There are some easy and relatively cheap wins when it comes to making your home more energy efficient. Draughtproofing not only saves energy, but it also makes the home feel more comfortable. As you will know, air currents makes you feel cooler – that’s why we have fans in hot weather. In the wintertime, cold moving air is the last thing we want. So, let’s hunt down the source of those draughts, block them off, and enjoy a more cosy home and lower heating bills into the bargain!
Here are our top five tips:
1/ Draught-proof the chimney. An open chimney will syphon 80 cubic metres of air out of a room per hour. This pulls in cold air from other leaky parts of the building, causing the cold draughts we notice. When draught-proofing your home, always start with the fireplace. Use a Chimney Sheep to block the nearest, narrowest part of the flue. If you have a gas fire then you must not block the flue but you can use a magnetic fireplace blanket , so long as you don’t have a lit pilot light.
If you have a log burning stove, you will not need a Chimney Sheep but if you are noticing draughts from it then you may need to replace the rope seal around the doors.
2/ Insulate and draught-proof the loft hatch. Even if you haven’t got a chimney, warm air will rise up through the house and create a stack effect if it can find an exit. Put window seal draught-proofing strip around the perimeter of the loft hatch where it sits on the ledge. On the back of the hatch, put a layer of insulation. We supply “A Useful Bit of Insulation” that can be used for this. Or use a section of our Herdwick wool underlay , cut to fit and stapled on.
3/ Look for all the gaps – around plumbing, holes drilled for electrical cables, gas pipes, etc. Bung these with wool gap filler.
4/ Check doors and windows, and fit draught seal tape if you can feel any air coming through. Look around window frames, inside and out. Although these are fitted to save energy, if they are badly fitted they will be a source of air leakage around the outside. Also use door draught excluders to block cold draughts from under doors.
5/ Letterboxes can be a massive source of heat loss, hiding in plain sight. Letterbox covers are cheap to buy, easy to fit and deliver instant draught-stopping results. Key-holes can similarly be a source of nuisance cold draughts – fit these with an escutcheon keyhole cover.
UK has the oldest housing stock in the world. In. The. World. That means a lot of leaky buildings. In times gone by when we relied on open fires to heat the place, the draughts would have been a welcome source of air-change. Now that we have central heating, those leaky parts of the building are a problem. We definitely need ventilation, but we need to take back control, and not have expensive warm air escaping into the neighbourhood. Sometimes it can be a bit daunting to try to make your home more energy-efficient, but these simple measures are easy, relatively inexpensive, and will pay for themselves within a few months. You will feel the benefit of your efforts immediately.
