FGS we have bought a really cold house...<sob>

[OhGiveUsAPruniPudding]

Victorian
Sash windows
Upstairs is in the eaves
Totally predictable, I know

I am so miserable when am cold
What can we do to keep warm? It's only December, I think if I have to go through another 3 months of this I will cry.

Any tips at all, apart from replacing the windows which is out because a) we can't afford to and b) DH won't - "I like the stripped wood" (I am working on this because he's being a twat about it).

Can you get a dinosaur to upend a sweater factory onto you?

If it is any comfort our "double glazed" house is nippy too ! Stained wooden frames

sort your shutters out downstairs. i used to wear a hat in bed when we slept in an uninsulated attic. get an electric blanket. do you have a fireplace? get some insulation in your attic.

alternatively come round here we have a lovely roaring fire on the go. (rest of the house is nipple piercingly cold)

Isn't there some stuff that looks like cling film that you put over the windows then use a hair dryer on it to make it taut or something like that ? And get some very thick curtains ?

I do sympathise, our kitchen has a knackered huge single glazed window and the side door in there has a gap under the cat flap, it is like being in the North Pole. Luckily the rest of the house is OK.

What about secondary glazing?

works a treat on our drafty sash windows....

you can tape up all the gaps in the window. a pain to get off in the spring though. but it works.

my mother used to pin blackets ot the windows in winter.

Teapot, Our kitchen is Freeeeeezing too, it sat the back of the house, north facing so never gets any sun, rest of the house if fine but thje kitchen is icy

Get good thick curtains and pull them as soon as it is dark, all rooms. Keep cushions near doors bottoms, to stop drafts. Keep one room downstairs really warm. Give children a hot bath before bedtime and put in a hot water bottle.

Get that reflective radiator stuff that goes behind them, it works.

do you keep your central heating on all the time? better do do that in a victorian house, at a low level it keeps an ambient temp. and newspaper in the window gaps works a treat and isn't noticeable, just jam it in with a knife. what else? keep curtains over the sidey bits of the window to cut down on draughts. and, er, use the oven a lot.

We have put plastic up at our windows (old sash) and it has helped tremendously.
Light all the fires if you have them, put a curtain up at the front door, buy thos draught excluder thingys for the bottom of all doors, buy some oil filled radiators, teach everyone to close doors, invest in blankets.
We have also, after 4 years got new radiators and a boiler, or you could get your system flushed through so it works more efiiciently.
I really do sympathise. This is the forst year after 5 years in our house that I am actually warm in winter

I have to brace myself to go in when I get up as we keep the cats shut in there overnight and it is just horrendous. I usally make DH go in first and try to warm it up whilst I linger in a warm shower !

DH also filled some of the gaps between the skirting, and floorboards in kitchen, under cupboards with a foam filler, that helped too.

same here ours is BITTER

i am hugging radiators in everyroom and wearing one of DH's hoodies indoors
I am always freezing but this is the pits
we are looking into an aga but its tthe money

I made our kitchen ever so slightlt worse by smashing one of the windows a week after we moved in.

I meant to throw a knife in the sink but used a little too much underarm thrust and it hit the window behind the sink....

yeah yeah lth ...what did dh say about the 'accident?'

Do you think her DH may have been washing up at the time?

Does it have cavity walls - filled or not? You could probably get bettfer insulation in the roof, too.
Do u wear tights or leggings under jeans? If not, y ever not? Wear wooly hat indoors, too.

hmm wotz -yes looks shall we say 'probable'

Top tip from another thread - wear thick wool tights on your head even if you are not on your hands free phone

Don't even try to heat the whole house,just settle for the odd room or two. This is what my parents do; they are skint but live in an ancient and immense house. When I stay there I wake up with a sore head which hurts from the cold but dd (who stays once a week) says it's fine when you get used to it.

I guess I used to manage fine when I lived there as a child but I have v fond memories of their previous (georgian) house which must have just had very good central heating because it was fabulously toasty warm everywhere.

You can get draft excluders specifically to fit around victorian sash windows. Or we used to have a sheet of laminated glass fitted by the local glaziers over the windows, internally, to create a double glazed effect; that's a cheap option (can't open the windows then though, but ours was into a main road so we didn't want to). Secondary glazing can go internally and can slide open and shut so you can use the sash windows in summer. Can you get more insulation in the eaves? Thick lined curtains down to the floor on all windows and over front door. Fluffy slippers!

I should imagine that your radiators are not sufficient for the size of your rooms

They need to have a certain output to heat effectively. look here you can calculate the required output. It may just be as simple as replacing an existing single radiator with a double of the same size but they are thicker iyswim. Much cheaper than replacing windows

We live in an Edwardian house which we did up, I was always cold before we did it up and I calculated the required output and bought new rads accordingly, we are now roasty toasty!

I send DH a text saying "ring me" which he generally knows means sonmething has happened.

I was relieved (and surprised) to here him say "Ohhh don't worry about, we'll be getting that window replaced at some point anyway, we'll just get it done sooner rather than later"
I was dreading telling him....

And the reason the knife was thrown was because ds2 had cut every finger on ds4 pudgy little hand!!
He'd been sitting next to ds4 at dinner and held his knife out to him to hold the serrated end....why I'll never know but because it was anew knife the serrated bits were sharp enough to cut his fingers.

I threw the knife in the sink because ds4 was screaming and I paniced hence the to much underarm thrust...

Luckily it hit the corner of the window so only made ahole in the glass and cracked the pane, had it hit in the centre the whole thing would have gone I think