Avoid using GAS and ELECTRIC !

Mermaid

full-time-mum wrote:

Maybe old quilts could be used for other insulation problems such as stapling a piece to the loft hatch door - always strikes me as odd that we spend a fortune laying down insulation between the rafters then leave a dirty great hole with just a lump of wood in it.

It's a good idea to insulate the loft hatch, ours was pre-insulated. It has polystyrene attached to it, so it is light and stays in place. Perhaps you could scavenge some large pieces from packaging and attach it with double sided tape?

A few years ago, two of my friends lived in a rented terraced house with no loft insulation. In a very cold winter, theirs was the only house with no snow on the roof in the street. We used to get regular invites to go round - we'd all sit under duvets and drink their homemade beer. Each person in the room raised the temperature by a degree! Not sure they saved a lot as they supplied the beer, but we all had fun!

Regards,

Mermaid

John_3:16

All those solar garden lights bring in and put on a wibdow sill use them if you get a power cut or just leave then to charge to use whenever

wannagobacktogreece

does anyone know where we would stand in the situation given that we live in rented accomodation and we have on many occasions complained to the letting agency that the house feels extremely cold, we couldnt figure out why so after waiting 2 months for them to send someone round we decided to have a look ourselves, we descovered that the loft insulation is extremely thin(even though now ddm say it is ample) and also the radiators need bleeding every 5 weeks or so, they are always full of air so when we switch the heating on it doesnt do anything, we are currently paying about 90pound a quarter for our elec and 160 a quarter for our gas, we live in a 3 bedroomed detached house prob 1980s ish, double glazed, does this seem a reasonable price to pay to and does anyone know where / if we can get advice from anywhere regarding the loft insulation?
thanks

ps we also find that snuggling in a dressing gown can save money and turning all elec stuff off at bedtime such as tv video dvd etc, why leave them on at night while your sleeping!i also do the ironing when im cold as i always seem to get hot whenever i do the ironing.
also when u take a bath close the door to keep the heat in so you have a toasty warm bathroom :rotfl:

Stuartli

If you are 60 and over use Powergen's StayWarm service - fixed amount per month for gas and electricity through a government scheme.

You can also get free cavity wall and loft insulation done through Powergen through the same government initiative.

Once you have established the Powergen scheme (and had the insulation work done), use uSwitch after the first or second year to get even lower monthly costs...:-)

wannagobacktogreece

thanks stuartli il look into powergen to see what they can offer but we are only 22 so wont be going for the over 60 just yet,lol.
would i be within my own rights to complain about the poor service we have received from ddm?and if so, who to?

MIRRY_2

One of my neighbours is throwing out her carpet so my hubby went round to collect it,
it is so nice and clean that I am going to fit it in our down stairs loo.

I am also going to use a square of it to place in front of the kitchen sink and in front of the cooker (where I spend alot of my time standing).

Barcode

I'm sorry if this sounds really, really stupid, but is it safe to put tinfoil behind the radiators? I don't want something catching fire in the middle of the night! I did a quick google, and it said something about putting it behind radiators on outside (?!) walls. I don't know what this means. I'm a student, facing a mountain of bills this Oct, so any way I can avoid using as much gas/electric is welcomed.

Chipps

"tinfoil" is aluminium, so can't catch fire. You can buy special stuff for putting behind radiators, but ordinary foil is fine.
How hot do you have your rads if they are hot enough to set anything alight?:eek: :eek:

Chris_L_5

Barcode wrote:

I'm sorry if this sounds really, really stupid, but is it safe to put tinfoil behind the radiators? I don't want something catching fire in the middle of the night! I did a quick google, and it said something about putting it behind radiators on outside (?!) walls. I don't know what this means. I'm a student, facing a mountain of bills this Oct, so any way I can avoid using as much gas/electric is welcomed.

The "outside wall" means where the radiator is against a wall where the other side of the wall is outside in the open (i.e. not where the other side of the wall is another room or another house). I felt the bricks on the outside of my house where there was a radiator inside and I could feel the warmth outside!! After putting radiator reflective foil on the inside between the radiator and the wall I could not feel any warmth outside so it must make a difference. Since then I have done all the radiators in the house but did the ones on the outside walls first.
Radiator reflective foil can be bought from B&Q for around £5 per pack for the square panel version with polystyrene on the back, two packs will do three radiators (there is a cheaper/thinner version on a roll). You need to cut the panels to size and glue them using wallpaper paste, you don't need to take the radiator off the wall as it just slides into place. I tried using ordinary tin foil at first but it made a noise if stuff was put on the radiator to dry and it kept falling off.

Fish_2

As the weather is nearing a turn for the worst (christmas just around the corner), we will all have no option but to use our central heating. If you have a standard gas fed boiler and radiators (as the majority do) it is worth remembering that when you turn on your boiler it heats the water within the pipework Etc first, this then becomes hotter than the surroundings and the heat is radiated out into the room. A lot of people think that by turning their heating on and off in a spasmodic way actually reduces usage (as time wise it appears to be on less), this is not true. Everytime your heating goes off the water inside then cools, when you then reactivate the boiler it again starts heating the water in the system, you are therefore gaining no advantage and are actually wasting energy in cooling and reheating the system. You are better off setting your boiler to a lower numbered output and leaving it on constant run, this way you are only heating the water in your system once and from then on you are gaining the benefit of all the energy used after that time.