Victorian house keep warm life hacks sought!

[slugjelly]

Hello,
First winter in my draughty north facing mid renovation Victorian house looming. I’m already cold. What hacks do you have. Do I need small heaters? Heated blankets? Dehumidifier? There must be some way to make it better apart from hot water bottles. I have central heating, but need to seriously supplement it.
Yours freezingly,
slugjelly

Ooh, I'm an expert at this! I recently moved from a hideously cold, badly insulated house. It wasn't Victorian but very cheap 1980s, with 1980s electric storage heaters and gaps under the front door and round the windows. So I'd be lovely and warm (dripping with sweat) overnight when they heated up, but I could see my breath by 11am. I was renting so couldn't change much, so don't have any advice on how to heat the house... but I have loads on how to heat the human!

1. Thermal socks. My favs are Jeep. Heat Holders are also good, though I found them poorer quality.
2. More socks. For the worst days, add an extra pair of socks underneath the thermal socks. For the worst worse days, you can get plastic booties, or just use clingfilm. Add some foot cream, and you'll wake up to sandal season with perfect summer feet!
3. Warm slippers. Make sure they're good quality, and proper wool or suede. There's a lot of crap out there... Just make sure they're big enough to go over the big thermal socks!
4. Thermal leggings and top under your clothes. Just pretend you're off skiing.
5. An Oodie. Soooo warm... though rather cumbersome to move about in. Perfect if you're more or less sitting in one place though.
6. Electric blanket. Best invention ever. Nothing like the pleasure of getting into a heated bed when you're freezing cold... I also have brushed cotton bedding, to really add to the snuggliness.
7. Warm, powerful shower. Actually, the best invention ever is a shower pump. There's nothing quite so pleasurable as a really strong warm shower when you're chilled to the bone. It's genuinely worth getting freezing cold just for the defrost. Warm baths also work, though I think the power shower gets the win.
8. Oil filled radiator. An annoyingly late addition to my arsenal, after years of buying fan heaters I finally splashed out on a good quality oil radiator last year. And it really works! And now I'm very irritated as it cost a lot of money and in March I moved to a lovely, well-insulated, centrally heated home, so don't imagine I will ever need my very expensive radiator again :( The one I got was De'Longhi Dragon 4 TRD41025T Oil Filled Radiator - White : Amazon.co.uk: Automotive (Let me know if you're interested in a nearly new one...!!)

Live like a Victorian with layers and layers of clothes, and layers of bed clothes, and heavy curtains and rugs! I am only half joking. Funny to think that a month ago everyone wanted to know how to cool their home.

Can I recommend getting an insulation firm in to check for odd draughts, weird holes to the outside etc. We did that and half a days work transformed the place. We had loads of pipes coming in and out that weren't properly sealed

North-facing Victorian here too. Some ideas:

Oodies
Thermal layers
Warm flippers
In bed: fluffy sock with sticky bottoms so you don’t slip when you get up
Fluffy snoods
Fingerless gloves
Rechargeable hand warmers
Heat the room you’re in
Low consumption electric heaters that blow heat out
Fluffy blankets on the sofa
Fluffy blankets over the duvets

I live in a Victorian terrace, it's pretty cosy. We do enjoy a heated blanket in the winter in bed, and we put our fire on, but we could manage without both. Do you have double glazing, a solid front door, loft insulation and a decent boiler? Have you checked for draughts? Any damp? Carpets?

and you'll be fine. Victorian houses are lovely to live in - even if/when you have to layer-up, huddle under heated throws & buy more hot-water bottles than you'd ever thought you'd need. There's SO MUCH good advice on here to get you started on your new forever home.

Good luck, OP. It'll be lovely. ... in the end 😂🤗

You got the downstairs floorboards sanded and… didn’t insulate underneath? Ona suspended timber floor?

My house was built in the 1820s.

Electric blankets for beds. The ones that go on top of the mattress. Big duvets. Additional throws for the lounge. Proper slippers so I look like an elf. Proper PJs. Proper dressing gown. Replace your letterbox so drafts aren't sneaking through that. Check that your pipes are all sealed on exit (will also stop little critters camping out when they're trying to escape winter). Good lined curtains - I still use my parents velvets even though they're something like 50 years old, the bloody things are amazing, cost hundreds new way back then. And they're not just at the windows. I have one at the front door and one at the bottom of the stairs. Charity shops sometimes have them and the expensive when new ones are totally washable.

