Help with cold lounge that loses heat quick

Arnela

Hi everyone,

So we moved in to our first property 6 months ago. We are looking for some advice on how to improve our lounge.

So the house is a late 70s, 3 bed semi. Double glazing throughout.

The lounge itself is 15x17ft , with a open staircase. There are 2 doors in and out of the room. One leads into the kitchen, which is warm and the other leads to the single skin porch, which is rather cold! We cant get the room above 19c after heating has been on a few hours and by the morning it will be down to 13c. Its been about -1c here at night this week.

The current radiator is old, heats up fine but you cant feel the heat coming out of the top like you can with the newer one we have in the kitchen. The rad size is 1800 x 600.

We don't have much of a budget right now so want to try and find the most effective way to heat and keep the lounge warm. 

The things we were wondering are:
1. There is currently an open, disused vent hole on the external wall of the lounge. Could this be causing heat loss if the hole has been patched up on the inside? 



2.  Will changing the flooring from vinyl planks to carpet help insulate the room?

3. Should the door between the lounge and porch be an external door to help keep the cold in the porch? Its currently a cheap internal door.

4. Will replacing the current rad with a new one be beneficial? And should we get a second rad installed on the opposite side of the room?

Here's some pics of the room

Brie

If you walk in bare feet on the floor does it feel cold?  If so a rug/carpet may help.  

Perhaps a cheaper alternative for your door to the porch would be to hang an insulated curtain over it? Presumably you don't use it much in the winter.  

How much of a draft are you getting due to the stairs?  Where I'm sitting right now I'm under the stairs in what was previously the dining room.  It's a bit like sitting in a wind tunnel even if I have the door to the room and those upstairs closed.

Albermarle

It is probably a concrete floor, so changing the floor covering may not make much difference, although carpet will feel warmer on your feet .
With the open plan/open staircase it will always be quite difficult to get it comfortably warm ( 21 degrees) but I think a second larg( ish ) radiator will help quite a lot.
The old radiator sounds like it maybe needs flushing out, or just replacing .

daveyjp

Hard floors immediately make rooms cold.  One radiator doesn't seem enough for such a space.

I'd also find a way of sealing off the staircase, lounge heat is rising upstairs.

When I lived in a similar property we had a piece of fabric for the side and a curtain at the base of the stairs we would use in cold weather. Made a huge difference in winter, with a noticeable drop in temperature on the stairs compared to the lounge.

Swipe

The open staircase won't help but not much you can do about that. You could try putting some insulating foam tape around the porch door frame but a decent external door would be better if you can get a secondhand composite one on the cheap. Those temperatures don't sound too bad at all to be honest considering we are in the midst of a cold spell. Much warmer than my living room with a 3.4KW storage heater.

Keep_pedalling

That old radiator is not going to have enough output to get your room up to temperature, it’s just a single with no fins on the back. Replaced that with a modern double and you will get 2 to 3 times as much heat out of it into the room. I would also consider a second rad placed where you currently have the portable heater. 

On-the-coast

My concrete floored lounge is double the size of yours but has no open stair. But I have 2 double skin radiators each 1800x600. 

It won’t be expensive to replace that radiator, and assuming your boiler’s not at full capacity you’ll get more than double the heat out of it. You could consider moving it a little further from the wall under the window and putting reflective foil behind it. 

Albermarle

Keep_pedalling said:

That old radiator is not going to have enough output to get your room up to temperature, it’s just a single with no fins on the back. Replaced that with a modern double and you will get 2 to 3 times as much heat out of it into the room. I would also consider a second rad placed where you currently have the portable heater. 

I did not actually spot that radiator was just a single one.

OP - Not a big or expensive job for a plumber to replace that radiator with a new double one.

Probably then best to see what kind of difference it makes. It will be significantly more expensive/potentially disruptive to install a second radiator from scratch .

If the new radiator improves things but not quite enough, you could still pop the portable heater on for short periods when it was really cold.

Arnela

Thanks for all of the replies! 

Brie said:

If you walk in bare feet on the floor does it feel cold?  If so a rug/carpet may help.  

Perhaps a cheaper alternative for your door to the porch would be to hang an insulated curtain over it? Presumably you don't use it much in the winter.  

How much of a draft are you getting due to the stairs?  Where I'm sitting right now I'm under the stairs in what was previously the dining room.  It's a bit like sitting in a wind tunnel even if I have the door to the room and those upstairs closed.

