hacks to keep house warm

That way, the hot, moist air spreads out into other areas of the house rather than just blowing out of the vent. In fact, we often cook soups and stews in the slow cooker, which means a lot of liquid.

If you eat something warm, you’re going to feel warmer and for good reason – your body temperature is going to go up a little bit.

One great additional trick if you have some extra water is to sit it in a bowl or something near a hot air vent in your home. These layered blankets can keep you very warm at night, which is perfect if you drop the temperature in your home a few degrees on winter nights so that the furnace isn’t running constantly. To create the DIY double glazing, simply get some of bubble wrap and use a product like blue-tac to hold it in place on your windows. But be careful if you’ve got curious kids or playful pets. Although our doors are pretty well lined, it’s still beneficial to add a bit of extra protection on the coldest and windiest days. A bit of humidity helps the air hold heat a little better and gradually adding a little moisture to the air throughout the day raises that humidity. I’ll usually do this with a glass bowl. If your house has an attic, it is best recommended to hire some professional in insulating this part of your house to keep it warm.

We keep windows uncovered when sun is shining through them, but cover them the rest of the time. The enclosed space will heat up by trapping the air and using your body warmth to make the space nice and cosy. How to Keep a House Warm in Winter: Ceiling Fan Heater. I love making casseroles and soups and stews. I make a lot of hot meals at home (and bake a lot, too). The trick is to find the exact point where your house is cool but not uncomfortably so, and that exact point is different for each person. If I do this along with the shower technique described above, I’ll feel warmer all day long. How to Find the Be sure to close your curtains and blinds as soon as dusk falls, but keep them open during the day to make the most of the sunlight, which will help gently warm your house, even if it’s cold out. You can set the direction of the blades with a little switch on most ceiling fans. We’ll often do this in the evenings if we’re watching a movie as a family or playing a board game or working on a puzzle or something, because we tend to feel most cold when we’re sedentary. Just make sure you remove it before starting a fire! Unless you regularly use your fireplace for an actual fire, consider making it purely decorative by installing a chimney balloon, which will put pay to chilly draughts (and also those creepy whooshing noises when it's windy out!). Again, I don’t normally wear them around the house except for when it’s cold, but when it’s really chilly, they help a ton. Rather, the air is pushing upwards against the ceiling, which causes the warm air that collects at the top of the room is pushed down along the walls and mixes with the cooler air on the floor to warm the room. The obvious one is that, well, I’m ingesting warm stuff, which will make me feel warmer.

Just because it's winter doesn't mean you can't go camping...well, as long as it's in the living room.

Every room in our house has a pile of blankets available in the winter for people to cover up.

You needn’t buy expensive ones; a pair of tights stuffed with soft fabric or beanbag beans will do the job nicely.

I feel really comfortable and also quite warm, even though the house temperature is pretty cool.

This is particularly important because the cold drafts it blocks flow in along the floor, where your feet are, and this can make you feel doubly cold. If I were to just take off the sweatshirt or the jeans, I’d probably be fine for a while and then gradually start feeling cold, which would make me want to nudge up the temperature. Christmas may be long gone and spring up ahead, but when it comes to the cold, we’re not out of the woods yet! My first line of defense against this is a nice pair of slippers – I currently wear these and love them. I shower with the bathroom door open and a fan outside the door running.

Several blankets can also create a mild “weighted blanket” feel, which some people like. I’ve learned, for example, that my parents like to have their house much hotter in the winter than we do, and our house is certainly cooler today than the house was when I was a kid living with my parents.

There are two reasons for this. This makes it much nicer to get into a cozy warm bed at night, and it doesn’t risk spillage as a hot water bottle might do. Robert Marchand Thick curtains will help to keep heat in and cold air out, but if you can’t afford new ones, try lining your existing ones – you could even use a PVC shower curtain!

Like it or not, cold air does seep in a little around the edges of doors, especially when the wind blows against them. I’m normally barefoot around my house in the spring, summer, and fall, but in the winter, having bare feet can make me feel really cold.

The Simple Dollar does not include all companies or all available products. There are few things that will make you feel warm under a blanket faster than the warmth of another person, so if you have someone you don’t mind cuddling with, keep a big blanket around and cuddle with that person often. If someone happens to feel cold while others don’t, they can just grab a blanket and drape it over their laps or completely cover up with it. When in doubt, a great way to stay warm on a cold night is by sharing body heat. According to the National Energy Foundation, as much as 10% of a home’s heat is lost through bare floors. You don’t need to keep your furnace on full blast all winter long. We’re not big candle people, but we sometimes receive them as gifts. Gaps around doors and windows are big culprits when it comes to cold houses. Walking elevates my core temperature and the temperature stays elevated for a while, leaving me feeling warm all over. I keep it lower during the day when I’m alone working and low at night when we’re all sleeping, but a little higher when all of us are at home. There's nothing like a good soup or a roast to make you feel better on a cold winter night. A rug or a blanket will also do the trick. My goal is to feel slightly sweaty on my innermost layer, such that I feel like changing clothes or even taking a shower when I get back to the house. 100119879.