The biggest enemy is always damp. Straight cold is fine. It's the damp cold that clings. Dehumidifier. Dry your washing away from where you want to breathe.

The thing about living in a cold house is never letting yourself get too cold. We have room thermometers. Once it gets to 18 degrees we know we can't just sit there for hours on end because you sort of stop feeling the cold until it's proper in your bones and then it's really hard to warm yourself up again. It's ok to have a hottie bottie when it's minus 6 outside because it's not often minus 6. I have a house poncho. We have fake snuggly sheepskins. He sometimes wears long John's. It's like staring in your very own western.

Good luck. You get used to it.

Your biggest issue right now is the downstairs floor. Cheapest and quickest option is carpet it and fill in any gaps in the skirting that remain.

I see that you have old sash windows - if you can save up to eventually replace these with double-glazing, you will notice a huge difference. If you’re in a conservation area, it will be very expensive as you may need to get wooden ones. But if not, you can get cheaper non-wood ones, they still look nice and last a lot longer.

And yes our house is ALWAYS colder than outside! A benefit in the heat of summer! But in winter our kitchen is routinely 9 degrees C 😫😫😫

I have this problem with condensation. It's a mid terrace pain in the bum.

I bought thermal curtains from amazon. Not expensive and they looked really thin when I opened them. I bought a colour i liked and hoped for the best! They are amazing! Totally obliterate the drafts from the front and back doors which despite being double glazed upvc are just as drafty as the wooden ones were!

Look on Facebook for people giving away rugs or selling them cheaply. Is there a local free stuff group? We have a couple of charity furniture shops nearby which sells rugs and curtains as well as furniture. They might not be your taste but will be a stop gap whilst you decide what you really want to do in the house. Good luck.

genuine question as I have never understood the whole “south facing” desirability thing.

surely a north facing house is no different? If people want a “south facing” garden then the front of the house must be north facing? The point being the sun rises east to west so the house isn’t in it’s own shade for most of the day?

I live in a Victorian house and have never found it draughty. Decent windows, heat downstairs to a comfortable temp and upstairs stays warm enough…

heated towel rails/radiators I find are the most important. Get black ones with a high heat distribution, warms towels and clothes and keeps bathroom warm.

You can get thermal window covers, they suction onto the windows. They keep the heat inside or outside in summer. This helps prevent drafts and curtains can still be used

I use heated airers as heaters in colder rooms including my office so I don’t have to have the heating on. It’s amazing how much heat they give out, I have heated blankets and even without a heated blanket being turned on it keeps me warm. We also have two log burners - the one in the kitchen has been a game changer. Carpets upstairs (except bathrooms), door curtains, v good quality lined curtains, double glazing in every room. I absolutely love our house. We have been here 16 years and prioritised double glazing, log burners, carpets, under floor heating etc over everything else.

It’s so annoying - there are certain pockets in some rooms which are particularly bad - we’ve had to paint walls in anti damp/fungal stuff, then repaint. Never happened when we had crappy windows as there was enough air circulating.

Open fires shouldn’t be a problem as long the chimney is drawing properly. Get the chimneys swept first and also get them to check whether the stack is still ‘sealed’. The pointing inside mine had degraded and I had to get the flue lined.
Double glazing, or if you have the original windows have secondary glazing fitted.
Thermal lined, full length, curtains on all the windows and behind the external doors. You can get curtain rods specifically designed for that.
Be careful with insulating the external walls, as you may get problems with condensation.
If the radiators are under the windows, move them so they’re not covered by curtains.
Heated throws; mine from Lakeland is a godsend.

Hi I feel your pain 😢 Heavy door curtains for front and back doors. I managed to get a pair of pre-loved from ebay. Draught excluder's for around the windows. You can get insulation film and tape for the windows on Amazon, quite inexpensive. Tin foil behind radiators will reflect the heat. Heated gloves and body warmers and hat. Layering is the key, plenty of hot drinks. To keep the cost down, heat only one or 2 rooms, not the whole house. Foil blankets are great underneath your bed sheet. Heavy wool blankets, sleeping bag, heated slanket. Door draught excluder. I hope all goes well xx

I lived in a draughty old house over a decade ago. We didn't have much money at the time so everything was done cheaply.

