Top Tricks For Keeping Your Home Warm This Winter

The colder days are quickly approaching and with them comes the worry of keeping warm. With rising costs, it’s more difficult than ever for families to cover the necessities. The best way to make sure you and your family stay warm at home is to be prepared.

There are many things you can do to make sure heating your home doesn’t cost a small fortune. Take a look at these top tricks for keeping your home warm and cozy when the frost sets in.

Cover Your Floors

Laying down carpet or rugs isn’t just a great way to decorate the rooms in your home or have something soft under your feet. Rugs are an excellent way of keeping heat in a room. Heat can often escape through the floor and most people feel colder without carpet in their home.

If you feel colder, you’re more likely to use energy to heat your home which can be costly. Invest in a rug now to ensure you can keep heat in your rooms on the coldest days.

Check Radiators

Now is the perfect time to check if your boiler and radiators are working properly. Many people find that they need to be serviced after months of not being in use. If you find that your radiators aren’t working, it could be that they need to be bled.

This isn’t a complicated job so you’ll be able to do it yourself. All you need is a radiator key that will allow you to release any trapped air from your radiator. Once you’ve done this, you should notice that your radiators start to heat up again.

Check Pipes

If it’s common for you to have freezing temperatures at some point during the year, you’ll need to protect your pipes. Most households find that pipes freeze during these times which can lead to burst pipes and no heating at home. To protect your pipes, think about leaving your heating on a low temperature overnight to ensure they don’t get too cold.

If that’s not an option, ask your plumber to fit a munsen ring to each pipe which will allow for insulation around the pipes so they don’t freeze.

Smart Heating

If you haven’t made use of smart heating yet, now is your chance. The cost to install it and use it is relatively low and it could save you a lot of money in the long run. You can turn your heating off and on from your smartphone so if you want to heat up your home before you arrive from work, you can.

Additionally, you can control the temperatures on each of your radiators. So, if you have some rooms that you don’t use often, you can turn your radiators down. Alternatively, you can turn it up in rooms you do use frequently.

Make Use of Curtains

It’s surprising how much heat is lost through windows. Curtains are an excellent way to ensure this heat stays inside your home. Not only are they a way to keep heat in but they’ll also help to keep draughts from windows out.

In addition to looking good on your window, there are so many practicalities to curtains. However, it’s important to keep checking the areas around your curtains. Even though curtains help to keep heat in, any cold that manages to make its way in can quickly turn to damp so regularly check the walls around your windows and curtains for signs of damp and mold.

Draught Stoppers

No matter how old or new your property is, there will always be draughts to be found. Just a small amount of cold air coming in from outside can make a huge difference to the temperature of your rooms. When you identify any draughts in your home, it’s essential to block them as well as you can.

For instance, if there’s a draught coming from your front door, it can help to place a draught blocker at the floor of the door. You can do this with all of the doors in your home to keep the heat in each room.

Insulation

Is your home properly insulated? Insulation can make a massive difference to how warm or cold your home is during the winter. Start by checking the spaces above your top floor.

Your home may have a loft but there are often other spaces above rooms that are left untouched. Make sure each loft space is fully insulated so cold draughts are stopped in their tracks. You may want to hire a professional to fully insulate your home so you aren’t spending more than necessary on energy costs.

Log Burner

More and more people are investing in log burners to help keep their homes warm. A log burner can generate enough heat to keep a room- even a whole floor- warm. It’s ideal if you have access to wood from your garden.

Purchasing logs of wood is also cheaper than running your heating constantly. Most log burners require a chimney flue already present but it is possible to install one too. The only downside to this option is that any additional floors won’t be as warm as the rooms closest to the log burner.

Hot Water Bottles and Blankets

If you’re running low on hot water bottles and blankets, now is the time to stock up. Most people turn their heating on because they feel cold, not because the room feels cold. If you’ve got plenty of ways to keep warm during the cold weather, you may not need to turn your heating up.

There are tons of accessories you can use to keep warm. For example, microwaveable neck warmers and electric bed covers. 

Use Hot Appliances

You may have already noticed how your tumble dryer can warm up your whole kitchen. If you’re using more than one appliance at once, you may find that your kitchen doesn’t need heat. For instance, using the oven is another way to build up heat in the room.

When you’re using appliances that get hot, it’s inevitable that the room will rise in temperature. If you don’t need your radiators on, turn them off.

Heated Flooring

The investment of heated flooring can be expensive but it will serve you well during the colder months. Walking on heated flooring can feel heavenly when it’s freezing outside and will contribute to warming your whole home. Again, this is something you can control using a smart thermostat.

If you just want it turned on when you wake up in the morning and just before you go to bed, it’s easy to control and can make a big difference.

Close Air Pockets

There are multiple places in the home that can have air pockets. For instance, extraction fans can bring in cold air when they aren’t in use. It can help to cover these places with bubble wrap to ensure you’re not paying more than you need to for your heating.

Search your home and find any potential air pockets that can be covered by normal draught blockers. If you don’t have bubble wrap, sheets of paper can do the job just as well. It can help to cover any windows you don’t use, especially at the corners.

Keeping your home warm during the winter takes effort and planning. The more you do to keep the cold out, the less money you’ll need to spend on keeping the heat in. If you’ve found this article helpful, take a look at the others.