Please help me understand why our house is so cold

[Guibhyl]

This weekends slightly cold snap has made me remember just how cold our house is in winter. I just don’t understand how or why it is quite so cold and what the hell we can do about it. We haven’t put the heating on yet and most of our house is around 14/15 degrees now.

It’s a 1950s three bed semi. We have all brand new windows and doors throughout, double glazed. We have bay fronted windows in the front lounge and upstairs front bedroom, but these are full bays ie it’s not a normal brick wall with a bay window but rather the bay is almost the entire width of the room if that makes sense. I’ll try to find a picture of a similar one. I know this means that most of the front wall in the bedroom and the lounge are timber framed and thus poorly insulated. About a year ago when we got the window in the bedroom replaced we got them to build the wall under the window out a bit and fill it with lots of insulation. It has made zero difference.

There is insulation in our loft, not to the standard you would have in a new build but a decent amount. We have insulated and draft proofed the loft hatch.

We have been round the house with a thermometer gun thing and can’t see any obvious causes of drafts or anything else.

The bathroom is particularly cold as well as the downstairs hallway again despite having no obvious drafts or anything.

If we put the heating on the house warms up ok, we have a new boiler and the radiators are fine, but the heat disappears within half an hour of it being turned off. In the winter if the thermostat is set to even 16 or 17 then the boiler will be going constantly trying to get it to reach temperature, it will never switch off because the house doesn’t get up that high. Therefore having the heating on for two hours in the morning and two in the evening costs nearly £10 a day. And it’s still freezing.

I’m due DC3 in January and the thought of having to bring a tiny baby home to such a cold house (our room is the coldest) is so depressing. I’m buying as much second hand wool clothing as I can. But I really want to know just why our house is so effing cold. This isn’t something our neighbours seem to struggle with. What have I missed? Any ideas?

Your flooring is a huge issue. Hard flooring on top of concrete is always going to be cold. You also shouldn’t have got rid of your porch-every t8me the door opens the heat goes right out

I think alot of this will be due to you knocking the porch through.

We've got a 30s house with a porch that has a upvc door and then a solid original wood door to the house. The brickwork in the porch is only single skin which is why we've never knocked though to have a large hallway. You may have the same which is why the hall is always so cold.

Also, do you have all internal shut all the time? This will help as it will keep the heat in each room rather than it seeping into the hallway and getting cold quickly.

To answer more questions;

No signs of damp. No mould. We never even get mould in the bathrooms.

The house is north east facing so that might contribute to the front rooms being cold. However they are also the rooms with the bays so no insulation on those parts.

We can’t really change the flooring. We paid a lot to have karndean laid so I don’t want to now cover it all up with underlay and carpet. Plus I wouldn’t want carpet in a hallway, kitchen/diner or utility which is the majority of the ground floor. Under our carpets is just underlay and then concrete, we don’t have floorboards downstairs. Not sure if this makes it feel colder or if it’s bad? But it’s not drafty. I do think I’ll get a runner for the hallway though.

i might try to do a big curtain all along the bedroom bay although I do think it would look a bit weird because of the shape of the window. We have thermal blinds at the moment.

I have a 1950s house that sounds similar. There are a number of cold bridges: concrete all around inside the old porch, concrete window sills, no cavity in the brick bay window, concrete flat roof. I think the floor in the old porch isn't properly damp proofed.

The front door is the old external porch door and so poor insulation and also gaps around it.

Each room has an air brick just above head height because the house was designed for coal fires.

Years of kitchen rework has a few different old bits stocking through the wall creating air leaks.

There is a chimney.

Bathroom is missing an extractor vent to expel damp air.

Also the walls need repointing so the exterior walls have draughts.

I think the porch will be the cause. It was probably constructed in a flimsy way compared to the rest of the house and won't be as well insulated.

No advice but you could literally be describing my house here, though mine is a 1930's semi. We're about to have the front and back doors replaced which I hope will help, but somehow I doubt it. Honestly, I've given up. We're using little oil radiator/heater things in the living room and the DC bedroom because the heating is basically a pointless money pit. Looking to move house as soon as we can afford to.

I was going to ask about which parts of the house get the sun.

I live in a small open plan house which gets the sun at the back all morning and the sun in the front all afternoon. It’s the warmest house I have ever lived in. I used to live in a Victorian terrace ‘corridor house’ and it was dark and cold all the way through. Even in the height of summer it was cool.

Which way does your house face? My current house is south facing so feels warm without heating even in the winter. My student house was north facing and felt like an ice box even in the summer. So it could be due to the orientation of your house & unless you move, there's not much you can do.