We filled the gaps in the floor boards with paper mache. I think you can also use foam and wood filler if you are worried about damp. Have a Google, it worked fine for us and stopped a lot of the draughts.

Then we had this padded foam roll stuff covered in foil down with rugs over the top.

We had thermal blackout blinds very close to the windows and then thick lined curtains which were down to the floor and I would tuck them behind the radiators. Facebook market place can be great for decent curtains. People spend 100s and then decide to change their colour scheme so replace.

Draught tape is great and inexpensive. You can use a lit candle held in front of doors or windows to find where the cold air is coming in.

I love a heated throw. They cost pennies to run and are perfect for cold nights on the sofa.

Hot water bottles in bed. We have a feather duvet, throw over the top. I find as long as my feet are warm then I don't notice the cold at all over night. Then a rug and slippers by the bed and a dressing gown or oodie for as soon as you get up.

Also living in a Victorian project. Was also here last winter. Top tips:

• don’t get cold- wear a beanie and Ugg boots ( or cheap knock offs), thermals and a heavy sweater as soon as you get up.
• i personally think the oil filled radiators are v good- much better than the blowers so keep one room warm with one of those
• hot water bottles when sitting down or in bed
• chain drink hot drinks
• use dehumidifiers to stop damp- this is important- otherwise the wallpaper will strip itself and you’ll get mould

So jealous. I miss my old victorian terrace that stayed cool all summer.

I mean that’s the definite upside and once I get the radiators filled it’s the best of both worlds for sure. But last winter was hard. Honestly the damp was worse than the cold, or at least massively exacerbated it, hence advising the OP to get some dehumidifiers

You mentioned radiators under windows. This is a great way to keep the garden warm.

Don't get full length curtains over them. Put a shelf or extended window board that sticks out more than tbe radiator, and a curtain that hangs down and rests on the shelf (not in front of it). This will force the warm air rising from the radiator to be pushed out into the room, instead of losing its heat to the cold glass.

Try not to fill the shelves with flower vases and china pigs, which the curtains will knock off. If times are hard you can get plastic film to stick to the frames, it creates a pocket of still air between itself and the window, which is a very effective insulator. It is difficult to keep tbe plastic in good condition through the summer, so unless you have net curtains to hide them, you will probably fit it new each winter. It sticks to clean, glossy paint. It does not stick to rough, scabby wood, or to flaking paint, or to dirt.

Your starting point should be finding a good heating engineer and having the boiler serviced. Assuming you have gas central heating you're describing as not working well it's likely that it can be made to work better - either just with a boiler service and maybe altering some of the settings or by replacing some radiators with more modern efficient ones. Currently, using your central heating will be a more cost effective way to heat several rooms than electric fan heaters or heaters that run on bottled gas. If you're unlucky the boiler service will tell you that the boiler is on its way out and needs replacing in X years but that's knowledge and better than the heating just not working in January.

Reflective foil to go behind the radiators is cheap. Rearranging the furniture so radiators aren't blocked by sofas etc is important if your current arrangements don't work for winter. Also do bleed your radiators if you haven't recently.

You do need curtains and carpets or rugs with non slip under mats in your living areas (even in a Victorian house I wouldn't put carpet in the kitchen or bathrooms).

Getting rid of draughts is important - look at your front and back doors and fit floor length curtains if you can. If the external doors are very draughty consider replacing them (when I lived in a Victorian house it was in a conservation area but had a modern PVC door so check locally if you need permission)

Thermal cameras as loaned by Octopus are useful for checking where your house is losing heat - I suspect they can be bought / hired from other places if you don't use Octopus for energy.

Small weighted blankets are surprisingly effective at keeping me warm sitting in an armchair and can be considered along with electric throws and electric under blankets for the beds.

Block draughts - draught excluders, thermal curtains, rugs if not carpeted, thick door curtains.

Heaters will only work so much if there are a lot of draughts you will loose the heat.

Electric blankets, throws, thick socks, oodies and slippers.

Lots of ventilation, disposable dehumidifiers in wardrobes. Electric dehumidifiers will help but again if you have big gaps then you are going to be running it a lot.

Ultimately decent insulation is your friend. We have a Victorian house it use to be freezing until we got the attic insulation and new doors and windows.