Looking ahead to winter - recommendations for cold living room?

[WireSkills]

Our house was built in the 1990's. Generally it seems pretty well insulated, but the living room is always cold. Handy in summer (until the sun comes round late afternoon/evening), but is a nightmare in winter, let alone with fuel bills going the way they are.

The main issues are:

• box bay window with a lead effect canopy over the top (like the picture on this page - link). I have no idea what insulation, if any, is between the roof line and the canopy, but on the basis that any bird or cat that lands on it sounds like they're coming in through the roof, I'm guessing not much.
• trickle vents in the windows
• the air brick, which is basically just a hole in the side of the house to the outside world. It's covered on the inside with one of these covers (link) but it's effectively just a very thin bit of plastic so not exactly thermally efficient.
• wooden floor in a cold room = no retained warmth

We do have a gas fire which I hate but DH loves. Even before these increases in prices I thought the gas fire was the equivalent of chucking £10 notes in the flames, so I'm really, REALLY reluctant to let DH use it this year. I know air bricks are there to protect you against CO2 poisoning from a gas fire, but we do also have the blasted trickle vents and a CO2 alarm (plus the lack of use of the fire too).

Would it be OK to cover/block the air brick over winter?? I obviously don't want to kill us 😂

Does anyone have any recommendations/experience of similar box bay canopies and whether the insulation can be improved?

The other annoying thing is that there is only one small radiator in the whole 15' x 12' room (probably because the house builders expected you to use the gas fire to heat the room), and there's a sofa in front of it that can't go anywhere else. I keep pulling the sofa forward to create some space for the heat to rise, but the bloody thing keeps moving back, thanks to the wooden floors (which are also freezing!)

Or do I conceded defeat and just buy some blankets instead?!

We have a cold living room with a small radiator and hard floors. We have bought a large high pile cosy rug for the floor and have such order some thermal blackout curtains too. Nothing ground breaking I'm afraid, but would be keen to know what other people do!

Thanks - I was thinking rugs too, but the price of them can be crazy! When we re-do the downstairs I'm having carpet put back in here. The wooden flooring looks nice and is practical from a pet/kid point of view, but I think I'd rather have warm feet and wash the carpets a bit more regularly!

The box bay makes curtains difficult too as there's no gap between the top of the window and the roof to hang a curtain pole. We'd have to use that ceiling tracking stuff and I'm not sure that's feasible with a box bay.

On a sunny day I'm just going to decamp to the conservatory - it'll be nice and toasty in there, as the windows don't have trickle vents!

I have some of the same issues. North facing living room. Does not get any sun. I also have the airbricks to the outside and the rubbish plastic vent covers. I don’t use the gas fire at all. There is a radiator but it’s also on the wall with the sofa in front of it. I have an oil filled radiator on wheels which I find very efficient and not expensive to run. Admittedly it doesn’t look great but I don’t really care as it does the job. It’s also slightly hidden by another sofa. Also it’s very safe so if you go out and forget to turn it off it’s fine and doesn’t cost a lot. I use it to boost the heating. It also allows me to economise on heating as once I’m just sitting in the living room I don’t need to heat the rest of the house to a particularly high temp. Once the room has warmed up I don’t need it on much or just have it on the lowest setting. It’s made my living room useable/comfortable in winter without using the gas fire.

I stopped using my gas fire (it would have been warmer to huddle round a match) and bunged up the air vents with kitchen roll. Nobody died.

Heated throws are your friend. DH and I have one each and they are brilliant.
Especially when combined with an Oodie-type garment (I think ours were £16 from Dunelm. Or maybe Matalan.)

If you sit in there to watch TV etc you won't be generating much heat, so will feel the cold. This may sound daft, but....I have a cold sitting room, with a cold floor*, and I find wearing those woolly fur lined slipper/socks which go half way up your calf makes a surprising difference. And this house is chilly- an old one which we are insulating as and when we can get to things, and we keep it at about 17 in daytime, less overnight, and 18 for a hour or so in the evening when we're just sitting watching TV, as having it warmer than that would bankrupt us. We wear thermals in the winter. Doesn't mean you have to wear great woolly combinations, though. 😆Outdoor shops sell very efficient, thin and lightweight underlayers these days- as thin as tights, even the long sleeved tops. You forget you even have them on, but they are toasty.

*carpet but on a suspended wood floor in our case- so we plan to insulate under it eventually when we have done a few hundred other jobs......incidentally, we have just had roof work done which exposed the roof of our bay. Zero insulation! 😬So we sorted that out while we could get at it.

Well the cheap way to do this is heat the person not the house. So thick socks, oodie and as pp says heated throws.
Longer term you could replace the radiator with a bigger one, I know I like to be toastie in the living room. I could cope with other rooms being cold but not the living room.

Oh and you could try to ‘balance’ the radiators to draw heat to that room, ie turn that radiator up to max and have the others on a low setting.

