The housing minister, Yvette Cooper, invited me to have the first of the new Energy Performance Certificates on my home and even did me the honour of popping round to my house for a cup of tea to see how I got on.

It should have been a pretty straightforward report. Trials of the certificates begin around the country next week. They’ll be introduced nationwide in June next year.

The idea is pretty simple. When houses are sold the seller will pay for the house to be energy rated, just like a fridge, and they’ll offer suggestions for how energy efficiency could be improved. Sounds pretty sensible doesn’t it?

My house scored a D just below average but not bad for an older building. (Read the certificate for yourself.) It said I could boost that to a respectable C with a few relatively cheap improvements.

The big one was filling the cavity in my walls – my certificate claims that’ll save £56 a year. The only reason I haven’t already done this is that I¹d been told I didn¹t have a cavity to fill.

The other home improvement is the one that proved controversial. Apparently I’d be able to save £21 a year by improving the programmer on my boiler and putting in something called thermostatic valves on my radiators.

I asked my friend Laurence, who’s a plumber, to come round and give me an estimate. He was very sceptical that the switch was worthwhile.

I’ve already got valves on my radiators and Laurence’s view was that I’d be replacing a perfectly good valve he’d have to charge me 300 notes for the service.

Of course there would be a small carbon saving because the thermostatic valves are easier to use but there’d be a carbon cost too – all the energy and materials needed to make the things.

It didn’t sound like a good deal to me.

But not everyone agrees. After the programme was broadcast a colleague, Neal, told me he’d switched all his radiators to thermostatic valves and says they work a treat. He can regulate the temperature of each room much more easily and thereby reckons he saves a fair bit of energy.

So here’s your ethical brainteaser for the week: should I change my valves?

The world of ethical living is not glamorous is it?

Ball valves have many good points and are often considered superior to many other kinds of valves. Ball valves are very easy to use and can both maintain and regulate three things-high pressure, high volume and high flow of temperature. Other advantages of ball valves are that they are sturdy devices that can be purchased for a low price and they have a long service life. An added plus is that the regulating element’s design makes it easy for the ball valve to work without concern about side loads, which often plague globe or butterfly valves. The ball valve design allows for the easy ability to fix the seats if a problem arises and also seals without having to take away the body of the valves from the line.

Ball valves can be found in a number of different styles. Some of these include one-piece, two-piece, three-piece and lastly, what is referred to as flanged body construction. Each form of ball valve has its own good and bad points, all dependent on what each application calls for. Ball valves are made using an assortment of materials, some of which include brass, bronze, cast iron, copper ductile iron, metal alloys, stainless and other steel types, and plastics (including CPVC and PVC). Ball valves are to be found being used in a number of different industries. Some of these include the chemical, oil, pharmaceutical, allied process and also services such as corrosive and cryogenic.