Whilst the majority of heat in a house is lost through draughty windows or through poor insulation in lofts, you will also find that you lose considerable amounts of heat energy through your floor. Floor insulation is easy enough to do yourself, though you can consider getting a professional to do the work, and it could save you significant money on your fuel bills.

Floor insulation is easy enough to do with a tube of sealant that you can get from most DIY stores. You can use a silicon sealant to fill the gaps between the floorboards and around skirting boards in order to stop draughts. Another effective measure is to lift your floorboards and lay mineral wool underneath, support it with netting to make sure that the wool stays intact. You can run it across the joists upon which the floorboards rest.

If you are going to do the work yourself, however, make sure that you don't accidentally block under-floor airbricks in your outside walls. Just like the rest of your house proper ventilation is as important as proper draught exclusion, and floorboards will rot without adequate ventilation.

Using silicon sealant to fill gaps will save you around ?25 a year on your heating costs, whilst insulating underneath the floorboards can save you around ?50 a year. Don't worry about insulating underneath the floor on the upper stories - you only need to make sure that your ground floor is properly insulated. It will cost you around ?20 to do gaps in the skirting boards and around ?90 to insulate underneath the floorboards.

In addition you will save around 400kg of CO2 every year by insulating your floor properly, and you may find that you are eligible to receive grants to complete the work under the government scheme to ensure that as many of Britain's houses are insulated as possible.

Of course, even the best insulated house still costs to heat. Make sure that you are not spending any more than you have to when it comes to your fuel bills, and there are significant variations in energy supply costs from different providers. British Gas have recently announced a 10% cut in prices so it might be worth taking a look at changing provider if your own deal is approaching expiry.