British Gas, OVO, EDF, Octopus customers can get £100 off bill if they own £1 item

British Gas, OVO, EDF, EON Next and Octopus customers can cut their energy bill by £100 before the price cap hike - all by using a £1 item. Bleeding radiators is one good way of making your whole heating system is working effectively.

You can save money by increasing the efficiency of your radiators and all you need is a bleed key to open the radiator valve. Data revealed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in April this year said some 7.4 billion people in the UK were struggling to pay their bills due to the high cost of living.

“If you're bleeding the radiator, you're getting rid of trapped air,” Alice Beer, the ITV This Morning consumer champion, said. “This means that hot water can circulate, and it will be more efficient and effective at throwing out heat.

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Alice added: “You can do it very easily, watch a little YouTube video if you're not sure or ask a neighbour or a friend to help. It really makes a difference.” For further efficiency, only turn radiators on in the rooms you are actually using.

There isn’t much point heating the whole house at extra cost if you aren’t using all of it. Keys can be bought for as little as £1 on websites like Amazon and eBay. This small investment in a tool could potentially save you over £100 annually, depending on when your radiator was last serviced.

Air often becomes trapped in radiators, causing them to take longer to heat a room - a clear indication of this is if the bottom of the radiator is warm but the top is cold. However, you'll probably need a radiator key to bleed your radiator properly.

The alert comes as the January price cap looks set to rise for UK households up and down the country.