Keep your home warm during winter advice, House heating radiator tips, Property warmth guide

Keep your home warm during Winter

May 26, 2021

When the winter alarm rings, everyone starts to worry about ways they can keep their house warm at minimum costing and effective methods. And let’s accept it, once the season begins, it’s all hush and rush and you are left with selective options that, although might be effective, doesn’t have an overall efficacious effect.

Therefore it’s necessary to prepare your house as well as your column radiators for winters before the season starts.. This will save you a lot of time and effort and reduce the energy costs of your house by a half. Additionally, the energy consumption will also be cut by half, minimizing your contribution to the Annual Carbon emissions in the UK.

So let’s get into it:

Keeping Your Home Warm During Winter

1. Service your boiler

First and foremost, if you have a heating system in your house that pretty obvious, you are going to use a lot, it’s better to ensure that it’s all tip-top. A faulty heating system is not only dangerous but inefficient.

With a faulty heating system, you will be paying double bills for something that is posing a constant hazard to your health while being dysfunctional at the same time. Means you will be paying for nothing.

To make sure you save yourself from such inconvenience, it’s better to have a brief look at the system, specifically the boiler and see if it’s showing any unusual behaviour. If it is, it’s time to have it serviced before the season begins because you won’t be able to get your number later.

In Annual Boiler Service, an engineer will have a detailed look at every part of the boiler and see if there is any fault. Furthermore, he will assess and fix anything that can pose any problems anytime soon.

This is not only necessary from the efficiency perspective but also necessary to validate the boiler’s warranty. Every boiler manufacturing company specifies annual service as a mandatory point in their warranty policy.

2. Use sunlight

What’s better than something free and efficient? Although we don’t get to hear any of these words quite often these days, let alone be together, sunlight is one of the best free heating sources you can use to warm up your house during the chilling winters. All you need to do is just keep the curtains open during the day and close them to entrap the warmth inside the room. Not a lot of effort eh? And you don’t pay for it either…it’s free and effective.

3. Thick curtains will help

Heating the room is one thing, keeping it warm is another thing. As much time as it takes for the room to get warm, you don’t have the heat to escape when needed. Luckily, thick curtains can solve this issue for you. There are curtains available that have a thermal lining that doesn’t let the heat escape the room. Although they are a cheap choice, you can still line your pre-existing curtains with materials like fleece. This will save you extra money if you are running low on budget.

4. Try double glazing

If you have got the budget, double glazing is another good option. It will allow extra sun heat to enter the room but won’t let the warm air escape. However, if you are looking for a more budget-friendly option, you can take the help of a special film.

Even though it’s not as effective as double glazing, it’s a great option and will do the job. All you need is a pack of the film and double-sided tape. However, it must be removed from time to time when you need to open the windows to let some fresh air in. But this isn’t a huge deal as you can just redo the adhesive every time you need to seal it.

5. Don’t block the radiator

If you love to sit close to the radiator when it’s snowing, that’s totally ok. However, if you aren’t the only one in the house, you might want to move away from your couch as it may be blocking the heat from spreading in the surroundings. Because sofas are known to absorb heat, there’s a low chance of the room heating up any quicker. This means you will be just paying all the bill to warm up…your chair?

6. Bleed the radiator

To ensure that the heating system keeps working at maximum efficiency, you might love to remove the extra air entrapped inside the system that prevents the hot water to flow through the radiator pipes. Bleeding will help a lot in this regard. All you need to do is just to buy a radiator bleed key and that should solve the issue. No more low efficiency!

7. Block the draughts

Ever wondered why your room doesn’t get warm even when everything seems in place and your system is also working at high efficiency? Well, you might need to look a bit more closely. The main culprits in this condition are often the draughts that allow the cold air to enter while hot air escapes. And guess what, it not only delays the heating time but also speeds up the cooling process. This means the warmth you got in several hours will escape in seconds. So it will be good to buy simple rubber sealants from the market and block even the smallest gaps e.g doors, windows, etc.

8. Put a shelf above the radiator

If you have high ceilings or the radiator is fixed just below the window, putting a shelf just above the radiator will help a lot. Since it can get trapped between the curtain and window or escape above, increasing the heating time, it’s important to have something that can channel the heat. However, make sure that the shelf doesn’t touch the radiator itself.

9. Use carpets or other insulators

According to statistics, almost 10% of heat loss occurs due to bare floors. Be it wood or anything, it’s important to cover it with carpet or other rugs. They are good heat absorbents and will preserve heat for a long time in the room. It’s always good to have that cosy and warm feeling when you enter your room.

10. Set the timer

When it’s too cold, turning up the thermostat won’t do anything but double your bills. So the best thing to do here is to set the timer and get the boiler started earlier. This way it will not only warm up your house but substantially reduce your bills. Always remember lesser the load, the lesser the energy consumption, and the higher the efficiency. Moreover it will improve boiler lifespan as well.

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