Interest-free loans of up to £38,500 available for energy efficiency improvements across Scotland

Scottish home owners who are interested in improving their homes' energy efficiency without having to pay anything upfront for the works can now access an interest-free loan of up to £38,500 funded by the Scottish Government and available via Home Energy Scotland.

Under the scheme, which is conducted by the Energy Saving Trust, funding is made available to owner-occupiers and private landlords to install energy efficiency measures, such as external or internal wall insulation, double glazing, boilers, warm air units and other forms of renewable technology that can be used in the home.

Home Energy Scotland will chat to interested home owners to determine which energy efficiency improvements are suitable for them and their home, including home renewables systems. In some cases they can provide a specialist home visit to the property, to discuss their plans in more detail.

Once the survey has been conducted (either via phone or at the customer's site), home owners will be given access to the online application form.

HeatingSave — the most cost-effective solution for energy efficiency improvements

Replacing your central heating clock with a HeatingSave energy and boiler management controller is the quickest way of beating those tariff rises and saving on energy costs, often paying for itself in less than a year but almost always in less than 3 years.

HeatingSave can cut your energy usage by 20% to 30% with its energy management control, as its internal microprocessor constantly calculates and improves the efficiency and savings of your central heating system.

Using HeatingSave, simply choose the room temperature and the hot water you want, and when, and HeatingSave does the rest. It works with all central heating systems — oil, gas or coal — and links up with a PC to produce reports and graphs to fashion a powerful and complete energy management system.

The system is backed by the Carbon Trust and the Energy Savings Trust.