Table Of Contents
Keeping Your House Warm During Winter
Summer is over. Winter is coming, and you are probably worried about the cold. You are wondering how to keep warm during this time while keeping a strictly low budget. Well, guess what? It is indeed possible. Despite the type of heating in your home, heating could be a costly utility, especially during winter if you do not make the right moves.
By the end of this article, you will realise that keeping warm in winter is more than just turning on your heater. After all, you can do just fine in winter without a heater, saving huge on heating bills. This article brings to you some suitable ways to keep warm during winter in a more economical way.
Seal All Cracks
If you live in an old house, there are higher probabilities that your walls may have small cracks or crevices. Such gaps and or crevices have the capability of seeping in cold draughts. Therefore, the most viable way of keeping the cold draughts away is by ensuring that you seal and block all the cracks or crevices.
Similarly, you could use a draught stopper to keep away cold draughts during winter. Draught stoppers are mostly placed at the door to prevent cold air from entering the house and are very efficient. Moreover, they are easily affordable and can be found in nearby shops.
Hang Up Thick Curtains
Well, thick curtains work both ways; they can help prevent overheating during the summer months and effectively prevent heat loss during winter. Therefore, buying some thick curtains would be a more economical way to stay warm during the winter season.
Check On Your Heater
During summer, people always regulate their heaters for proper heating. It is worth noting that your heater may be in the same state as winter sets in. Therefore, without checking the condition of your heater, you may end up receiving less or more heat than required during winter. You must check up on your heater before the winter season sets in to avoid this.
An inspection of your heater would ensure that it is in the right state and improve its work efficiency. Maintenance of the heater would help prevent breakdowns during the winter season. Experts have argued that if you keep regular maintenance of your heater as you adjust the thermostat and ensure that you seal all the cracks, you stand a chance of reducing your home heating costs by up to 30%. During the inspection and maintenance of your heater, be sure of:
- Changing the air filter
- Voltage and connections testing
- Checking the condensate draining
- Lubricating the moving parts
- Checking the thermostat settings
- Inspecting the burner and cleaning it
Use Column And Fan Heaters
Additionally, if you have a column heater, it is best to have some room around it to allow free heat distribution. If there are items such as furniture around your column heater, you may not receive effective heating since these sorts of things around the column heater would absorb the heat it produces.
Another cheaper way to keep warm during winter is by using a fan heater. Fan heaters are more efficient than radiator heaters. Fan heaters will warm up your house as the temperatures rise gradually. Once it attains the right temperature, it will maintain that temperature efficiently. Fan heaters are also effective since they help minimise the number of pollutants in your house during heating.
Regulate The Thermostat
This is a critical thing to do to keep warm during winter without incurring any expenses. After maintaining your heater, you must know when to regulate the thermostat and when not to. Many experts have suggested that one keeps the thermostat at about 68 degrees during the winter to ensure maximum energy saving.
However, this does not mean that you ensure your thermostat is at 20 degrees Celsius or 68 degrees Fahrenheit every single time. It does no harm lowering it to about 15.5 degrees Celsius or 60 degrees Fahrenheit or less while you leave the house for work. Keeping the heating on low while you are not in the place would save you a lot on the utility bills.
However, it is best if you are cautious about lowering your thermostat. This is because, if lower for just a short time, it will require a lot of energy to heat back up to 20 degrees Celsius or 68 degrees Fahrenheit. This will thus mean that you use a lot more power resulting in more expenses for your budget when it comes to settling the utility bills.
Eat Warm Foods
Various people have always preferred to eat different types of food in winter to summer. It is pretty evident that people would select warm food during the winter season. The first step to ensuring that you eat warm foods is by cooking or baking them. As you cook your food, your house also receives some heating through the heat from the stove or heater.
This becomes a cheaper way of warming up during winter, plus you will not have to buy food from restaurants. Similarly, cooking in your house also saves you the transport costs or the costs you would incur while moving to your favourite restaurants. Another hack is always making hot sauce or having some chilli in your food.
You can also have hot drinks to stay warm during winter. While most people prefer hot chocolate during the winter season, you could have hot tea or hot coffee to stay warm.
Use A Humidifier
As opposed to what many people think, humidity also contributes to the warmth of the house and not temperature only. For instance, a day that is 21 degrees Celsius or 70 degrees Fahrenheit (dry) would be much colder than a day that has the same temperature but with 85% relative humidity.
Therefore, if you want to make your house a little warmer during the winter, it would help to use a humidifier. A humidifier would add some moisture into the air and also keep your skin moist and soft. However, if you do not own a humidifier or can’t get one quickly, there is no reason to worry. There is a way to compromise.
