The Creative Winter Guide to Warming up your Home
What can homeowners do to keep their houses nice, toasty, and warm through the winter months?
24/09/2019
Winter is just around the corner – and most homeowners are already thinking of ways how to deal with what could be a bitterly cold season without having to break the bank. Heating costs are shooting up the roof and can take a significant chunk out of your budget. See, homeowners are often given the same old hat by HVAC consultants, almost every winter – install comprehensive insulation all over the house, tune-up or entirely recondition their air conditioning systems, or have double glazing fitted on your windows. But these solutions often cost an arm and a leg.
What other recourse do homeowners have to keep their houses nice, toasty, and warm through the winter months? Here are some creative tips you can try.
Turn up the sun
The best things in life are free – including heating. Take advantage of sunny days by opening up your window shades and curtains and let the light, heat, and warmth come in. Keep window shades and curtains open throughout the day, and close them up at dusk so your living space has a chance to keep all that marvelous, free, and above all, natural heat.
Humidify your room
If you have a humidifier lying around the house, put it to good use. It’s certainly less costly than the conventional solutions that most service providers will offer you.
Dry air during the winter can be really chilly, but humid air has a warming effect, which can help heat up a room and keep you mosty-toasty. Some models let you switch from cold to warm air, so choose a similar model if you don’t have one yet.
Choose the “winter” setting on your ceiling fans
Typically, ceiling fans are left turned off during the entirety of summer, but you shouldn’t. Most units will have a winter mode, which basically turns the fan clockwise instead of counterclockwise like they normally do. This pushes warm air to the ground, instead of sucking it up to the ceiling on its normal operation.
This method might work well for you if your rooms have high ceilings, so try it out. It might just work for you as it does for most.
Clear heating vents and radiators from obstructions
Furniture may clog up cleaning vents and radiators as well as other heat sources, and you might have unwittingly blocked one in the process of moving in or shuffling furniture around. Do a double-take and check out your furniture to see that there aren’t any blocked vents and move things around if you see any. After all, the heat wouldn’t reach you if the vents are all sealed off, not to mention that it could mess up the movement of heat in the room.
Close up empty rooms
Cold air from unused rooms won’t have the opportunity to move around the house if you shutter up those rooms. It also will help you keep the existing heat you have going within the areas you inhabit.
Use thick curtains
Windows release a lot of heat, particularly when the sun goes down. You can reduce this effect by investing in curtains that possess heat-retaining, thermal material. Plus, they wouldn’t cost as much as you think. They do a fantastic job of keeping the heat where it needs to be, right inside your house where you and your family live.
Wear layers of clothing
Scarves, gloves, jackets, sweatshirts, and pullovers are part and parcel when you go outdoors in winter – but who’s to say you couldn’t do the same thing inside your house? Layers will always help you insulate and keep your body warm, and maintain a comfortable temperature that’s easy to manage by just piling on more layers or otherwise reducing them.
Use a space heater
New technologies are prevalent nowadays, and one of the effective ways you can warm up a room without having to break the bank with conventional remedies is to use something to heat up a single room. That is, a portable, lightweight, yet wonderfully functional space heater. Space heaters cost way less than typical air conditioning, and if you pair its use with our previous tips here, you won’t have to spend far over the odds for heating this coming winter.