Preparing for Winter

aimeelister

Paulie'sGirl wrote: »

I've just moved to a little village, and I hear from the locals I'm likely to suffer power cuts during the winter. Any suggestions on preparations I should make?

Candles, wind up radio, torch (wind up is good! if not spare batteries) lighter or matches, gas stove and a battery powered alarm clock is useful (- or you wake up late for work as your alarm clock didnt go off due to a powercut in the night :rolleyes:)

BUT most importantly have them easily to hand!!! (or at least a torch - i have one at the bottom of the stairs and the top of the stairs to get me through those first 30secs till i can get my candle stash out!)

A friend of mine was all prepared for powercuts etc (even to the extent of having emergency food) then had one a couple of days ago and couldn't find where he'd stashed the stuff in the dark! :rolleyes:

rosieben

Paulie'sGirl wrote: »

...
I've just moved to a little village, and I hear from the locals I'm likely to suffer power cuts during the winter. Any suggestions on preparations I should make?

I've got a wind-up LED lamp and a camping stove. And after reading this thread I've ordered a "wee willie winky" style candle lamp and candle holder.

I have gas central heating, but I'm told this will stop working as the pump is electric. ...

I'm in the country too, we've already had power cuts in the last couple of months, one of which lasted about 12 hours! :eek: high winds seem to be the worst culprits in recent years, but if we have heavy snow that can bring the power lines down too, and it doesnt necessarily have to be in our area for us to be affected of course.

if the power goes off we need to be able to keep warm/get warm food and drink/have some light; if you have those 3 needs sorted then you'll be ok.

I suggest lots of candles and safe candle holders, matches, maybe a battery light to read by?

Very good idea from JCR16 to keep all these emergency supplies together in a box.

I also have a wind up radio/torch (£4 from tesco), hot water bottles and some lovely snuggle fleece blankets (£2.99 from Dunelm last year).

last but not least, I have a wind up alarm clock!!

If the power goes off I take all plugs out, especially the pc, tv etc; I leave one light switched on so I'll know when the power comes back on!

HTH

babychick

hello all.

I live in a house that has double glazing but gaps down the side of the exterior doors and a central heating system powered by my multi-fuel stove. My problem is that, the radiators take ages to warm up and when they do, the house still seems cold. Also, the stove won't burn through the night no matter what I do so the house is always cold in the morning. It's ok for me and OH but it's colder than I like for the kids (they're just little). I've resorted to using oil-filled radiators x 2 (1 upstairs and 1 downstairs) upstairs at nighttime and downstairs in the mornings (I work during the day so it's a waste of time lighting the stove) but my latest electricity bill has me £118 in debit already!! I pay £54 /per month as it is and I can't afford to go through the winter in this way.

Please can you help with any suggestions of what I can do to a) make my house warmer(!) and b) keep the heat in when the house does eventually warm up.

Thanks

HariboJunkie

babychick wrote: »

hello all.

I live in a house that has double glazing but gaps down the side of the exterior doors and a central heating system powered by my multi-fuel stove. My problem is that, the radiators take ages to warm up and when they do, the house still seems cold. Also, the stove won't burn through the night no matter what I do so the house is always cold in the morning. It's ok for me and OH but it's colder than I like for the kids (they're just little). I've resorted to using oil-filled radiators x 2 (1 upstairs and 1 downstairs) upstairs at nighttime and downstairs in the mornings (I work during the day so it's a waste of time lighting the stove) but my latest electricity bill has me £118 in debit already!! I pay £54 /per month as it is and I can't afford to go through the winter in this way.

Please can you help with any suggestions of what I can do to a) make my house warmer(!) and b) keep the heat in when the house does eventually warm up.

Thanks

We live in an old house with rubbish double glazing too....We don't have central heating (it's quite uncommon here)
Make sure you're drawing the curtains at dusk and use draught excluders on all the external doors. Halogn heaters are cheap to buy and much cheaper to run..They heat up quickly so we put them in the bedroom for an hour before bed and the children get into bed in a warm room with extra blankets on the bed...The heater gets turned off when they are asleep. I light a log fire at 3pm every day and that stays lit till after midnight. This tends to keep the ground floor warm but I think insulation is the key.

HTH

Haribo

Icemaiden

I have a similar problem but its our Gas bills that are really high. Every October I start to hang curtains everywhere, Front door, cellar door, back door, put draft excluders on the bottom of the doors, extra blankets on the beds and thick jammies to wear, hot water bottles in the beds. We don't keep the central heating on overnight unless its really freezing and have thick dressing gowns to put on in the mornings. I don't really know anything about Mulit-stoves but we do have an open fire, could it need a service or maybe a problem with the flue to the raidators does it need a good clean out I'm grasping at staws here can you tell? Anyway hope some of my ideas have helped.

