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.
When it comes to draughts, the biggest culprits are usually your front and back doors. Internal doors can add to the problem though, as the gaps beneath them tend to allow unheated areas such as kitchens and utility rooms to steal warm air away from the cosier areas.
The best way to weatherproof your front and back doors is to attach strips of self-adhesive draught excluder to the edges. This comes in rubber, foam and brush pile versions. For interior doors you just need to find something put at the bottom; you can always buy the traditional stuffed snake, or even make your own out of a very long sock!
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, you can attach the same type of foam or brush strips to your opening windows as you can to your doors. Brush seal is better for sash windows, although there are other sealing products that are specifically designed for them. Also inexpensive and effective are the glazing films that attach to your window frames with double sided tape. More expensive, but also more sophisticated, are the glazing panels fitted with magnetic tape. Both types of glazing are ideal for fixed windows.
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.
Flexible insulation seal, which you squeeze down between your floorboards, is widely available in 40 metre rolls. Prices start from around twenty pounds. You won’t see any difference to your floor after you fit it, but you should feel it! For sealing around your skirting boards use decorator’s caulk, prices for a 300ml tube start from about one pound.
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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Tips for a draught free home
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