Why is my house so cold?

[Winterbeee]

We live in a newish house (about 20 years old), have double glazing, cavity wall insulation, tonnes of insulation in the loft and yet still parts of the house are so cold, particularly the hallway and one of the bedrooms. Strangely other parts of the house are so badly effected. What have wise MNers tried that have improved things? Is there a type of contractor that could tell me what's causing the problem and how to go about fixing it? TIA!

Draughty front door?
Inadequate heating in cold areas?
Is the cold bedroom in anyway different to the others, eg in roof space, on other side of house, bigger window?

Its quite a modern front door, and I can't feel any draughts. Its got a metal core though, and quite cold to the touch. The cold bedroom has a laminate wooden floor, its above the kitchen though, which is often the warmest room in the house!

Are the radiators large enough? Have they been bled recently? The one in our hallway is quite small and is the only one for the hall and landing, so it’s often not as warm as in the other rooms.

Also, is the double glazing in good condition (frame not draughty, glazing clear)? You could feel for draughts or use a jostick to see if the smoke is being blown aside.

Thanks so much @BlahBlub. There's no cold patches on the radiators so I don't think they need bleeding. I've never really thought about the size of the radiators before (I think I'd just assumed the builders put the right ones in for the size of the room) but looking at them now they could be replaced with something a bit bigger.
The double glazing seems in pretty good condition, I've never noticed any draughts and the glazing is all clear so I suspect that's ok.

Stupid question, but are your radiators on the right setting? Also, are they balanced? We had one radiator that wasn’t getting very warm and it turned out the inlet valve was barely open.

Haunted?

We had a new boiler fitted about four years ago and that made a difference. Previous boiler was v old and v uneconomical. New boiler is a condensing boiler, previous one wasn't

Is the insulation too good to allow the warmth of the kitchen to convey to the bedroom with the laminate floor? Is the radiator in that room actually getting hot?
Do you have a zoned thermostat?

There's a radiator calculator you can use online and check against the kind you have.

The floor might not be insulated? If they just laid the floor then I can imagine the cold can seep up.

If the bedroom is on the first floor the insulation would only be located above it and along the outside walls, to separate the house from the cold outside air IYSWIM. There might be some underlay to block noise from walking on the laminate but I reckon it would not make a big difference to heat rising from the kitchen.

The coldest room in our house has three outside walls, which is definitely a factor for us. If you don’t have thermostatic radiator valves (and use them properly) that can affect things.

Try having the cold rooms with the TRV on a higher number than the warmer rooms.

The coldest room we have are all outside walls at the top of the house. There's a lot of insulation but we did get bigger radiators than the calculator suggested

What temp is the heating running at?

In hot weather, is that room warmer than the other upstairs rooms?

Thanks so much for your responses everyone. The radiators in the cold areas are on the highest setting, the thermostat for the house is set to 23. We don't have a zoned thermostat.
@MacbookHo LOL- my other half would absolutely LOVE it if the house was haunted, he loves all that stuff!
@Palavah the insulation is in the roof, I don't know what insulation is between the ground and first floors. We had some work done in the loft recently and the guy that came out suggested there was slightly too much insulation up there! I suspect there's not masses of insulation between the kitchen on the ground floor and the bedroom above it- when you're in the bedroom you can hear everything happening in the kitchen below.
@CurryForever, it might be a tad warmer in the upstairs bedroom during the summer, but its not as noticeable a difference as how cold it gets compared to the rest of the house during the winter IYSWIM.

23 is high the house should be warm enough set to that , ours is 19 and is ok ,

Do you have a combi boiler or the traditional boiler/hot water tank?
If it’s the latter, as an experiment, try turning the pump to ‘3’ , often marked as III. That should ensure the radiators are getting the best chance of being supplied with hot water.

Also, Turn the ground floor rads to 0 , put the heating on and after a while check the temperature in that upstairs bedroom. Warm enough in that bedroom? If it isn’t with only the upstairs radiators on, and you’re happy with the radiator temps then you either have a really strange draught problem or the radiator is too small for the room.

This colder bedroom, it’s not in a draught path from the downstairs hall ?

Hi @tanstaafl, its a traditional boiler with a tank. Is the pump attached the to tank? I will try the experiment with the ground floor rads, thank you.
The colder bedroom is the first at the top of the stairs, so it could be on a draught path perhaps? The stairs bend around a slight corner (you can't see the front door from the top of the stairs, but if cold air was travelling up the stairs it would definitely be the first room it would hit).

Where is your thermostat and do you only have one for the whole house? Is there a chance that the place where the stat is located is warm enough to turn the heating off leaving the other parts of the house cold?

Are you finding that when a part of your house is cold the radiator is no longer warm?

Our house was built 20 years ago. We could always feel a slight draught coming down the stairs but could never pin point the source, even bought those smoke pellet things that you light and wandered round trying to move slowly so the smoke would only move from the draught.

In the end we bought a £20 handheld infrared thermometer off Amazon which led us to putting in a new weatherstrip around the front door and a new weather bar thing at the bottom of the front door.

We also had all new double glazing which made a hell of a difference as the frames are much more energy efficient. That obviously wasn't cheap though.

I would buy the thermometer and see if it helps. It certainly helped us see the difference in temperatures around the front door where the weather strips were just a bit too worn.

My house is cold but big rooms etc and it's a semi...we nicknamed it Stalingrad as we used to burn old furniture to keep warm before heating was fitted !!

Pumps are usually in the pipes next to the hot water cylinder.
If you go to www.screwfix.com , search for ‘central heating pump’ you’ll see a range of brands.
Here’s one picked at random , you can see the 3 speeds where the red dial is on the left side in the black plastic.

www.screwfix.com/p/wilo-4035479-sb30-secondary-circulating-pump-230v/74599

Some new builds have been caught out as not having the insulation the builders claimed to have installed. The noticeable cold spots made me wonder...
You can get a thermal imaging survey which is dead simple. The surveyor comes and point thermal camera at your house and it shows where heat is escaping from. If a wall is letting lots of heat out and other walls are not you can info if you have missing insulation and get it fixed.

Hi @TobyHouseMan, the thermostat is in the living room, which is one of the warmer rooms in the house. We only have the one thermostat. If I walked from the living room and went into the hallway and up to the stairs they'd both be noticeably much colder than the living room. I don't think the thermostat is turning the heating off- I have the thermostat set higher than recommended, and if I go up to the cold bedroom the radiator is on, but the room is still cold.

Thanks for the tip about the infrared thermometer @OnTheBenchOfDoom, that's a great idea. Thanks for the link @tanstaafl, that's incredibly useful.

You've set off a whole chain of thought @ChickensMightFly! I've been doing some research and apparently you can hire a thermal imaging camera from Jewson for about £70 a day.

@Winterbeee great idea to hire a thermal camera if you can afford to. That would really help you and you can film it so that you have a record of the cold spots in each room.