Ice
x

FBThree

babychick wrote: »

Hi Babychick. We had the same problem with radiators not warming up much. Afraid it turned out to be a very old inefficient, almost defunct boiler. We had to take the plunge and replace it with a new one, and we replaced the radiators with new ones at the same time. Our gas company tracks our usage and we're going to use over 1/3 less heating fuel this year. The rads heat up wonderfully now!

Have you ensured your rads have been "bled" to get any excess air out (do this when they are cold!). It might be that your heating system [EMAIL="hasn@Can"]hasn't been cleaned out for ages and there's thick gunck in the bottom of the radiators. It is possible to get this cleaned out but as the cleaner [/EMAIL]needs to work around the system for a week or so (according to my plumber) that may not be a winter job.

Can you apply some insulation to the door gaps - it's on sticky tape. Do you have thick curtains, including heat linings on all windows and external doors, and close them at dusk (if not a tad before)? How's about a door bolster at the base to cut out drafts underneath? Have you got a cellar ? Our cellar drags heat downwards. If you do have one, make sure you have carpeting with thick underlay on your lower floors. Is your loft insulated with the currently recommended thickness of insulation? Many lofts might still have the older, less thick insulation in it.

We live in an old cottage where the wall between the kitchen and living room was taken down by someone. Last year we stuck up temporary curtains between the two so the living room stayed warmer. Now if only we could get the cats to stop coming in and out all night so we could keep the kitchen warmer!

Hels_Bells_3

Hi everyone, just wanted to write down what we've done and have left to do in order to get some sort of list written down and kick me into gear with the preparations!

We have central heating and 2 fires downstairs but they can't be on when i'm in the house because i find they really dry the air out and play havoc with my sinuses much to the annoyance of the rest of the household.

I've so far got everybodies summer duvets underneath blankets and all winter duvets have been put on, i managed to get some gorgeous velory (sp?) type thick curtains in a charity shop last week for a massive £3 so with my mums guidance tonight will be making a curtain for the front door. We had new double glazing put in in January and only know can you tell just how much better they are then the old ones that were in! All the fleecy blankets have been taken out of the loft, washed and are on the backs of all sofas and chairs for people to snuggle up under of an evening if needs be, although i think they've only been used once by my mum as of yet.

Candles, matches and batteries are all stock up and we each have a little box in our rooms as well as the mainstock in the larder. Wind up radio and torches have been bought incase of power cuts - although i can only remember us ever having 3 in the 23 years we've lived in this house - but better safe then sorry hey

I'm doing lots of baking etc atm so find having the oven on for a few hours a day really is keeping the house plenty warm for everyone.

So things left to do are:

* Make and hang curtain for front door.
* Swap summer wardrobe over for winter wardrobe - not sure i can get away with vesty tops for too much longer, lol.
* Swap the light weight 'summer' rugs over for the thicker winter rugs, we find it really does make a difference for some reason?

I think that's it, after writing things out on here i'm a lot happier with where we are so yay

Olliebeak

Something that has just occurred to me - if anybody DOES experience Power Cuts, then our DECT phones won't work! Good idea to get hold of an old-fashioned plug-in phone just in case - often available in charity shops/car boots!

Having suggested that, I'm now feeling perhaps slightly stupid. I'm assuming that ordinary phones still work during power cuts - after all if your meter card runs out of credit your phone still works! It's so long since we had one of those - we didn't even HAVE a phone back in those days!

rosieben

Olliebeak wrote: »

Something that has just occurred to me - if anybody DOES experience Power Cuts, then our DECT phones won't work! Good idea to get hold of an old-fashioned plug-in phone just in case - often available in charity shops/car boots!

Having suggested that, I'm now feeling perhaps slightly stupid. I'm assuming that ordinary phones still work during power cuts - after all if your meter card runs out of credit your phone still works! It's so long since we had one of those - we didn't even HAVE a phone back in those days!

You're absolutely right Ollie, we've found out an old plug in phone for an elderly rellie who has cordless handsets; the old plug ins work fine in a power cut. A good point to raise too, never thought to mention it.

Someone posted on here that we are due more powercuts than usual because of capacity problems and someone else posted that we are forecast a hard winter - it looks like this sort of prep would be very useful.

metherer

Have read through this thread with interest, and get the feeling that I'd best start making preperations!

we got cavity wall insulation and central heating this year, (thanks to the grants that meant we didn't have to pay anything) and are about to shell out for double glazing, so with a bit of luck we won't feel the cold too much this year.

I'm going to look for a wind up torch on ebay this evening, and if I get chance I'll swap the bedroom curtains for a thicker pair. (husband brought them with him when he moved in so they might as well be used.)

We've got people coming to fit some kitchen lino tomorrow, so whether or not I'll actually have time to do anything this evening remains to be seen...


Metherer