Save money on house heating.

0rsen

This is a really practical money-saver as far as heating bills are concerned. When the utilities companies announced their immoral price hikes last year, I decided to do something about it and looked at ways of improving thermal efficiency in the loft space (although I already had plenty of fibre-glass insulation installed). Eventually, I finished up with a loft that has an internal temperature of between 8 and 10 degrees c. when the temperature outside reads well below zero, and a house that is still nice and warm first thing in the morning. And all for a cost of less than £40.
Here’s how I went about it. After much trawling on the Net, I opted for insulation with reflective aluminium foil. However, this can be quite expensive to purchase from insulation dealers, so I decided to use the aluminium emergency survival blankets sold on ebay. Shopping around, I managed to pick them up for roughly £1 each (1.5 X 2 metres). These were then attached to the pitched roof beams, allowing a necessary air space between the foil and the roof. I used brass drawing-pins to fasten the foil to the beams, but first stuck a ring-folder paper strengthener (1000 for about £1.50) in position for each pin to prevent tearing.
The whole operation took me about a fortnight in my spare time, but has been well worth it. It will now be interesting to see how long the snow remains on the roof.
If you decide to do this, by the way, please make sure that you tread very carefully in the loft. A hole in the ceiling could certainly outweigh any savings for some time to come!
Also, I must mention that after I had fitted the first half-dozen sheets, the effect was like working in a sweat box..

Fire_Fox

Are the survival blankets fire retardant? If you use a product not designed for a particular application, you may negate your buildings insurance.

coolpran

nice idea Orsen ! but please could you reply to FireFox's query so that others can follow your example.

ixwood

You don't want a warm loft space (unless it's converted of course), you want a warm house. The heat that's getting to the loft is being wasted. Ideally you'd stop the heat from getting into the loft, not outside from the loft.

A_fiend_for_life

This is an excellent idea. Would be good to hear about the fire safety side.

I've had a quick look at these, they seem to be made of aluminiumised polyester. Haven't found anything on whether they are fire retardant or fire resistant - it's not something you'd expect them to advertise nor would you need them to be in normal use.

It would be interesting to hear more about this Orsen as the possibility of making insulation that is lower in weight and could possibly be made from recycled aluminium and plastic bottles would be an excellent possibility.

Let us know if you have any info on fire retardance / fire resistance and how much it has impacted on your energy bills.

Mitchell285

Also , some superstores and i guess a couple of smaller stores do draft reduction things at like 20ft for 76p well worth spending 5 mins in each room putting it round the doors and windows . the house is alot warmer which means some nights we dont even bother with having the heatting on .