Energy Saving Week: Keeping the heat in your home

It’s Energy Saving Week, and up and down the county homeowners and employers are being encouraged to save both their money and the planet. Energy Saving Week educates the public on how they can help lower their carbon footprint and reduce the damage to their pocket over the colder months. Keeping cosy can be achieved with just a few simple tricks, so get yourself ready for winter and read our handy guide to how you can keep the heat in your home.

How does your house lose heat?

Warm air both enters and leaves your home by conduction and radiation through walls, doors and windows. The most frequent route that heat takes to escape from a building is via the windows, as warm air tends to move towards cold glass. A typical house loses roughly 10% of its heat via the windows, and they are 10 times more susceptible lose heat than the same area of an insulated wall. This is a huge loss of energy, which is why it’s imperative to bar this avenue of heat loss by using the appropriate window protection.

Benefits of window dressings

A tight fitting window dressing can create an effective barrier between the window and the inside air, trapping in heat when closed and allowing you the freedom to drop the thermostat down a few clicks. Window protection creates an insulating layer of unmoving air between the glass and the dressing, in addition to the material itself acting as an insulator.

While curtains provide these advantages, blinds and shutters are also worth considering. They are a great investment to combat future energy bill rises, and offer the user excellent ease of use. Slatted blinds and shutters, in particular, allow the user to control heat and light levels by adjusting the slats’ degree of openness depending on the time of day or the season. Roller blinds are also a good choice, as they offer a tightly-woven and solid barrier to keep the house warm. And blinds and shutters are perfect all year round, additionally keeping your home nice and cool during the summer months.

Don’t think that you have to keep your curtains and blinds closed constantly to maintain warmth; take advantage of the winter sun, and have them open, or partially open, for a few hours every day to allow the house to warm through naturally.

A poor fit can destroy the great advantages of window dressings, so hire a professional team to install your curtains, blinds or shutters, to ensure a snug fit and minimals gaps.

Other energy saving tips

• Cosy furnishings such as carpets and cushions not only offer comfort and warmth in winter, they have insulating ability and can raise the temperature of your home.
• Invest in some cavity wall and loft insulation. While this is a big initial purchase, it can save you a lot of cash in the long run as well as increasing the selling value of your home.
• Draught excluders are a cheap yet effective method of controlling airflow through your home and maintaining the temperature of a certain room. Treat your doors to one and feel the difference.

Here at Angel Blinds & Shutters, we understand the importance of keeping your home nice and snug in the winter months. Our family run business has over 15 years’ experience in supplying, manufacturing and installing made to measure blinds and shutters, helping you keep in the heat during the chilly season. To arrange your free home visit and quotation, then contact our expert team today and we’ll be happy to help.