I AM at war with my house. Although my actions might be subtle, they are subversive. My four-storey Victorian house. Will. Be. Green.

The Energy Saving Trust (EST) reckons that we could all save up to £340 and reduce our home’s carbon dioxide emissions by up to 1.5 tonnes a year by taking simple measures.

Gas and electricity account for nearly a third of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, but 96 per cent of us don’t know this – and subsequently continue wasting energy away.

Having had a home eco audit with green guru Donnachadh McCarthy, I am ashamed to say that I never realised just how much energy my house was wasting.

I have now fitted some radiator reflectors and chimney balloons, fixed the timer on my boiler and noticed the house running warmer and more efficiently. But it’s still not perfect.

The EST – energysaving trust.org.uk – has some great and easy ideas on what you can do to keep your house warm and cut costs at the same time.

n DOORS It all started by letting Donnachadh, author of Easy Eco Auditing: How to Make Your Home And Workplace Planet-Friendly, into the house.

“Take a look at your front door,” he said ominously, stepping over the threshold.

He told me to get some strip insulation and a draught-proof letter box.

“A doorbrush would help the gap at the bottom of the door, and a door curtain would also stop any draughts from coming into the house,” he added.

The kitchen door was also an eco-travesty, he said, with its keyhole allowing a permanent shaft of air coming into the room and the frame being too large for the door itself.

He told us that putting tape over the keyhole on the outside would prevent cold air from coming in.

A trip to the local hardware store got us 17m of thick, puffy draught excluder for £3.49, which we installed (easily, by pulling off the back tape) onto the doorframe in no time.

Not only was it warmer, the door also made less noise when closed by allowing it to actually have some airtight cushioning.

THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR: door gaps, draughts from cracks, air coming through keyholes, broken locks and draughty letterboxes.

SOLUTIONS: draught excluders, taping keyholes, fixing locks and getting draught-resistant letterboxes.

n FLOORS Our draughty house’s wooden floorboards have not changed since the house was built sometime in the 1870s.

Well worn, they have been reduced to thick splinters and holes in some parts of the house – like the toilet or living room – and are incredibly draughty, with no insulation protecting them from the cold cellar air blowing from below.

“This is a source of a large amount of your heat loss and needs to be dealt with urgently,” Donnachadh said.

By filling in the floorboard gaps and nailing FSC-certified wood fibre insulation board to the cellar ceiling, we should be a lot warmer, he said.

As a tenant, I’m not keen on nailing anything to the cellar ceiling, so I invest instead in some second-hand rugs and carpets to block the cold air from circulating.

THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR: holes in floorboards.

SOLUTIONS: plug the holes with floor filler (available from hardware stores) and insulation board.

n WINDOWS A crack as small as 2mm around a window can let in as much cold air as leaving the window open 8cm, the EST reckons.

The windows in our kitchen and living room had gaps large enough to stick pencils through, and air vents in the toilets were either left open or were broken.

Explained Donnachadh: “It’s the simple and small things, like air vents in toilets, that people tend to forget about and which keep cold air circulating through the house.”

After blocking up the vents with some strip insulation and recycled cardboard, we found that the toilet and kitchen now feel 100 times warmer.

Our next step was to look at the sash windows in our house, whose draughts needed blocking with draught excluders along the sides and in between the window frames.

Donnachadh also noted that installing curtains on the kitchen windows would help even more, as would drawing our bedroom curtains (and having them thermally lined, or at least double-lined) with Velcro, to ensure their complete closure at night.

THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR: broken locks, draughts coming in between the panes or between the pane and frame.

SOLUTIONS: strip insulation, fixing the locks, heavy curtains.