Most homeowners don’t realise they have a heat loss problem until they visit other properties. Maybe you spend some time with your family and then go back to your house. All of a sudden, you feel like your home is significantly colder. You text your parents and ask if they had the heating on and they say no. So, why does your house feel much colder, even with the central heating turned up?!
Unfortunately for you, the problem is usually hidden. Heat can escape your home in a myriad of unknown ways – so let’s look at them and see what you can do to stop each issue!
Losing Heat Through The Floor
It’s easy to forget that a home loses heat through the floor. You make your living room nice and toasty, but all the heat generated by you and your central heating dissipates through the flooring material.
Why does this happen?
Usually, it’s because there’s not a big enough barrier between your flooring and the ground beneath. This is a bigger problem for homes without carpet on the ground floor – haven’t you ever wondered why your floor is so cold to the touch?! Carpet does a good job of insulating your flooring and trapping heat inside your home, so it should feel warmer.
Alternatively, you could look into floor insulation boards to go under your flooring. This provides a new layer of protection and adds even more heat loss reduction benefits. For homes considering underfloor heating systems, specialised underfloor heatings boards provide both insulation and a suitable foundation for heating cables or pipes, ensuring efficient heat distribution while preventing heat loss through the floor structure.
Heat Loss From Old Windows
Are your windows all they’re cracked up to be?
Pardon the pun, but small cracks in your windows can leak heat like crazy. It doesn’t have to be a crack in the glass pane either; small cracks or breaches in the window fittings will regularly cause heat to fly out of your home.
Your major concern is that the windows have double glazing at the very least. You can find triple-glazed windows these days and they take home insulation to another level. Double glazing will be more than enough to form a protective barrier between your windows and the outside world. It stops cold air from getting in and prevents as much heat loss as possible.
If your windows don’t have double glazing, they should be replaced ASAP. At the same time, you might have double-glazed windows but terrible window fittings. It’s known that metal frames are poor thermal insulators while uPVC windows tend to score highly on an energy-efficiency front. Pairing double or triple glazing with the right material will give you the most thermally efficient windows you could hope for.
One final note on this topic: your windows could be double-glazed and have efficient materials, yet still cause heat loss. How? Through gaps in the window seals. Improperly installed windows cause gaps and heat will easily escape. Over time, the sealant can wear down and must be replaced. Many of you may experience this problem and the good news is that replacing the sealant should solve the problem, so you won’t need a full window replacement!
Heat Escapes Via Draughts
Your home will likely lose heat through countless draughts around your property. A draught is when cold air leaks into your home, meaning the overall heat level decreases. You can normally feel them when you walk into rooms or stand near areas that a prone to draughtiness.
Where are draughts most likely to appear? In any of these three places:
- Windows
- The front door
- Other exterior doors
We’ve already covered your windows – draughts tend to happen when they’re not correctly sealed – so what about your doors?
The main problem is cold air coming through gaps around your doors. When your front door is closed, can you spot any places for cold air to come through? Depending on the door and when it was installed, you may see small gaps around the side, at the top or under the door. All of these areas will leak heat, so it’s time to plug them up.
An obvious idea is to buy a new door, but this costs money. In all honesty, it’s a very worthwhile home improvement – if your house is due a new door anyway. Some of you are probably against this idea as you either moved home recently or the door is relatively new. In this case, the next best idea is to buy some draught excluders. You’ll find them at any decent DIY home store and they come in many varieties. The general idea is to attach something to the bottom of your door so it blocks the gap while allowing the door to open and close properly. You can also get draught excluding tape or covers to stick around the sides and at the top.
Do this to your front door – and all other exterior doors in your house – and you’ll notice a huge decrease in draughts.
Losing Heat Through The Roof
The funny thing about a house is that it loses heat through the flooring AND the roof. Heat loss through the floor is mainly a problem on the bottom level of your house. As you move upstairs, heat loss from the roof becomes your concern.
Heat will travel upwards, ensuring all the bedrooms and bathrooms are nice and toasty. It then keeps going up and will leave through your roof if things aren’t adequate. Mainly, you’ll be looking at these concerns:
- Roof insulation
- Roof materials
- Roof state
A lack of insulation in your roof means nothing stops the heat from hitting the top and dissipating. Similarly, poor roof materials won’t trap heat inside your home, so you lose a lot of it. You must ensure your home is equipped with efficient roofing materials to be as insulative as possible. In truth, the majority of homes are built with good roofing materials – your main issues will be terrible insulation and a poor roof state.
What do we mean by a poor roof state? In other words, your roof has cracks or holes that cause heat loss. This happens as the materials degrade over time, which is why you should get regular roof inspections every few years. If breaches are detected, some swift repairs will seal up your roof and keep the heat trapped in.
Why Do You Need To Prevent Heat Loss In The Home?
Preventing heat loss isn’t a huge deal when the temperatures get warmer. However, it’s much easier to cool your house down when it’s hot as you can open all the windows, get fans, etc.
The problem with heat loss is that it ruins your energy bill. You’ll try extra hard to heat your home, meaning you turn up the thermostat and demand more from your boiler. This makes you spend far too much money on energy during the colder periods – of which there are many! Upgrading to a modern, energy-efficient boiler can also help reduce heat loss, here’s a guide to the most energy-efficient boilers available today.
With proper heat loss prevention methods, you’ll keep your home as warm as possible without depending on your central heating. There’ll be times when you can sit around without turning the heating on, when before you’d have it turned up pretty high.
What Are The Benefits Of Preventing Heat Loss Apart From Saving Energy?
Saving energy and money aren’t the only benefits of preventing home heat loss. As you can imagine, lessening the demands on your central heating system will be better for the environment. It reduces your carbon footprint so you can feel better about your contribution to society!
More than that, preventing heat loss can increase the value of your home. This sounds crazy, but think about the things you’re doing to counter the hidden ways your home loses heat:
- Upgrading the insulation
- Improving the windows
- Improving the front door
- Maintaining the roofing
All of these things are high on the list of home-value contributing factors. You’ve made your house a much better place, which also makes it more desirable to others. If you ever wish to sell your home, you’ll get way more money for it when it’s thermally efficient, compared to if it’s draughty and cold.
Finally, tackling heat loss makes your house a more comfortable place for everyone. You and your family won’t have to wear multiple layers of clothing or lie in bed every morning feeling cold. The heating goes on when it needs to, but the general home temperature remains at a modest level and never gets too uncomfortable.
Don’t suffer in silence if your house feels a bit chilly. This isn’t normal! It’s probably losing heat from somewhere, so go through all the points in this post and check your house. When you spot any problems, take the necessary steps to fix them and your home will start feeling much warmer and way cosier!
Thank you for reading.
