Any tips for warming up a freezing house?

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We just moved into our first house. We knew it like be cold because the survey highlighted how old and pants the windows and doors are so that’s first on our list, but while we are deciding what style to go with and getting a quote for that to be done in January, I’m looking for any tips.

I’ve got some of that thermal cling stuff which will work on a few of the doors but not all the windows due to where the fastenings are.

I’ve ordered some thermal curtains for the patio doors, bay window and internal door that leads out onto the porch.

We have a log burner so making sure we have plenty of wood.

The heating system is pretty good all the radiators Chuck out a decent amount of heat but it’s a three floor house, so with the poor insulation, hard to keep the heat in.

Am I missing anything obvious?

Try to find where cold air is coming in from and seal up any cracks (but not vents).

Also consider what you’re wearing and whether you could get warmer pyjamas.

Also oil filled radiators are reasonably cheap to run and help to heat up a room quickly.

Thanks this is al great! We are a bit green about DIY having lived in rentals for years.
We don’t actually have a loft as our top floor is where they extended up into the loft, but perhaps we need to check the wall insulation up there? Silly question but how would we go about that? It sounds like a big job to add insulation to walls?

Lots of great tips here thank you!

For best Cost:Benefit

Close the internal doors

Put curtains up

I would say insulate the loft, but if you have a loft conversion and it is cold, you may well have a real problem. How long ago was it done, and did it have Building Regulations approval?

Don't have bare floorboards on the ground floor

Don't have holes in your ceilings (e.g. for lamps or pipes)

Buy some joss sticks and waft them around to find out where the draughts are. Probably around doors and windows. Easy to fix.

The plastic film over windows is truly effective but might not last more than one year

Cavity wall insularion if you have cavity walls and they are not defective.

Energy from electricity costs four to five times as much as energy from gas. So if you have gas CH an electric heater will be uneconomical unless you are only heating one room.

The worst possible cost:benefit return is buying a new front door. The second worst is buying new windows. But if your old ones are rotten and must be replaced, new ones will probably be better, unless they are badly fitted with draughty gaps round the frames (this is more common than you think)

oh yes, as you said, electric blankets. The prices are lowest in Spring as retailers clear stock that nobody wants. When I looked recently, Wilko were best value. Consider two-sided controls so each partner can choose their temperature without arguments. I find a king-size is the right size for a regular double mattress, because otherwise they don't reach the edges.

If you need to buy an electric heater, oil-filled radiators are the safest. All electric heaters, whatever their price, are equally efficient. They all turn 1kwh of electricity into exactly 1kwh of heat. So don't buy expensive ones unless they will impress your friends.

Look at the timer, room thermostat and thermostatic radiator valves on your central heating. Do they work, and do you know how to use them?

Thank you @pigletjohn very informative
The loft extension was done 28 years ago, so it’s old. However it had approval and our survey only flagged the windows causing the heat loss (they are old aluminium and wood). The windows need replacing due to the fact they are old/rotting so we had factored this cost into the house purchase.
I thought the top floor was cold but DH has pointed out that he’s turned the radiators down up there as we aren’t using it at the moment and that actually it doesn’t suffer too much heat loss so hopefully we don’t have a big problem there.

The windows are all cold to touch and the family
Friend we have doing our windows (he’s a specialist by trade) said that we will retain more heat with modern windows, even if they are very basic. We are getting mates rates so he’s not trying to swindle us :)

We have wooden floors on the ground floor, so will need to do something about that. I hadn’t considered that.

We moved in a week ago, and the heating hadn’t been on for a week or two so I think that had a part to play as well.

I think part of it might be as a PP suggested that we have switched from tiny roasting flat to house so might take a bit of getting used to.

Is improving wall insulation a big job?

I suspect I’m maybe being slightly melodramatic about the level of cold as I’m not used to it!

Im going to read through the survey again as it has info about the walls so I can check that out too, but we do have plans to knock down a fair few walls and redesign certain parts within the next few years so we can look at that then potentially.

My mum and dad live in an old Victorian house with single glazed sash windows - ours isn’t anywhere near as cold as theirs so hopefully we don’t have any big problems and it’s just a bit draughty and I’m being a wuss!

When we moved into a cold old house we bought really heavy interlined curtains second hand from eBay. They had blanket interlining. That made an enormous difference, but they were expensive even second hand. Worth it, though, and saved tons on escaped heat.

Cavity Wall Insulation is surprisingly cheap and effective, but adding insulation to the outside of walls is more expensive. It may be suitable if you have rendered or pebbledashed walls, or cladding, that needs to be renewed anyway. it would spoil the appearance of good brickwork. Adding it to the inner surface of external walls involves replastering them with drywall and a layer of insulation, so all the electrical sockets have to be moved and the room redecorated. You might consider doing it as and when rooms need updating.

Loft conversions are notorious for poor insulation. If you need the roof retiled, that's a good time to do it as it's exposed and you have scaffolding up. If not, all the plasterboard has to come off (or be covered over with another layer) on the inside, which is a messy job.

I am personally opposed to using plastic foam insulation slabs in a home now, but mineral wool quilt (which is non-flammable) needs to be thicker for the same effect. A product called FoamGlas is available but seldom used in UK. I keep hoping that will change.