You can boil some water in a large pot then leave the pot open for the water to evaporate into the air after switching off the heat. Further, it would be much better if you placed the pot of hot water near a vent or a radiator. The warm air from the radiator or vent would blow over the water in the pot, thus increasing the rate of evaporation.
Ensure You Layer Up
It is cheaper to stay warm during winter by layering up. However, depending on how frigid it is, you can decide on how many layers to put on. Layering up includes having many sweaters over your shirt, putting on two or more trousers, having piles of blankets on your bed, etc. However, layering up does not mean just putting on any clothing. Certain kinds of clothing are most suitable for layering up during the winter season. These include:
- Fleece
- Silk
- Flannel
- Wool
Natural fibres and moisture-wicking fabrics are most effective and efficient for layering during winter. Silk and wool are breathable, meaning that besides keeping you warm, they also suck away the sweat from your body. Even though fleece and flannel are also practical, they do not pull sweat away from your body. Therefore, it is not advisable that you put them directly on your body.
Similarly, you could fill a bottle with hot water and put it under your blankets before slipping into your blankets. The hot water bottle would supply heat inside the blanket to keep you warm when your sleep time comes. It would also help to use an electric blanket, turning it on and off as you desire to regulate the temperature.
Cover Up Hard Floors
While hard floors are practical for flooring and provide an attractive appearance, they could be great cold agents during winter unless they have insulation underneath. Hard floors include tiles, floorboards, cement plastering, etc. You could always have some rugs over your hard floor during winter; this would prevent heat loss and also enable you to walk barefoot in your house at any time.
Close Off Unused Rooms
In a house, some rooms are not always used or used at only specific times, such as the bathrooms or the laundry. It would help to keep such rooms shut during winter and only open them when necessary. If you close the rooms that you do not use during winter, the heat will be concentrated in those used rooms, thus facilitating efficient warming.
Keep Your Attic Insulated
Check to see if your attic is insulated. Some experts include attic insulation while installing the ceiling. If your attic has no insulation, it will help to fix in some to keep you warm. Similarly, if you had attic insulation placed earlier, it is best that you check to see if it is still in good condition. With your attic insulated, you will have all the heat concentrated where you need it, thus keeping you warm in winter.
Have Some Weather Stripping
Applying some weatherstripping in the gaps in your doors and windows is another economical way of keeping warm in the winter. If you do not have weather strippings, you should consider purchasing some affordably at a nearby hardware store. After buying them, you can consider placing them yourself to avoid the costs of hiring an expert.
Similarly, insulating your windows with a clear film could also help keep the heat in and cold out. The transparent film is also beneficial because it does not prevent the entry of light into the house and can be used over blinds.
Turn On The Ceiling Fan
This sounds a little off; however, it becomes an effective way to keep warm during winter when done in the right manner. And yes, turning on your ceiling fan in the other direction would indeed help keep you warm during the winter. Almost all ceiling fans have a switch at the bottom. This small switch allows one to change the direction of the fan.
Now, as opposed to the average days, you need to switch the fans to rotate in a clockwise direction during the winter season. The blades will be pulling up warm air from the floor towards the ceiling as they spin, thus facilitating effective and cheap warming of your house.
Turn Off The Bathroom Fan
Even though a bathroom exhaust fan effectively removes steam from showers during the winter, it can also remove the warm air in the house during the winter season. This means that turning on your bathroom exhaust fan during winter will be a bad move towards keeping warm. This doesn’t mean that you should not entirely use the bathroom exhaust fan. We suggest that you should turn it on when necessary and off as required.
Prepare Early Enough
Heating is one of the most expensive utilities, especially during winter. It does not matter whether you use solar, electricity or gas for heating. It also does not matter where your house is located. What matters are the actions you take and the appliances that you use during winter.
With the wrong steps, you will find yourself spending a lot on heating during winter. However, you could be creative and smart with things such as the food you eat and how you regulate your thermostat to save on heating. From everything discussed in this article, it is clear that staying warm during winter is far more than just putting on heavy clothing or having chilli sauce in your meals.
You could make thousands of litres of hot coffee during winter, but that alone would not keep you warm the whole time. Also, too much liquid in your body will only result in running to the bathroom often. Hence, with the combinations of options above, you are right on track to keeping warm in winter on a budget.
Keep Warm Cheaply During Winter With Expert Help
As you have probably seen from this article, almost all the options are domestic, and you can do them entirely yourself. However, hiring an expert may be necessary for specific floor and attic insulation tasks.
While you can always attempt to do this yourself, if you do not have the right skill set, you may end up doing more harm than good, resulting in higher costs to repair damages. Also, it would be best to work with professionals to ensure your home heating system is as efficient as possible.