So the floor is definitely cold to walk on bare foot and tbh with socks on too. We do have the rug in front of the sofa and it does take the chill off of our feet so I think we will have to carpet the whole room. There is a very slight draft in the room but it really is minimal tbh. The curtain over the porch door is a great idea and something I'm going to do this weekend.

As everyone has pointed out that our radiator is most likely not up to scratch, I have ordered a new one, same size but type 22 so I'm crossing everything that this will help! 

Although 18c seems warm and I guess it is really, we rented a new build for 10 years before buying this place and had the thermostat set to 24c in winter... it was a much warmer house... and I must admit, I seriously feel the cold... I just cant hack it lol

Does anyone have any input about the open vent hole on the exterior wall of the lounge? Do we think the lounge could be losing heat because of this? Im not really clued up on how house walls are built... like, would the cold from that hole be getting into the whole side of the house or would it be just that spot? Sorry for sounding so dumb lol

bjorn_toby_wilde

Arnela said:

Thanks for all of the replies! 

Brie said:

If you walk in bare feet on the floor does it feel cold?  If so a rug/carpet may help.  

Perhaps a cheaper alternative for your door to the porch would be to hang an insulated curtain over it? Presumably you don't use it much in the winter.  

How much of a draft are you getting due to the stairs?  Where I'm sitting right now I'm under the stairs in what was previously the dining room.  It's a bit like sitting in a wind tunnel even if I have the door to the room and those upstairs closed.

So the floor is definitely cold to walk on bare foot and tbh with socks on too. We do have the rug in front of the sofa and it does take the chill off of our feet so I think we will have to carpet the whole room. There is a very slight draft in the room but it really is minimal tbh. The curtain over the porch door is a great idea and something I'm going to do this weekend.

As everyone has pointed out that our radiator is most likely not up to scratch, I have ordered a new one, same size but type 22 so I'm crossing everything that this will help! 

Although 18c seems warm and I guess it is really, we rented a new build for 10 years before buying this place and had the thermostat set to 24c in winter... it was a much warmer house... and I must admit, I seriously feel the cold... I just cant hack it lol

Does anyone have any input about the open vent hole on the exterior wall of the lounge? Do we think the lounge could be losing heat because of this? Im not really clued up on how house walls are built... like, would the cold from that hole be getting into the whole side of the house or would it be just that spot? Sorry for sounding so dumb lol

The answer is that yes, it might be. It looks like the exhaust vent for a gas fire.  It’s possible that they took out the gas fire then simply plastered or filled over the hole on the inside.  I came across something similar in my son’s house. Assuming that’s a cavity wall then yes, draughts entering the cavity can sometimes result in draughts in the room behind.

It would certainly be better if it were removed and the hole made good.

twopenny

Starting with the cheapest a door curtain makes a big difference.
You can get rails that fit the door and open with it if you're in and out. A closer fitting rail above the door then you have to leave that pulled back if you are out of the house but it will make a bigger difference while you're in sitting.

Heavy curtain, charity shops have some expensive ones donated. It should reach the floor at least.
I used to have draught stoppers (sausage shape) but found on really cold days towels worked much better. Not pretty but I'd rather be warm 😉 and no one but us saw them.

Agree with Dave jp, I had a big hall and staircase. In reality cold weather I hung sheets from the top and across the opening.
Easy to put away when not wanted .
Made a huge difference.

Remember it doesn't have to be forever, just in the cold evening while you save or sort things out.

You also will be getting cold air from the window going up through the top where there is a big gap.
That will both cool the heated air at the ceiling and sink down to the floor.

Could you fit a second set of thermal lined curtains in the window recess, a blind or some such to cover the window ?

I currently have just thermal or blackout fabric, self adhesive velcro attached and the other part of velcro stuck to the window. That doesn't show. I put this home made blind up in hot and cold weather and draw the curtains. Pull it down in daytime.
It can't be seen inside or out. Huge difference. Cost about £5.

Is there any heat going out of the back of the rad? Is it heating the wall? Turkey Foil at the back helps that 🙂

Have the radiator cleaned or replaced eventually.

Yes thick underlay and carpet will help.
What is under the flooring now?

I actually used newspapers under carpet at one time. Works well but they are in short supply 

How about a rug under the radiator so it's not warming the floor.