Preparing for Winter

Confuzzled

greenbee wrote: »

I saw this and wondered whether it might be of interest. It sounds too good to be true

if it didn't work in the windows you could probably glue it to cardboard and shove it behind your radiators

actually, it may well work but if it's what i think it is it would look hideous!

Confuzzled

alice-mary wrote: »

a huge old fashioned tent along the dado rail and banister and over the huge amount of free space that isn't actually used for anything. I'm not sure that I'm actually describing it very well and am aware that if there were any children or energetic people or pets it might not be a good idea BUT I live by myself and have been amazed at how well the wet things have dried overnight!

in the one flat i lived in where i was lucky enough to have a pulley in place i too was amazed at just how fast things dried there. the kitchen was no bigger than a cupboard really, barely big enough to fit the pulley in and practically no air circulation but my clothes still dried very very quickly in there (and amazingly never smelled of food!) so i can imagine your idea would have similar results

well done you for coming up with a clever solution like that!

i'd planned to buy the nice cheap 4 pack of radiator airers from argos for 4.50 but now i'm moving to a place with storage heaters so i'm going to have to figure something else out instead

i did notice a somewhat awkward to get to but reasonable space inside the airing cupboard so i may try hanging clothes on hangers in there to see how they do, i suspect i'll have to buy a proper airer too but i'll see what i can manage without for as long as i can, i'm stubborn like that

the thought did occur to me that this place has a washer/drier combo (arghh not very energy efficient normally) since i'm often up after midnight what i may do is to put it on a short wash (the 30 degree wash at my current place is just 30 minutes!) then pop the heavy items on to dry for say 10 minutes. i actually haven't used a dryer in 5 years BUT if i can take advantage of the economy 7 prices and just do it for 10 minutes that should cut my drying time a lot on the really heavy stuff so i don't have to wind up washing it again because of that musty smell they get when they take too long to dry... i'll have to see how that works out, maybe combining that with the airing cupboard thing would work....

Confuzzled

zarazara wrote: »

we've had woodworm beetle on the window ledges this week. I've squashed them all. DH reckons they are coming in on the logs for the fire. But its an old house with lots of holey beams and floorboards so they might be hatching out form somewhere, particulaly as the house was unnoccupied for a time before we moved in. I've looked them up on the net and they like damp wood. So now theres a conumdrum, do we heat the house and keep it dry which should=no woodworm or do we let it be cool and so encourage the blighters to breed?

not a nice situation to be in is it?

want to trade? i've got spiders moving en masse into my house this week, and i'm not talking small spiders, nooooo these are industrial size spiders! the kind that make a loud chinking noise when their dessicated little bodies are carried in a glass outdoors to be disposed of, the kind that actually make me a little squeamish about spiders again after about 15 years of being over that fear!

actually they really are the largest spiders i've seen for the decade i've been in the UK, the bodies are about the size of my ring fingers nail if that gives you an idea, and really really long legs too!

i know it's cold and beasties want in (also this seems to apply to all the neighbourhood cats that previously would have been to shy to walk in my back door when it's open but now seem to see it as an invitation to have a nap on my sofa!) but i think i'd prefer the mega spiders wait til i've moved out to move in themselves... it's only a few weeks, honestly, arachnids have no manners these days :rotfl:

ktpie

jcr16 wrote: »

i've had an idea about the fleece lining of curtains. I am going to sew a strip of velcro to curtains just under header tape then a strip on the top of the fleece ( once cut to right size) so i can then just velcro together. so i can add for the winter and remove for the summer.

i'm not sure yet if this will work, but in my head it will. so i will experiment with it. What gave me the idea was in the argos book they had a thermal curtain lining which just hooked on to the exsisting header tape of curtains. so i was thinking i could adapt this method to suit.

Has anyone tried this idea ? does it work ?

My concern with using velcro is that the curtain would get pulled down fairly easy. I think it would depend on how careful people are with them. In my house with my DH and DS about I can see myself having to climb up and stick it back on every day! Maybe buttons would hold it up a little better?

It sounds like it is a lot colder in other parts of the country than here in the Midlands. We have a wood burning stove for the first time so I'm fairly eager to start using it but it is too warm here to think about it. Yesterday it was lovely, t-shirt weather. Hope the weather holds off until next weekend as we are supposed to be going camping. I'm a bit dubious about that idea at the end of September!

ktpie

Confuzzled wrote: »

in the one flat i lived in where i was lucky enough to have a pulley in place i too was amazed at just how fast things dried there. the kitchen was no bigger than a cupboard really, barely big enough to fit the pulley in and practically no air circulation but my clothes still dried very very quickly in there (and amazingly never smelled of food!) so i can imagine your idea would have similar results

Another thing I was looking at in Ikea the other day (honestly I don't work for them!) was their clothes pulleys, they are metal and quite small but quite a bit cheaper than anywhere else. I like the idea of hanging the washing out of the way.

It's amazing how much hot air gathers at the ceiling isn't it? In our old house we had a small kitchen which also had the boiler in it and if you put your hand up near the ceiling it was always really hot. Our new house has ceiling fans in the bedrooms and apparently these can help even out the temperature in a room, if you put them on reverse then the air doesn't blow straight down onto you but encourages the warm air to circulate. Not tried this yet I should add but will have a go this winter. Not sure how much they cost to run so might not end up saving much money but if having it on for a couple of minutes when the heating has just come on helps the room heat up it could be useful.

Olliebeak

When mum sold grandad's house (1984), my younger sister baggsied the airing pulley and got her OH to install it above the landing in her 'warm-air blower' heated house.

Silly girl forgot to take it down when she moved out for that house to be modernised!

queenb1981

zarazara wrote: »

we've had woodworm beetle on the window ledges this week. I've squashed them all. DH reckons they are coming in on the logs for the fire. But its an old house with lots of holey beams and floorboards so they might be hatching out form somewhere, particulaly as the house was unnoccupied for a time before we moved in. I've looked them up on the net and they like damp wood. So now theres a conumdrum, do we heat the house and keep it dry which should=no woodworm or do we let it be cool and so encourage the blighters to breed?

i have a house that is only 30 years old and we had awful woodworm couple of years ago,we found out that the man who lived in house before was lonely and collected old furniture he found. We had to get people in to treat it, i dont believe that temperature really makes a difference because they live outside in trees and old wood and they are also in houses , my house is always warm. HTH

mama67

twiglet98 wrote: »

Thinking about putting single duvets under bottom sheets for extra warmth, all our beds are 4'6 doubles and I think our top duvets are all 10.5 tog, what tog rating is best to go under the sheet? Will a 13.5 be toasty warm but too thick for the fitted sheets to go over? Will a 4.5 be too thin to be worth buying them? DD23, DS21 and DD17 are not happy bunnies but I need to leave the heating off for as long as possible and they're all early nighters, so making the beds as cosy as possible seems a great idea.

What I have done for both Ds's is take a couple of cheap double quilt covers to use as bottom sheete and actually put the matress and quilt etc all inside the cover.
obviously these are single beds but nothing seems to move about, as the extra bits on the sides are tucked underneath.

mama67

oliveoyl wrote: »

Flip it over. Hotels turn their matresses every few months... a total of 4 different positions to even out the wear on them.

I do this.

Jan - Head to toe
Apr - left side to right side
Jul - head to toe
Oct - left side to right side

Rummer

The cold start today has motivated me to go round and properly check the house for draughts so that I can make a list (I love lists!) and start ticking things off before the weather turns really cold!