If the house is old and has square-edged wooden floorboards, a carpenter can take them up easily (but will break some) and you can put insulation between the joists. This is very effective. Most of the cold from a floor is cold draughts, so carpet blocks it. A more modern house may have T&G boards which are not very draughty and would be damaged if lifted. Even more modern houses may have chipboard flooring, which is very suitable for throwing in a skip.

Buy some skins to keep you warm - and thick socks.

Rugs, even in the kitchen by the oven help as well- get a runner for the hallway.

It takes a while for the walls to get warm, even a week away and the beds are cold to touch.

Check if there’s any thing you can claim for insulation, we had the walls insulated with a huge government discount. I think we paid £150.00 and it did work.

@PigletJohn thank you! This is all brilliant advice, really appreciate you and other posters taking the time to share. We love the house, despite its quirks, and knew we would be uncovering a few more when we moved in, but just loved the flow and space and potential so it hasn’t taken the shine off it for us.
It is pebble dash and we do have plans to renew that at some point so that makes perfect sense, as does the roof.

I will check about claims as well. Thanks everyone! :)

When we moved into this house (3 months ago) the first thing we did was to get new radiators (big doubles) with thermostatic valves and a new thermostat/control (actually a nest but I don’t think that matters that much). The old radiators were almost 40 years old in some rooms and all were undersized for the rooms. We have wooden windows in a conservation area so can’t change them, we did have a quote to replace all the glass with double glazed panes but it was £65k so as @PigletJohn says not worth it for thermal reasons. We are not too cold here because the radiators have made a huge difference, but we came from another old cold draughty house. When we moved from our old flat to our old house we were miserable the first winter. Now you just get used to putting a jumper on, and we always have slippers on downstairs

Just another vote for taping around draughty windows - even sellotape will be effective, but obviously the thicker tape is best.

@foxatthewindow thanks! Luckily our replacement windows are a LOT cheaper than that so we can easily manage to get them done. I will look at the radiators, as some are a bit small and as the house is 1960s and the recent owners lived in it for 28 years and only updated some things, I imagine they are very old!

People in the 1960's were more used to cold houses, so often had smaller radiators than we use today. Also modern condensing boilers generally run cooler than old iron boilers, so larger radiators will help.

If the radiator is fully hot all over (top, bottom and middle) but is not giving out enough heat to keep the room warm on a cold night, a bigger radiator (or a double with fins) is likely to make a big improvement. Give the system at least a chemical clean before you start work.

Modern boilers are generally more powerful than old ones (especially if they are combis) so are likely to power bigger radiators with ease.

Thank you all. We managed to fit some more thermal cling today, put some foil behind a few of the radiators and got some draught excluders for some of the doors and it’s already made a huge difference - we were really toasty downstairs.
DH has just gone up to the office and the thermal cling on the window there has made a MASSIVE difference and since he’s switched the radiators back on properly up there it’s quite warm too.

We mainly have cavity walls so I’m going to look into upping the insulation on those, aside from one solid brick wall that goes along the side access of the house - we’re a mid terrace but a link terrace on one side.

This thread has been incredibly useful so thanks for everyone who has shared their knowledge and tips.

I had draughty windows here until a few days ago when I bought some foam insulation tape for about a fiver on amazon. Super easy to fit and definitely stopped draughts if you find that poor fitting windows is an issue.

Stair curtain?

I've put a pressure fit rail across the stairs with a thermal curtain and it has made a big difference downstairs as we are not heating the void over the stairs.

Just wanted to report back Incase this is useful for
Anyone else who comes across this thread, the thermal curtains from next have made a huge difference to retaining heat and were relatively inexpensive

For one brief moment I thought you had moved into the house that was sold by the people who bought our old house - but the description doesn't quite fit! Good advice re: thermal curtains. See how warm you can get - I've always resisted retrofitted cavity wall insulation because it seems to be a mixed bag, sometimes works, sometimes causes other problems. I'm sure @PigletJohn will have some sound advice on the subject though!

Also make sure that the heat from the wood burner isn't turning the central heating off in other parts of the house when it's on. Our thermostat was too close to the room our wood burner is in and is affected so we had to relocate it

ha that would have been been a very strange coincidence @foxatthewindow

@slalomsuki that's a really good point and I think you're right - it's in the hall, outside the room with the log burner. Is it easy to move a thermostat? or is it something you need to get someone in to do really?

We also have old wired smoke alarms that I want to change - I need to swot up on this DIY stuff!

For anyone that comes to this thread with similar issues - I can recommend Next Thermal Curtains. They're relatively inexpensive and have made a huge difference already, I'm going to order a set fro every room in the house.

older houses often have the thermostat in the hall. Apparently, 60 years ago people used to turn the heating down when they went out, and up when they came in. Disadvantages are that every time you open the front door it will get cold air in; and most halls are open to the upstairs landing so the warm air will rise away. also, you do not spend much time in the hall, so setting things up to make it the key to home comfort is not a good idea.

it is more usual today to have the room stat in your main living room where you spend most of your time. Except that if there is another source of heat in this room, such as a stove, open fire, Aga, gold-smelting kiln, big sunny window etc, it will trick the thermostat into thinking the whole house is warm, so put it in another room that is heated all the time that you are at home.

You can adjust your radiators so that certain rooms warm up more slowly, or to different temperatures. The radiator in the room with the wall stat should be adjusted so it is the slowest room to heat up.

Thick curtains.

Put a jumper on.

Surely you don't want the entire house heated at all times? That's quite wasteful if so.