Fight Rising Energy Prices with tesamoll®

Save up to 35 percent on heating costs

The average German household spends about 1,600 Euros each year on energy costs to cover heating and hot water. And the figure goes up year after year. These days, just a quick glance at a home electricity, gas, or heating oil bill is enough to prove it. According to the German Federal Statistical Office (Statistisches Bundesamt), the price of light heating oil alone went up by 57% from May 2007 to May 2008. Electricity prices rose 5.1% in the same period and natural gas became 4.7% more expensive year on year. The most effective way to resist this price explosion is by saving energy. There are a lot of tips on how to do this, but not all of them are as fast and cost-effective to implement as sealing window gaps with sealing strips from the tesamoll® product range.

tesamoll® rubber profiles

Two independent institutes have examined the air-tightness and savings potential offered by tesa’s sealing strips, and with impressive results: Consumers can save up to 35 percent of their annual heating costs if they seal gaps in their windows with tesamoll®.

The worst energy offenders

The devil is always in the details, in this case in the masonry itself: When it comes to household energy use, exterior walls, roofs, foundation floors, and windows are often true energy wasters. Depending on the type of construction and fittings, windows can make up 27 percent of a home’s overall energy consumption. But complete renovation, including replacing windows, is not within everyone’s budget and requires a thorough renovation plan in any case, meaning it is feasible only in the medium to long term. Therefore, effective stopgap solutions are needed – which in turn brings our focus to window gaps in particular, which allow air to pass freely without our knowledge. The result: Ratepayers are literally throwing the money they pay for heating costs out the window.

Total sealing

Help is at hand, in the form of sealing strips that close window gaps and prevent heat loss. tesa AG, which is also the market leader in the segment of sealing strips for windows and doors, has now had its tesamoll® product range tested for air-tightness by the Institut für Fenstertechnik e. V. (ift), in Rosenheim, Germany. The outcome: All of the products in the tesamoll® line deliver 100% sealing. Based on the expert report issued by the institution, the energy experts at Tübingen-based engineering firm Ebök set up various models to calculate the potential heating cost savings that the individual products could generate.

Depending on the width of the gaps around their windows and the purchase price and life span of the tesamoll® product selected, consumers can save heating costs in the triple digits each year. If, for example, a window gap that is 2 mm wide is sealed with the high-quality tesamoll® classic rubber profile, which lasts for eight years, the heating cost savings after four years add up to nearly 180 Euros per year. The independent energy experts also found that for gaps more than 2 mm wide, every type of tesamoll® pays for itself after just one winter season.

See for yourself: the tesa energy savings calculator

The more gaps, and the wider they are, the higher the potential savings offered by tesamoll® products. Now, consumers can use tesa’s energy savings calculator, at www.tesa.de, to calculate their personal heating cost savings potential online. Using information on the purchase price of the tesamoll® product selected, the width and length of the window gap, and the type of heating, the tesa energy savings tool calculates the maximum amount of heating costs that can be saved.

This means that consumers not only save money, but also reduce their CO2 emissions. And that’s a worthy aim: At 11 tons per year, Germany’s average per capita CO2 emissions are considerably higher than the worldwide average of about 3.8 tons.

Comprehensive information at a glance

Starting in August 2008, tesamoll® will appear on store shelves with a new design. The packaging will focus on product characteristics and benefits. Small icons will show at a glance which applications are best suited to each tesamoll® solution.