We've got a cold east facing living room, also with box bay and and wood (well, ancient ugly laminate) floors. A big rug really helped the room feel warmer underfoot, and we've just stuck masses of throws and blankets on the sofa and I spent my evenings in oodie/joggers/slippers wrapped up in those.

If you want to go the whole hog you basically need to get rid of any cold draughts. So replace the air brick with something like this (www.blauberg.co.uk/en/blauberg-midi-air-decentralised-heat-recovery-ventilator-smart-wifi-home-automation-controlled-single-room-unit), access the top of the window and stuff it with insulation, close or tape over the trickle vents (only if another ventilation source is in use - see above), find any gaps in the windows, skirting, anywhere that is leaking cold air and seal. If putting carpet down see if you can insulate the floor at the same time? Also install a bigger radiator! The window is likely your biggest problem though. Likely very leaky and poorly insulated as you predicted. Low cost Perspex secondary glazing is maybe an option for the winter (installed on magnetic strips so you can remove it in the summer).

You can overdo it, though. Seal most houses up too much and all you'll do is get a damp house, which will feel even colder*, and rotten woodwork.

• *the damper the house, the colder it will feel at the same temperature, believe me this really is true, we measured the humidity changing as we dried out our house, which had been stopped up all over the place until we ventilated it properly, with a horrible old gas fire pumping out damp ( and probably dangerous gasses as well). Even in August it felt like a fridge at first. Now it actually feels warm when the temp is exactly the same as it was then.

We've got a north facing living room.

I was looking into how to warm up a room cheaply.

I read the more stuff you have in a room, the more the items retain heat, fabrics and soft furnishing retain more heat than wood/ metal.

So sofas, cushions blankets. Basically the more crap you have in the room the warmer it will be, and obviously a carpet/ rug will help- trap some heat too.

@BlueMongoose this is why I suggested installing a ventilation system vs just closing off the air brick.

If it was down to the level of crap in a room we should be ok! 😂 not the right type of crap I expect though.

Thanks everyone for the ideas. I'm glad we're not the only ones that have one particularly cold room.

On the basis we've got the air brick I think I'll try and seal up the trickle vents at least for the winter. The bay window sofa is "my" sofa so while the radiator is there I think most of the heat just goes straight up and out of the vents. I've also (yet again) moved the sofa forwards slightly, much to the delight of the cats who can now fit down the back and cause as much mischief as possible.

Will definitely get a rug and some throws though. Trip to Dunelm on the cards this weekend I think.

I was looking on Rightmove at local houses sold and those that do have curtains in their bay window have all had to use really odd curved tracking in the corners which just looks a bit rubbish.

I'm also buying new "winter" curtains for the bedroom. I don't like the look of sill length curtains but with the rads being under the windows, my current floor length curtains aren't exactly helping keep the room warm when they're shut!

I bought some cheap curtain bump ( thick lining) and sewed it into my existing curtains, between the pretty bit and the lining. That's made a real difference, and was also good in the heatwave as it kept the sun out.

Any chance you could link to what you bought, Fuzzypuffling? Sound like a good idea!

It was a couple of years ago, so I can't remember the actual link, but I just googled "curtain bump".

Sorry, that's not very helpful!

fabricland.co.uk/product/curtain-fabric-interlining-bump/

Might have been this!

Air bricks are there to prevent damp not to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning as far as I know? (Which, btw, is CO, not CO2)

What type of gas fire is it? Is it definitely inefficient?

La Redoute can be cheap for rugs if you catch a sale.

A bit drastic but can you move the sofa elsewhere and replace it with a couple of armchairs to let the heat circulate?

Also put a radiator shelf over it to to force the warm air out into the room

Dunelm have nice cheap fakey sheepskin rugs,on the floor on the sofa. Blocked airbricks, dangerous, because of damp and you may well put the gas fire on one day Friend at work did this.... this was a Victorian house,she felt fluey. Went to sleep on the sofa..... woken up by the dog, with carbon monoxide poisoning. Get an alarm, quite cheap. We have thick 'winter' curtains,they only just meet in the middle,it's a huge window, almost floor to ceiling,wall to wall. They look fine when they're open,and no one else sees them. I go for effects,fairy lights, candles,throws,a bit of shimmer. Makes you feel warm.

I looked into the air brick thing. Think I was here when we had the Beast from the East and the draft was horrendous around my feet! Mine is a relative new build. 2008. There seems to be a requirement that if your gas fire is above a certain. kWh power level you have to have the air bricks. From b&q I bought what looked like slabs of green wire wool. I cut these roughly to size and shoved them in the air bricks space outside. This did reduce the drafts quite substantially. It was cheap and still allowed some circulation of air as obviously they didn’t fit exactly and are porous. I have the carbon monoxide alarm and vents in windows anyway so still some air circulating.

I also never use my gas fire. But on the whole probably best not to block the air bricks as I guess they are there for a reason. I did it as a short term measure when we had freezing gale force winds and even then did not block them completely.

Kukoon rugs are great for large, affordable rugs.