Cut your energy costs

The term "energy efficiency" is heard more and more in Serbia too. It means using energy economically and so reducing energy costs. Energy-efficiency measures are not hard to implement with an upfront investment (among others in better insulation), which pays back in a relatively short time; everything after the payback is pure saving. Buying and installing good insulation is an indispensable energy-efficiency measure. If you are building new, you will insulate your building properly during construction. But if you own an older building that you want to renovate, it is not too late to take care of its energy efficiency through insulation either.

Take the renovation of an old, run-down facade: adding insulation during the facade renovation (if the facade was not insulated before) increases your renovation costs by only about 25%–35% compared with a "half renovation" without insulation. What you get for this small extra investment is shown by a telling example from Austria:

If you insulate an average 130 m² family house in Austria to the minimum technical standards of the Austrian norms, heating costs come to about EUR 1,400 a year. If that minimum is not enough for you and you insulate your house optimally (e.g. with Austrotherm insulation materials), annual heating costs are halved to only EUR 700! The additional insulation pays back in 8 to 10 years — and that is without state support. Austria does subsidise such construction, so an Austrian homeowner, with the state subsidy, pays back the investment in at most 2 years! From the third year on, he has EUR 700 a year to spare.

So from the third year on, such a private builder has a nice extra holiday "prepaid" every year. Or, if he is not one for holidays, after 15 years he can buy a decent car or a top-class kitchen with the money saved! Interesting, isn't it?