Now is the time of the year where you have to get your glasses out, take a stance over the thermostat, and remind yourself how to use the buttons on your home heating system. I swear, it sometimes feels like you need an engineering degree to figure out why most of those boxes only have three buttons to cover a hundred options.
While you’re doing everything from getting the heavier blankets out for beds, and seeing if last winter’s sweaters still fit, you’ll want to do the rounds in every room of the home and check that your radiators are all in working order. With a few simple tweaks, you could soon see rooms getting warmer, and heating bills taper off if you act smart. How do you do so? Let me explain how.
Stop bleeding radiators yourself
This first tip isn’t me saying that you should stop letting the trapped air out of radiators. It is, after all, the first step in helping prevent oxidisation and rusting on the inside of a radiator. I am suggesting that anyone who annually has to rummage through drawers to find the radiator key they swore they’d left in a place they’d remember (we all forget where we put it), and then go from room to room with a towel to let the air out and hope we don’t stain the wall, can throw that key away.
Get yourself self-regulating air vents. They are incredibly cheap and can be fitted to pretty much any radiator. Any time air builds up inside the radiator, the valve adjusts and lets it out. Doing so helps prolong the life of the radiator and improve water flow (if you didn’t know, many radiators only come with a 5-10 year guarantee)
Turn your valves down
Who is guilty of cranking that thermostat up as soon as they see the first leaf hit the ground? While the central thermostat is going to turn up now we’re in the colder months, if your radiators have individual valves, try keeping them as low as possible. Having them up full is like telling your radiator you want the room to feel sub-tropical in the winter when in reality, you just want it to feel nice and cosy.
Take time to reflect
In many older homes and apartments, radiators tend to be placed under windows and by external walls? While having a radiator under a window does help with air circulation (hot air coming out of a radiator will rise around the room better if cold air from a window forces it), if your radiators are on external walls, warm air will needlessly be drawn out.
You can avoid this by getting some radiator reflector. It’s a fabric which looks a lot like the foil you wrap food in to cook with but isn’t the same, so don’t go sticking your kitchen foil behind radiators.
It won’t have a dramatic effect on heating, but it is a cheap way of helping keep warm air in a room.
Enjoyed the advice?
A lot of the tips mentioned in this article come from advice found at Trade Radiators. If you’d like to know more and get a good deal on new radiators to boot, visit https://www.traderadiators.com.
Want to avoid chilly bathrooms this winter?
No one likes waking up and having to tiptoe around in a cold bathroom, so help get your space in order by reading this article on the Top Ways to Heat Your Bathroom in the Winter.