It doesn’t last forever, but it lasts for a surprisingly long time. (The reverse is true – in the summer, you should take a warm shower if you want to feel cool after your shower.

If I heat up water for any reason, I won’t just dump it down the drain. Best, Will Multiple Credit This won’t directly heat your home, but what it will do is encourage evaporation as the air coming out of your vent will be quite dry, and having sitting water there will cause it to evaporate at a relatively high rate, adding moisture to the air.

Cooking things with a lot of liquid in them adds humidity to the air, and during the winter when the furnace or when radiators are running, it’s easy for the air to get very dry.

We keep the ceiling fans running on “low” in “winter mode.” By “winter mode,” I mean that the blades are running in a clockwise direction so that you don’t actually feel it blowing down on you if you’re standing right underneath it. Close off any rooms that aren’t used frequently, or rooms that are particularly nippy due to their positioning (rooms with several external walls, for example), to stop their chilliness seeping through to the rest of the house.

We cook lots of things in the slow cooker. This enables people to easily add and remove blankets as their needs change throughout the night. For those whose home insulation isn't up to scratch, a budget-friendly trick is to use bubble wrap to insulate your windows from the inside. A nice long brisk walk makes me feel a lot warmer, and that warmth seems to continue for a surprising amount of time after I get home. Positioning your favourite seat in front of the heater might feel great when you're sitting in it, but when you put furniture too close to a heating source you're actually stopping the hot air from circulating throughout the rest of the room. When I climb into bed, it’s already really warm under the blanket, as the heat has spread but hasn’t escaped. If I cook something via sous vide, I let the basin of hot water sit out for several hours, spreading the heat and evaporating. I go on a lot of walks, even when it’s really cold. In the morning, when I make the bed, I grab the little rice bags and put them downstairs near the microwave, so they can be easily microwaved again. I also wear socks on really cold days, sometimes even in layers. I drink a lot of warm beverages throughout the day, particularly tea. When direct sunlight isn’t shining on the windows, we do the opposite and keep them closed because the insulation effect of the window coverings exceeds the nonexistent warmth of sunlight. Sometimes, I’ll even just put normal containers of water near the hot air vents. Heat up your home and your belly by putting on a roast. Are you dreading returning to a freezing house this evening? OVO Energy Ltd, registered office 1 Rivergate Temple Quay Bristol, BS1 6ED, company no. I heat up “rice bags” and throw them under the sheets and blankets a few minutes before I go to bed. Trent Hamm founded The Simple Dollar in 2006 after developing innovative financial strategies to get out of debt. The heat of the sunshine exceeds the loss of insulation from keeping the window coverings closed.

While snuggling up with your partner might make you a little bit warmer, cuddling a furry pet will heat you up a lot faster.

In the winter, every bed in our home has several blankets on it. If I make tea and have some extra water, I let it sit out in a bowl. Robert Marchand, University of Sheffield. I’ll just sit it near a vent for a while, let some of it evaporate, and eventually dump the rest. 5. I tend to like wearing wool socks. This is a particularly effective trick if your radiators are below a window, where heat can easily escape or become trapped behind curtains; heat will be fanned into the room instead of up the walls. Also, the last few minutes of my shower are as cold as I can stand it. Forecasters say we’re in for a good blast of winter weather before the daffodils appear, but these easy hacks will keep your house toasty warm in the meantime. I dress warmly around the house, often in layers. As noted above, it heats up the house, and eating warm foods makes you feel warm. I keep some warm house slippers around and keep them on my feet if it’s chilly. READ MORE: * Energy-efficient ways to keep your house warm * Give your home a warm and cosy look * 10 cleaning habits to stop you getting JOIN THE FAN CLUB. Like most websites OVO Energy uses cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. How we make money: The Simple Dollar is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. This is a trick I learned that actually helps me keep warm, even though it seems really counterintuitive. The Reiker Room Conditioner installs just like a regular ceiling fan and provides fast, even heat over a large area. Sick of the hearing about the same old heating methods that never quite do the job? After the shower and a bit of warming up as you get dressed, this elevated core temperature will actually leave you feeling quite a bit warmer about 15-30 minutes after the shower than taking a warm shower will leave you.