Keeping your home warm / heating / energy crisis / insulation etc

Chimney pillow at the bottom to improve heat retention?

my central heating hasn't been able to get it to that temperature

You have those radiators that look nice but don't work, don't you? We have one in the loft room, and it just makes the boiler spin its wheels continually heating it as it can never get the room to temperature. Double panel convector is the way, but they look shite. But by god do they work.

Out of interest do you know how many KW/h your boiler is? It might be that the boiler has the capacity to heat the house and then some, but the rads don't release enough of it and act as a bottleneck. Or the entire system might be woefully under-specified.

work out what is going on

Can you take a temperature reading on the external wall? You'll also (probably) have at least one internal wall that's directly connected to an external wall and these will act as further heatsinks (any heat you put in to them just bleeds out via the external connected wall). Check the temperatures of those, too. Those cheapy IR guns will do the job.

Maybe this is a bit obvious but if you have a single skin wall house, with no underfloor, internal or external insulation, it will just bleed heat really quickly as the walls and floors themselves are fucking cold and just pull the heat out. There's probably a calculator around that shows you how much kw/h you lose based on temperature and area. That will give you an idea of what you need to put in to maintain a temperature.

I'm joining Karcher Window Vac club, collection tomorrow.

We filled gaps around front door (behind upvc porch extension) but still an icey blast coming through. Hallway has no heating and cold space there is making it hard to keep upstairs warm especially when kid doesn't remember to close doors.

Boiler now not getting the house above 17deg on reduced mode (3/6 on the dial) so I'm cranking it back up a bit until this cold snap passes.

I've been on eco boiler mode but this last week I've put it up as the place feels so cold and damp also jumped on the dehumidifier bandwagon and that has helped

Get a curtain up. We had one in the old place and it made a massive difference.

obviously while hunting down further leaks.

Letterboxes should also be looked at for replacement or improvements. Ours has a weak spring so flies up in strong gusts.

Get a curtain up. We had one in the old place and it made a massive difference.

I'd forgotten we had one until this summer. The door opened through it and the pull on the curtain over time destroyed the hanging fixtures so now we are without one. Unless we hung it on the outside (porch side) but I doubt that'd be as effective?

winter heating problems solved

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/12/breakthrough-in-nuclear-fusion-could-mean-near-limitless-energy

the boiler looks a little large for your average terrace though

they'll be giving us free energy soon right ? right ?

What, you didn't just pull the curtain open when opening the door? You just left it closed all of the time?

I got triple panel convectors installed earlier this year. They are amazing but v pricey. I spent months combing thru FB marketplace and gumtree for cheap deals on them though so saved a fair packet that way.

It wasn't possible to without go-go-gadget arms.

Most of the year the curtain was open, but when closed it needed whoever was indoors to unsnag it for incoming person, which wasn't an option when I was finishing work at 10.30pm so home after 11pm.

It was a shit setup tbh and it annoyed the fuck out of both me and my partner.

the boiler looks a little large for your average terrace though

That, and that it's weapon ignition related, rather than power generation related.

Although my deceased father-in-law did build these things, and could have left something in a cupboard somewhere.

I picked up a couple of 22 panels for our offices at home and I can't get my head around how im going to mount them off the existing pipework. They're just so much deeper than the current single panel rubbish.

I made fix for this by attaching a pole to the door above the top that made the curtain swing with the door.

The pole overlapped the handle side to cover that edge and I put a little pole on the wall beyond the hinges so the curtain could overlap that side and just fold with the door as it opened.

Good it was.

A very cheap alternative to fill tiny niggly gaps in sash windows is just strips of cling film squished up and pushed into gaps with the back of a knife. Gets into gaps smaller than Gapseal too.

Sounds great thanks for sharing, don't suppose you have pictures of it?

You can also buy these, they're called portiere rods

Nice one, ta.

the 33 panels are 160mm deep!

But it's sort of a trade off as you don't need the length or height you might with a 22 or 11 type rad.

I think you might be looking for one of these: Extendable Door Drapery Arm, Strong Door Curtain Drapery Arm they open the curtain, as you open the door.

I've just replaced our Hive with a Tado + Automation subscription. £99 from Screwfix plus £25/year subscription. The price made it worth doing, as I don't think the Hive was making the best use of our gas.

I like that the app turns the heating off when we go out, has some actual data in it, and can modulate the boiler output rather than just on/off.

Is it the black tado? Its annoying they have only the heating and hot water one although on the website it says for all boilers.

Yeah the black one, for heating and hot water. I just didn't connect any wires to the HW side as I don't have any to connect, and it hasn't complained.

I did something similar with bubble wrap last night as one of our (casement) frames has stopped closing properly

You running it on a combi?