There's a thing in Thursdays Daily Mirror that advises you how to keep your house warmer and cut your heating bills.
This man advised the woman on things she could do, the whole cost came to £101 but it worked out it would save her a lot more than that. He sells all these things in his shop (called Eco Store).
The tips he gave were:
1. Letterbox - you can lose 27% of your heat through the letter box. Even those with brushes or flaps on the back, as they can get stuck open or aren't tight enough. You can fit an ecoflap, which costs £19.99, to the inside. It will block winds of up to 100mph but is still light enough to allow the post to come through easily.
Also use key hole covers.
2. Use a candle to locate sources of draughts by shutting windows and doors and walking around with the candle. When it flickers you have found a draught. Use a tea light to get close to the floor. Block the drafts with appropriate sealants and fillers.
3. You can buy a Radiator Booster for £19.99. It plugs in and costs 30p per year to run! But it uses a fan to blow heat back into the room rather than having it be absorbed into the wall or rise up behind curtains and be lost through the window panes etc. He claims it will save between £70 and £140 in a year.
4. Fit insulated reflector panels behind the radiators. He recommends Radflex Radiator Reflector panels that cost £13.22 for three sheets, which should cover six radiators. He says that 40% of your heat is wasted by being absorbed into the wall behind the radiator. The panels reflect 95% of that lost heat back into the room.
I tried to get some of these today in B&Q but they only had their own version, at £7.00, but which has to be glued to the wall with a solvent. The Radflex ones hang from a rod that hooks onto your radiator fixings, so sounds a lot easier to fit. Otherwise you could stick tinfoil to thin cardboard and slide it down the back of the radiators.
5. Double glazing halves the 10% of heat lost from single glazed windows, but you can get a film that you stick to single glazed windows if you can't get double glazing. It costs £10.52 for six square metres and you fit it with a tape and then blow it with a hairdryer to get out any creases.
6. Instead of normal draught excluders you can buy one that fits onto the bottom of the door, so you can open and close the door and not worry about forgetting to put the excluder back. He sells them for £9.95 in black or white, or B&Q had some for £10 in brown. I bought two today and they do seem to be working.
7. Wooden floorboards can be draughty and you can loose 15% of your heat from them. He says it's like leaving your window open permanently, summer and winter. You can get a floorboard gap seal for £23.99 per roll and it just tucks into the gaps. You can't see it once it's in and it seals any places where draughts can get in or heat can be lost.
These are the little things that I do to help.
1. Put on cardigans and jumpers before deciding to turn on the heating.
2. Have lots of warm drinks.
3. Shut the curtains on all the windows as soon as it starts to get dark.
4. Also check your loft insulation is thick enough (and if you are a British Gas customer you can apply (quickly) for free loft and cavity wall insulations or to be part of their rent a roof scheme, where they install solar panels for you and you get free electricity during the day and pay for what you use at night. We are looking into the rent a roof scheme now.
5. Don't have curtains or furniture blocking radiators, so I would say if you have long ones, as we do, to also fit blinds so you can close the blinds and keep the curtains open while the heating is on.
6. Get proper winter duvets and quilts for beds. Hot water bottles are good, especially if one of you is always colder than the other.
7. Keep all doors closed and if someone comes to the door close your interior doors before you open the front one. Invite people you know to come straight in or step out and shut the door (don't get locked out though).
8. Curtains at external doors can help stop draughts too.
9. And it's nice to snuggle under warm blankets while you watch TV.
10. Oh and don't dry clothes on your radiators or block them by putting a clothes horse directly in front, it can make them as expensive as a tumble drier because they just take all the heat and stop it getting into the room so you have them on longer and turn the heating up more. Don't block them with furniture either.
11. I've bought some of those sealing strips for the door frames. I think I got 10 metres of brown sealing strip for £2.00 in Lidl. You usually see them on exterior door frames but they work just as well on interior door frames to stop internal draughts.
, hense the stove, i cant figure it out at all lol, i cant keep it heated (as it takes much more work than a stove) and its just big and annoying lol!
