My house is so cold-help!

[Appuskidu]

We live in a three-storey old drafty house and its bloody freezing! Most of the rooms are actually fine, it's the main bedroom and the lounge (on top of each other) which are the worst. We are double glazed and centrally heated but those two rooms have big bay windows and two exterior walls and they are arctic-honestly-as you walk into them in the evening, you can feel the cold on your face! We have joked that the house was built on some ancient burial ground!

We have that foil insulation stuff behind all radiators, we have two duvets on the bed plus a throw plus a fleecey type sheet. We have a thick curtain for the porch door with a draught excluder. We have thick curtains at all windows. I wear thermal pyjamas in September FFS and still wake up in the night because I am cold.

Is there anything I'm missing?!

Cavity wall insulation?

How's your roof? Well insulated up there? Also- is there a sufficient number of radiators with a high enough output relative to the room?

I feel your pain, I really do. We're part way through a major renovation and as well as insulating the roof (well, we've actually had a whole new roof) we're double-glazing (which I see you already have), packing insulation in everywhere we can and having brand new radiators calculated to the BTUs given to us by the heating engineer on the project. It's an old detached house (1928) so it'll probably never be as cosy as a new build but I'm determined to relegate the fleeces to only the winteriest of days once we move back in!!

Do you have blinds on the windows too? That would add a layer of insulation between the windows and the curtains.

our lounges and the bedroom above were like this.

We had 2 external walls, and the lounge had also the garage wall as a third wall.
Old house, so not possible to do cavity wall insulation.

The rooms are a decent size, so we did internal wall insulation, so wooden battons, thick insulation and then replaster.
It was a big job, we also had a woodburner put in and a fireplace built and wall lights etc etc at the same time. But massive upheaval.

Both rooms are now warm. But also the woodburner allows us to get super cosy on autumn evening when we don't have the heating on.

before we had the work done, we got a new controller on the heating and put the sensor in the lounge instead of the hall, which did mean it heated up better (but at the cost of heting on more)

Up the size of the radiators and keep them on all the time. Keep curtains closed and have thick ones. Have carpets not floorboards. Make sure your boiler is giving sufficient output. Leave doors open so heat goes all over the house. I have a lounge with bedroom over and exposed on two walls and it's not cold at all. Can you get a wood burner in the lounge? (If permitted).

If it is an old house it probably will not have cavity walls so no chance of cavity insulation. I'm afraid old houses are more expensive and difficult to heat.

Are your bays insulated?

When we moved into our last house there was no insulation in the bays, so we added some. It made a big difference.

Are the curtains ceiling to floor in the bays, and lined with thermal linings?
We used to put the sofa across the bag in our old house. The temperature behind it was attic, so can you put furniture across the bag and block it off?

A hot water bottle and/or electric blanket? With all those layers you would expect to be warm even in a cold room. I've been told that eating something before bed can also help keep you warm (from friends who camp on mountain sides). Is your circulation OK? Raynauds Syndrome can make you feel the cold and can be worse with stress, so if you start thinking it's too cold it can make you colder! Hoping for a mild winter for you

electric blanket on the bed will help

The rooms probably need more radiators - can you swap for ones with a higher BTU or get additional ones put in?

Have you tried using a dehumidifier? Old houses are prone to damp, by removing dampness in the air, heating will be more effective.

Also second the suggestion for carpets *or at least thick rugs) and thick thermal lined curtains.

What's on your floors? What's underneath your ground floor? If floorboards can you get underneath ground floor and insulate? Or get good underlay and carpet.

Bay windows definitely worth investigating. What's the construction? Single or cavity wall? Insulated? As pp has said, harder to do solid walls but you could potentially look at interior insulation?

Roof insulated?

Heating working efficiently? Do the radiators get warm?

Floors make a big difference. I think you need to get one of those thermos cameras to finish me the problem

Put a fleece blanket under your bottom sheet (really makes a difference).

how old is the house?

Are there open fireplaces?

Do you have any rooms with bare floorboards?

What are the dimensions of the two cold rooms, and what size are the radiators in them?

Are you in Aberdeen or in Truro?

Make sure the windows are actually shut - I know that seems daft but youngest DSS was always complaining about his room being freezing and he'd latched the window so it was a tiny bit open.. Designed that way for ventilation but shutting it properly made a huge difference.

It took us a stupidly long time to work out that was what was going on.

Also insulting the top of the bays. Bay windows can be real warmth suckers. Blinds do help a lot as do big thick curtains.

I reckon that lift insulation will be the biggest thing.

Similarly to Tatlerer, we live in a 1928 detached number and it's really toasty compared to the period semi we lived in before. Period houses just seem to be pretty freezing generally.