Just read that your house is NE facing, that's the cause of your problem right there.

@Ilefttownonsaturday yep the back of the house faces south west and the rear extension with the kitchen/diner and my DCs bedroom at the back of the house are definitely the warmest rooms. The bathroom is also at the back but unfortunately the window is on the other side so it gets some morning sun but it’s not that warm. In the summer the downstairs kitchen/diner and DCs room are unbearably hot 😒 and our room and the lounge at the front are nice and cool. So maybe the sun is playing a bigger part than I thought. Also our road is curved so all the houses have a slightly different orientation which may explain why our neighbours don’t all have the same issues.

You didn’t poast pictures, do you have sloping ceilings in your first floor rooms.

Being north facing alone will not explain why it loses heat so quickly - OP said they can get it warm but as soon as heating is off, it is cold without half hour. North facing may gain less warmth from the sun but it doesn't explain a rapid loss of heat from warm levels

On a long dark winter night, the positioning of your house isn't going to be the only reason for this.

I suspect the external wall around what was the porch is a factor and probably got a significant draft from around the edge of the roof - even if there is insulation packed in where you can see it, if there are gaps then warm air rises and is sucked up and out of a house.

Get a proper thermal imaging camera and take a look.

@MojoMoon good point. However the porch was never a “sticking out” porch - it was an integrated one - so above the roof of the original “porch” (which now forms part of my hallway) is the smallest bedroom. It doesn’t protrude from the house at all so doesn’t have a separate roof and hence no draft. The brickwork is just as thick as the rest of the wall although it is possible that any cavity wall insulation was not done on that part of the wall so it might be colder in that respect. But when I put my hand along the wall (and when I use the hand held heat gun) the wall around the original porch doesn’t feel or seem any colder than any of the other external walls in the house.

The heat gun does show that the coldest points on the walls are in the lounge at the top above the bay window where it’s timber frame only and around the bay window in the bedroom. This is despite new windows and the bedroom wall being packed out with insulation below the window itself all the way down to the floor. Could the timber frame/tile finish be causing this much heat loss?

This is similar to the front of our house, the windows and bay are the same style and it looks like they’ve done the same thing with their porch. Only difference is that part of this house is rendered but none of ours is.

Cheap temp and damp meter from Amazon. It is amazing how much damp air doesn’t heat and costs more. Only around £5-£10

Something like this.
ThermoPro TP49 Small Digital Hygrometer Indoor Thermometer Room Thermometer Temperature and Humidity Meter for Home Office Comfort Reptile Thermometer https://amzn.eu/d/dk8YH0Q

it might be your floors. ground cold seeping in and through the walls.
also, do you feel the cold a bit more than other people, because i do.
it might be a mix of poor insualtion around the house and your own bodies?
do guests feel cold too?

my cousins house was also like this. just always so bloody cold. an old victoria, terraced property too. i personally think they had mild damp

Sounds like our house - which was built in mid 90s! I’m looking at draught proofing around all doors. We have Karndean in the lounge and hall, and fucking porcelain tiles in the kitchen - from previous owners!! I’m going to get a much bigger rug in my lounge. I’m honestly wanting to move, every winter is awful in our house.

@iovebread its definitely not just us, everyone who comes complains about the cold even when the heating is on. And the thermometers reflect this too. Often if I’m working from home in the winter with the heating off it will be about 13-14 if the temperature outside is 4 or 5, even an hour after I’ve had the heating on. There’s almost no point putting it on as you only get any benefit during the actual time it’s on, none afterwards.

I also think we are pretty hardy as we had only ever lived in (rented) draughty old Victorian terraces beforehand plus our previous house we owned which was a 1930s semi with almost no loft insulation and huge gaps between the floorboards and a front door so draughty you could actually feel the wind on your face when you stood in front of it. So we have always lived in old, cold houses and this one is by far the worst despite being the newest and the only one to have all new doors and windows with zero draughts.

I think the floors will be the main culprits

Yes, but if one side faces NE then the other side faces SW so will get sun in the afternoons.

aww, that really sucks!
it could be the ground and poor insulation from the bottom.
it's an old house as you say.
i think the digital temp gadget thingy someone mentioned might be handy!

Are you sure that there are no voids underneath your floors? We are in a 1930's semi with voids underneath the floors and when it was windy the carpets used to lift from the draught. Since we ply lined the floors the house is much warmer.

Heat rises so double your attic insulation. It's probably not half as much as you should have there now, even though may look enough.

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