing energy used for heating your home.
Even the tiniest of gaps –a key hole or a crack in the floorboards - can let warm air leak out of our homes and cold air flow in to take its place. This lowers the room temperature, meaning the boiler has to work harder for longer, burning more fuel and creating more carbon emissions. How much harder will your boiler have to work if you leave the curtains or doors open???
Your challenge this week is to draw your curtains at the right time in the morning and evening and Shut the Door on Draughts! Before you tug at any curtains, please check with your parent/ carer! Remember to HIT THE RED BUTTON and tell us when you’ve completed the challenge.
Humans when we get cold tend to put on jumpers, coats and hats. Animals that live in cold climates are well prepared for the cold with thick fur coats. What does your house ‘wear’ to stay warm? Curtains and insulation! A bit like a jumper, curtains and insulation are both made of materials that don’t allow heat to pass through easily. Home roof insultation is often made of fibre-glass or rockwool (so don’t touch it with your hands), or foam boards, or in some cases even with sheep wool! Maybe you could ask your parent/carer to show you what it is – you may have some visible in a roof space, or could hunt down some lagged pipes?
Did you know we cause more carbon emissions in the UK by heating our homes (including providing hot water) than by anything else that households do – even driving or flying? Around a third of our household carbon emissions relate to the energy we use for heating air and water – and at present most of this depends on burning gas, a fossil fuel, in individual boilers in individual homes. To tackle climate change, we will need to replace all these gas boilers, possibly with bio-fuel or hydrogen boilers, or more likely with other ways of heating our homes such as heat pumps or district heating powered by renewable electricity. But that won’t do the trick on its own, we also need to really cut back on the energy used for heating our homes. Recent research suggests that even if we expand renewable energy as fast as we can, we will still need to cut our overall use of energy to 60% of today’s levels to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050. Shutting the curtains and the door on draughts is one way we can make a start!
If you’re feeling super keen, as well as making sure you Shut the Door on Draughts, why not go on a draught-hunt? Choose a cold day, then hold a feather near to external doors, windows, key holes, gaps between floorboards, unused chimneys. If your feather flutters or you feel a cold chill, it’s time to take action! Ask your parent or carer if you can fill in small gaps with old newspaper. For larger gaps you could have a go at making your own draught-excluder by stuffing one leg of an old pair of tights with scrap paper or fabric.
Using our curtains to let in natural light in the morning, shutting doors and closing curtains in the evening to prevent heat escaping are all ways we, as Young Climate Warriors, can help reduce carbon emissions from our home. Remember to HIT THE RED BUTTON when you have drawn your curtains at the appropriate times of the day and succeeded in Shutting the Door on Draughts!
