Easy £6 trick raised the temperature in my home by five degrees – and other cheap ways to cut energy bills
MORE cold weather this week will be bad news for an estimated ten million people living in draughty homes across England.
These energy-wasting houses lose a third or more of the warm air when the heating is turned on.
The average private tenant is paying an extra £350 a year to heat poorly-insulated and damp homes, with those worst affected forking out £1,000 more, according to Citizens Advice.
Major works to make your home more energy efficient can be costly or difficult if renting.
But taking small steps could save you £105 or more per year on bills, according to the Energy Saving Trust.
This week, Rosie Taylor tries cheap DIY hacks to block draughts – and uses the FLIR ONE Edge Pro thermal imaging camera to test how effective they are.
Heat loss shows up as blue, while warmer areas are orange or yellow.
BLOCK DRAUGHTY GAPS
DRAUGHTS happen where there are tiny gaps in the build of your home or where openings to the outside are left uncovered.
The most obvious simple fix is to cover any cracks with a draught excluder.
You can buy the long, tube-shaped pillows from Dunelm from £6 each.
Or make your own for next to nothing by stuffing rags into the leg of a pair of old tights and tying off the top.
External doors are particularly prone to draughts around the edges, where small gaps let cold air in and warm air out.
The thermal camera showed the air temperature at the bottom of my door was a chilly 15.3C.
But adding a cheap draught excluder instantly raised the temperature by three degrees to 18.3C.
- Hack £6 Heat Rise +3C
IT’S CURTAINS FOR COLD
FRONT and back doors are one of the main culprits for heat loss in any house.
Warmth can escape at door edges or through keyholes and letterboxes.
You can buy stick-on foam tape to go around edges from £6, keyhole covers from £3 and letterbox brushes from £8.
But an even cheaper fix is a door curtain.
I bought an old one from a junk shop for £1 and fixed it in place using screw-in hooks and wooden dowels from B&Q, costing less than £5 altogether.
The camera image showed a huge difference with the whole door a cold purple without the curtain and a warm orange with it.
The area around the keyhole rose from 13.8C to 19C.
A thicker, lined curtain and draught excluder would be even better protection.
- Hack £6 Heat Rise +5.2C
CHEAT’S DOUBLE GLAZING
WITH single glazing, windows are a major source of heat loss.
If installing double glazing for £600-plus per window is not an option, you can create a similar effect using a shrink film window kit.
Cut the transparent film (similar to cling film) to size and cover the window by sticking it to the frame using the tape supplied.
Then heat the film with a hairdryer to make it stretch taut, creating a clear, flat surface you can see through clearly.
I used the Duck indoor shrink film insulation kit (£30.99 for ten windows, Amazon).
It led to a 1C increase on the surface of the single-glazed window.
It might not sound a lot but the draught reduction made each room feel much warmer.
- Hack £3 Heat Rise +1C
LIMIT LOFT LEAKS
IF you have a hatch to access your loft or roof space, you are likely losing a significant amount of heat through it.
Phil Steele, future technologies specialist at Octopus Energy, says lofts are typically colder and damper than the rest of the property, so warm air will escape and cold air will enter if there are “even slight gaps” around your loft hatch edges.
You can use a thermal camera to identify any problem areas.
The FLIR version I used showed there was a lot of cold air around the edges of the loft hatch.
But sticking self-adhesive draught-sealing tape (£4.79 for 6m from B&Q) around the edges showed an instant improvement in air temperature, from 15.2C to 18.5C.
- Hack £4.79 Heat Rise +3.3C
CAP VENT DRAUGHTS
PROPER ventilation is essential to stop mould, damp and condensation building up in homes, so you should make sure all purpose-built vents and airbricks stay clear.
But when bathroom extractor fans are not in use, covering them up can stop additional heat being lost.
You can put a cheap shower cap (mine cost £3.50 on Amazon) over the vent cover to stop draughts.
This trick instantly saw the air temperature beside the vent rise by more than 3C, from 12.5C to 15.9C.
Make sure all the damp air has cleared before you turn the fan off and never cover a fan vent that turns on automatically.
And don’t forget to take the cover off and to turn on the extractor fan whenever you run hot water.
- Hack £3.50 Heat Rise +3.4C
FILL FLOORBOARDS WITH FOAM
GAPS in flooring or beneath skirting boards on the ground floor can let cold air up from basements or the ground below your home.
The Energy Saving Trust says you can save up to £145 a year by fully insulating your floor – but that can cost up to £5,000.
A cheap alternative is to use foam expansion strips.
You can buy 20m for £10 from B&Q, which is enough to fill under all the skirting in a large room.
It easily pushes into place with a blunt knife.
When I inserted a strip in a gap between floorboards in my hallway, it instantly reduced heat loss.
The ‘after’ image was warmer, with the temperature in the gap rising by 1C.
That was just one floorboard – so filling an entire room could make a big difference.
- Hack £10 Heat Rise +1C
Where to rent a thermal camera
OCTOPUS Energy offers free loans of cameras to customers every winter.
Local councils and charities in some areas, including North Somerset, South Cambridge-shire and St Albans, Herts, do too.
If the above options do not work for you, you can rent one from around £15 a day on marketplace Fat Llama (fatllama.com).