There can be few experiences more dispiriting than sitting on your living room sofa and watching your own breath hanging in the air in front of you. You want to turn on the central heating, but the thought of your next energy bill persuades you to put this off for as long as possible. Whilst you cannot do a lot about the price of your heating, there are certainly steps that you can take to reduce the amount that you use. The most basic and effective one is to proof your house against draughts; not only will this prevent cold air from coming in, it will also prevent warm air from escaping.
You may notice a draught coming in around your front door, and possibly the back door too. Even the letterbox can let you down in cold weather. Furthermore, the gap that you invariably find at the bottom of your internal doors means that unless each room in your house is heated to the same degree, heat is going to migrate from the warmer areas to the colder ones.
Self-adhesive strips of compression or brush seal are the usual way to make external doors draughtproof. You can buy them from any good DIY shop. There is even a clever gadget that will insulate your letterbox. For internal doors, if you don't want to leave an old blanket on the floor you can either buy or make the traditional sausage dog or snake.
Older windows can also lower the temperature in your home. If you can't afford to replace them with new, double glazed units, there are plenty of other ways of blocking off the chill.
Again, draught proofing strips will do the job, assuming that they are opening windows. Another option, which will also work with fixed windows, is double glazing film. This costs around ten pounds for enough to cover four standard sized windows. It attaches to your frames with double sided tape, and shrinks down to a nice, taut surface when you fire a hairdryer at it.
Bare wooden floors are a popular feature of houses these days, but those which are over unheated spaces such as cellars or garages can let precious warmth escape, as can the suspended floors that you often find in older buildings. You can either get a professional in to fit insulation sheets between the floor joists, or you can insulate your floors yourself by other means.
Rugs and carpets are the obvious way of covering up gaps between floorboards, but you can also buy rolls of flexible moulding to insert into them. This moulding can also be used to fill the spaces between floor and skirting boards.
As you can see, it's not prohibitively expensive to proof your house against draughts, and with current energy prices it should pay for itself quickly. With the money you save, why not invest in fitting new loft insulation? If you can get up there quite easily, it's not a particularly difficult job to carry out. Thus, you can save yourself even more money!
You may notice a draught coming in around your front door, and possibly the back door too. Even the letterbox can let you down in cold weather. Furthermore, the gap that you invariably find at the bottom of your internal doors means that unless each room in your house is heated to the same degree, heat is going to migrate from the warmer areas to the colder ones.
Self-adhesive strips of compression or brush seal are the usual way to make external doors draughtproof. You can buy them from any good DIY shop. There is even a clever gadget that will insulate your letterbox. For internal doors, if you don't want to leave an old blanket on the floor you can either buy or make the traditional sausage dog or snake.
Older windows can also lower the temperature in your home. If you can't afford to replace them with new, double glazed units, there are plenty of other ways of blocking off the chill.
Again, draught proofing strips will do the job, assuming that they are opening windows. Another option, which will also work with fixed windows, is double glazing film. This costs around ten pounds for enough to cover four standard sized windows. It attaches to your frames with double sided tape, and shrinks down to a nice, taut surface when you fire a hairdryer at it.
Bare wooden floors are a popular feature of houses these days, but those which are over unheated spaces such as cellars or garages can let precious warmth escape, as can the suspended floors that you often find in older buildings. You can either get a professional in to fit insulation sheets between the floor joists, or you can insulate your floors yourself by other means.
Rugs and carpets are the obvious way of covering up gaps between floorboards, but you can also buy rolls of flexible moulding to insert into them. This moulding can also be used to fill the spaces between floor and skirting boards.
As you can see, it's not prohibitively expensive to proof your house against draughts, and with current energy prices it should pay for itself quickly. With the money you save, why not invest in fitting new loft insulation? If you can get up there quite easily, it's not a particularly difficult job to carry out. Thus, you can save yourself even more money!
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