Over winter, it can be hard to keep the house warm. This means we’re often running the central heating for hours at a time. But using your central heating isn’t the only way to keep your home warm. By taking steps to stop your home from losing heat, you can reduce your dependency on your radiators. Here are just some of the ways to warm up your home without keeping the heating on.
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Boost insulation to conserve heating
If you want to stay warm in winter, you wrap yourself up with woolly jumpers, coats and hats to help you retain body heat. Insulating your home works in the same way. Wrapping up the roof, walls and floors of your home, helps it to retain heat. So, it’ll stay warm, long after the heating has gone off. It also helps the home to stay at a consistent temperature all year round. And when you do turn the heating on, you should be able to run it at a lower temperature and for fewer hours.
Adding loft insulation is the easiest and most efficient way to stop heat escaping. It typically costs between £300 and £600 to install but should last for around 40 years and save you up to £400 a year on your heating bills. If you’re planning to convert the loft or want to create a warm loft space, it’s worth looking at insulating between the rafters too.
Although the roof often gets the most attention in terms of insulation, you should pay just as much attention to the walls. This is because the home loses as much, if not more, heat through the walls. Cavity wall insulation costs between £300 and £750 but it could save you £100 to £300 a year on energy bills. With this type of insulation, it’s wise to get a survey done first to make sure it’s a good move. If not, there are other options.
It costs a bit more to insulate solid walls but they can be insulated on the inside or outside and doing it should save you £150 to £550 a year on heating.
Focus on the floor
In a similar way to walls and roofs, you can add insulation to your floors. Solid concrete floors can be insulated with a rigid layer of foam and suspended timber floors can be insulated with mineral wool.
Doing this not only helps you keep the heating off for longer but helps to cut out draughts and eliminate cold spots from your rooms. So, they feel warmer and more comfortable. Floor insulation should cost around £800 but as you won’t be using the heating as much, you’re likely to save between £70 and £130 per year.
It’s not just insulation between the floors that helps to retain warmth but also the layers you add on top. Although you might find exposed floorboards aesthetically pleasing, carpets and thermal underlay are better at keeping your rooms cosy and warm. You may also wish to add draught-proofing strips between the boards to help stop draughts.
Draughtproof
You’ll be surprised just how much warmer your rooms can feel once cold draughts are eliminated. Blocking up pesky draughts is another good way to retain heat and prevent cold air from coming in. So, your home should stay warm even when temperatures outside are on the chilly side. Like floor insulation, draughtproofing helps to get rid of cold spots in rooms – keeping temperatures more consistent.
As long as you don’t use your fireplace, chimneys can be blocked up with special wool excluders or plastic balloons. This one job alone lowers annual energy bills by about £50. So, draughtproofing certainly reduces your dependence on central heating. Look at blocking draughts from skirting boards and loft hatches too, if you want to keep your home warmer when the heating’s off.
Upgrade windows and doors
Windows and doors allow heat to escape and are another prime area for draughts. Draughtproofing around the frames and replacing seals does help. As does hanging thermal curtains. You can also add secondary window treatments such as blinds and shutters to improve heat retention further.
These are fairly cost-effective measures but if you want to make lasting changes, it’s worth spending a bit more money to upgrade your glazing. To prevent heat loss, look for windows and doors with a good energy performance rating from the British Fenestration Rating Council or that have a low U-value. Windows with features such as triple glazing, low emissivity (low-E) glass and warm-edge spacers will boost efficiency.
Use cost-free tricks to save on heating
There are some other ways to boost the warmth in your home without the central heating – ways that don’t involve DIY or installation costs. The first is to sync the opening and closing of your curtains and blinds with the day and night. Allowing the heat from the sun to enter your home can increase indoor temperatures by a degree or two. Covering windows up again as soon as the sun starts to go down and the temperatures start to drop will help to retain this heat better.
Just as nifty a trick is to keep internal doors closed as much as possible. This helps to block draughts and keep the residual heat in rooms after the heating has gone off.
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