How can i make my house warmer?!!?

[iamwhaticallpregnant]

We have just moved into a much larger old fashioned house (4 floors). We have had the heating on since we moved in and I can not stress how cold it is ALL THE TIME. There are radiators in some of the rooms but the heat doesn't seem to radiate at all! The hallway and three landings are FREEZING COLD - no radiators on the landings. We are worried we are going to have astronomical heating bills! Or have to live in Ski gear. (We do understand the last week has been particularly cold).
Question is therefore - how can we make our new house warmer? For a cheap cost. My mum suggests keeping all the doors shut - which I have done but the living room and kitchen and landings are just arctic . What stand alone heater would you recommend and is there anyway I can heat the house better? And am I better off just putting a heater at the bottom of the house as heat rises?

OP I did a quick hunt on srewfix. Under 'seals and excluders' you need brush seal(s) for doors, and stormguard glazing film for windows. You will be amazed how much difference getting rid of that under-door draft makes.

Gah. SCREWFIX. not what I wrote. Sorry.

We have a Victorian house and I hate being cold, so this is what we've done:

-Keyhole and letterbox covers plus a curtain for front door (card could do for a temp measure for keyhole, and you can get quite cheap thermal door curtains off eBay)

• thermal curtain for back door
• got British gas to insulate loft for free - they'll do this even if you're not a customer. If you've got stuff in the loft they'll insulate around it.
• thermal mattress toppers
• if you can't afford curtains then get those cheap fleece blankets (eBay or Ikea) and pin them up in your windows
• major issue for us is the floor downstairs. Victorian wooden floors were designed to be draughty to keep everything dry, because it was assumed the homeowners would put down carpet. If your floors are bare and original then this could be the issue, especially if you have a cellar beneath like we do. You really need to cover the floor with laminate, vinyl or carpet, there's no way around it!

If you look on the money saving expert website they have a great thread on their message boards about keeping warm cheaply.

As a rented house, the things you can do at modest cost are:

look in the loft and see if it has ten inches (yes ten) of insulation. If not, you can probably get it fitted at subsidised or free deal through your gas or electricity suppler

draft-proof the doors and windows. Use the rubbery strips, not plastic foam. It will not stick to dirt or to rough flaky paint, but sticks very well to clean new gloss. Get a flap for the letter box.

The temporary plastic film that goes over windows really does work. The sticky tape will not stick to old rough paint... etc

keep your internal doors shut

if you have any fashionable bare floorboards, they will be cold and draughty. Cover as much as you can with rugs or carpets

Look at the hot pipes around your boiler and cylinder. They should be insulated. If you have a hot water cylinder and it does not have a factory coating of rigid foam, buy two red jackets and wrap it up.

It might be interesting to know the name and number of your boiler.

too slow

make sure the oil radiator has a thermostat, will be able to control the temperature of the room for the baby

Go around the outside of the house and check for holes in the walls. It may sound silly, but in houses that old you will sometimes find holes the size of a pipe where for example an old kitchen outlet used to be. (Check behind bushes etc). Plug them with balled up tinfoil and then exterior grade filler.

I was amazed at the difference even fitting a back cover to our letterbox made. And checking all draught gaps around doors.

And yyy to stuffing/ taping all gaps around windows during the winter.
this stuff from Stop Gaps is godd - buy the clear one for gaps around sah windows and brown one for between floorboards. You don't need to stick it so you can take it out eg in certain windows over the summer and store it and simply replace the following winter.

Brown stuff for floorboards.

Also if you are keeping the wooden floors you can get thermafoil It is designed to be used as underlay, but I don't see why you couldn't use it under rugs too.

I bought lots of the £3 fleece blankets from ikea and sewed them to the backs of my curtains. Also rolled one up to make a draught excluder.

I always tuck my curtains up on the windowsill rather than letting them hang down, especially over the radiator. Stops a lot of draughts and keeps the heat in the room.

I also covered some big sheets of cardboard with lots of cheap foil to put behind the radiators, rather than buying the reflector panels.

When you're sat down sit with a hot water bottle. It's a bit like you're own personal radiator.