With energy costs going through the roof, no-one wants to be throwing money up the chimney, but that’s what we were doing until we installed a Chimney Sheep in early December for a total cost, including delivery of £34..
Chimney Sheep was featured last week on BBC’s Countryfile.
Whether the fire is lit or not, the chimney creates a stack-effect, and warm air is funnelled away to the outside. It’s like having a window open all the time. The programme suggested that those of us with an open fire could be losing as much as 5% of our heat up the chimney. Blocking up just one open chimney could save £120 on an average energy bill. It has been estimated that there are over a million open chimneys in the UK. So blocking up all of them could save over 200 million tons of CO2 being released into the atmosphere annually.
Sally Philips, from Workington in Cumbria, is on a mission to help us save. Sally’s solution was to design a pad made from local Cumbrian Herdwick sheep’s wool that could mould itself to the chimney and block it off. Wool is a natural insulator and pliable. She set up a factory From the farm, the fleece goes to Yorkshire to get washed and scoured, and then goes to Austria to get process into rolls of felt. Once back it gets cut to different sizes and shapes of chimneys, assembled and shipped.
Such an easy fix to save money and reduce carbon emissions.
