Energy Saving Measures - very basic

Chrysalis

Lined curtains are definitely a wise investment, blanket heating is also a big saver.
How does this secondary magnetic glazing work, usable on wooden frames?

RipleyG

We borrowed a thermal imaging camera from a local transition town group, and that definitely showed the benefit of having closed curtains at night. Unfortunately I don't have the comparison photo but I'll try and add a photo of our kitchen from the outside - you can see that even with super lightweight roller blinds, the windows are losing less heat than the door where I didn't close the blind. The difference in other rooms with proper curtains was quite extreme. We found all sorts of other small things we were able to address too - a random old charger using massively more energy than the others (see photo), some rucked up loft insulation causing cold leakage, tiny screw holes in the outside wall we'd never spotted leaking heat. It was fascinating, and helped us make some changes that have made a notable difference. 

The most interesting things to me were the significant heat loss through a bathroom extractor fan, and the poor performance of our (pretty new, good quality composite) front door. 

Oh, and the difference between a very cold beer on a table versus a mobile phone on the sofa arm also made me chuckle :-) 

MattMattMattUK

I think you have a few anomalies, which can happen if you are new to using a thermal imaging camera. The main cause of this is the scale recalibrating based on the current image, for those FLIR cameras you can lock it or fix it which is worth doing.

RipleyG said:

I doubt the upstairs windows are actually -12.4 c if the ambient is -6.5c and the downstairs wall and doors are only -1.1, the walls and downstaris are probably correct, so not showing much heat leakage when you realise that they are at -1.1c, however due to the angle the upstairs windows will be reflecting the sky which can seriously confuse FLIR cameras, you can also see evidence of this with your reflection in the downstairs right window, where it is reflecting you stood outside.

RipleyG said:

This also shows a calibration issue, the beer is probably fine, but the face of the seated person would be hotter than 27.3c, not a huge issue when you are looking for differentials, but if you are using it for absolutes it can create anomalies. 

RipleyG

Thanks you @MattMattMattUK - yes we were aware of the reflection and calibration issues, so we knew the specific temperatures wouldn't be reliably accurate (although it was indeed -6.5 degrees outside on the night we did it - flippin' chilly!). But we did find the photos really, really useful in spotting relative heat differences - those areas which were relatively hotter from the outside, or colder from the inside so we could see where heat was leaking out and decide whether we wanted to make any improvements. 

The changes we made were cheap and easy. We straightened out the rucked up loft insulation, added insulation and brush edges to the loft hatch, hung a thermal curtain at the front door, filled the myriad screw holes, and added a brush edge to the bottom of the bathroom door. Retaking photo's showed an improvement, and our thermostat shows our internal house temperature is about 1 degree warmer without increasing our use of heating.  

Still wondering whether to remove the bathroom extractor fan - stopping cold drafts coming under the bathroom door has shown how much heat loss we get through the bathroom fan. A fine line between removing ventilation, or keeping it and getting extra condensation because it's so chilly in there now!