Do you have small vents built in to the frame of the windows? These need to be open to allow some air flow and prevent condensation. A dehumidifier is no substitute for proper ventilation.

The void under the floorboards is sucking heat. It is a crap job but suggest insulation under there as Edukator mentioned. Very similar to a case study I looked at the other month. You need to lift the floorboards – sorry.

Or dig access from the outside or from a trap you make in the floor.

Tootall – How about a plastic undersheet that sits ontop of the floorbboards similar to pond-liner? (If such a product exists)

I don’t like bare floorboards anyway and was thinking of a jute or coir weave carpet in the hallway/stairs/landing and backroom

I live in a Victorian terrace. I notice that the front room is a lot colder than the rear. The front is a wooden floor and the rear is concrete. I was advised by an architect to put some insulation in the cellar under the wooden floor. Didn’t bother but probably not expensive. (I have some plasterboard type stuff as a ceiling in cellar so insulation could go in here).

[Hijack]BTW house is for sale if anyone interested in something near Derby city centre and nice park [/Hijack]

With the best of the multi-layer insulators (layers of aluminium, polythene and polyester) you can get R = 2.3 for only 30mm. It’s impermeable though. My favourite insulator at the moment in potentially damp situations is recycled polyester. I’ve got the thicker R = 3.05 version of this polyester under my floor boards.

Didn’t bother but probably not expensive. (I have some plasterboard type stuff as a ceiling in cellar so insulation could go in here).

The link I put previously to action 21 shows one way, I’ve also heard of people using loft insulation held up with chicken wire, but would also work if you have a plasterboard ceiling.

I did the under floorboards insulation in our dining room. It has made a fair it of difference. Took up a hatch of maybe three widths of floorboard and went down into the crawlspace (18-36″) Used Space Blanket jammed between joists and stapled in place. Messy job, but I was redecorating and putting a new carpet in too. Put a higher TOG rated underlay in too, and I think that made more difference, along with completely sealing all gaps under skirting.

http://www.carpet-underlay-shop.co.uk/cloud-9-cumulus-pu-carpet-underlay-11mm-19-p.asp
Makes even thin carpets feel lush too.

Why is your house cold?
Because UK building standards and thermal performance standards are useless, on new houses and even worse on old houses.
Where to start? Buy the Green building bible and join the AECB

Hora – don’t put a platic sheet down on the floor.

Whilst you may think your current floor is tight and sealed there will be air getting through – this is a good thing as it provides ventilation. Which you need.

Can you tell I’m a civil engineer?…

All rads bled?

Plastic isn’t a substitute for proper insulation. You need a bit of thickness under there. That is your major leaching of heat under the floor.

Find someone with an infra red digital thermometer (or spend £20 on EBay on one). Then go around the house checking the temperatures of the walls / windows / floors etc and you’ll see for yourself where the heat is going.

We normally insulate suspended wooden floors with 200mm of Mineral wool (held in place with stapled 3mm ply straps)

If there is enough space, it’s done from underneath. When done that way we would seal all the edges with expanding foam and cracks with frame sealant.

If we do it from above, we would remove all the boards, fill with the same insulation held in place with a wire mesh, and then replace the floor with 22mm t&g chipboard (glued and screwed) with a foam underlay underneath.
Then seal all the edges to make it air tight.

The idea that you use gaps in between tongue and groove flooring and spaces round the edge of badly fitted floors as “ventilation” is frankly rediculous.

You need to be able to control ventilation, gaps are just draughts that you can’t control, and they are not recommended.

Having a purge here – first Winter in new house. Extra insulation added to loft plus draught excluders on all the downstairs doors.

Downstairs bathroom is like an ice box and the ceramic tiles don’t help.

Next job is sorting out reasonably heavy duty curtains as the old double-glazing is draughty.

Am determined to reduce heating costs!

The downstairs of my house is feezing since i took out the wall between the living room and conservatory, brrrr.

It does look nice though 🙂

It does look nice though

I’m sure all those numbers on your heating bill will be just as lovely! 😀

I must admit the heating is on higher than usual and it doesn’t take the chill off the living room, and it’s not even that cold or frosty yet 😕

I have a nice big blanket though

While on the subject, does window insulate film make much difference? I’ve got a big single glazed window in my kitchen. There is no radiator in there, two external walls and roof (which i suspect has little insulation). There’s no chance of getting a new window as I rent.

I must admit the heating is on higher than usual and it doesn’t take the chill off the living room, and it’s not even that cold or frosty yet

I really have no idea why that could be…

@CaptJon, I don’t know about this film of which you speak but have you thought about secondary glazing? No idea on cost or availability or quality or look or….

After a winter last year spent with the heating on full blast and the house always feeling cold it’s a pleasant surprise to find that our new (to us) house doesn’t seem to need heating. It’s 4 degrees outside and we’ve not needed the heating on all day and I’m normally a bit nesh.

Not really a huge difference between the two houses, both had cavity fill and 300mm loft insulation, similar ages, both semis so the difference in warmth is a bit of a mystery.

Plastic film is OK, easy to fit and very cheap.

Slightly better option is a plastic sheet cut to size and attached magnetically (or with other frames)
http://www.theonestopplasticsshop.co.uk/clear-cast-acrylic-1000-3-mm-p-1395.html?osCsid=e5t7emnvqah27polrtregfgst5

Good tips on insulating under a suspended floor, we’ve got high ceiling cellars so I need to get on and do that.

As stated – unisulated suspended timber floor.

“both semis so the difference in warmth is a bit of a mystery.”

Next door is identical to ours. Not as good on the combi etc but a big difference on warmth when neither is heated. Maybe previous owner had the underfloor mod etc.

Orientation?

Orientation +1. Probably has a nice south facing wall and heat soaked brickwork.

Thermal insulation is to reduce heat loss but also prevents heat gain, like a thermos flask.

gravity-slave,
Pay particular attention to the edges of each room, expanding foam round all the edges to seal the gaps.
We put lights on in the room above and keep cellar dark to spot any gaps in the middle of the floors too. But obviously that won’t work if you have carpets. Just put frame sealant anywhere that looks like it might provide an airway.

And put a plastic membrane between the insulation and any outside Walls, just in case of damp (we use the bags the insulation comes in normally)

Try this web site justinsulation.com

justinsulation.com

Also have you had your heating system power flushed
if not give that a go, and also are your radiators full of rust
if so change them ASAP

Our front room was always cold so i replaced it with a double radiator

Have you considered heat distribution? In our house there’s a bit of interplay between the thermostat and the TRVs. The thermostat is on the ground floor at the end of the circuit, so if you turn it up the TRVs on the other floors can close and direct more heat to the ground floor which heats that floor but also redistributes it better through the house. Something to consider, if the radiators are not all warm.

Our front room was always cold so i replaced it with a double radiator

a bit radical 🙂

Shirley radiatical? 😈

I’ve been tackling this in our 19th Century cottage (thick walls and draughty). So far the things that have made an immediately appraciable difference for minimum outlay have been the plastic film on windows and reflective insulation behind rads (Lidl have it on offer at the moment).

Our front room was always cold so i replaced it with a double radiator

I was thinking of this for my house.

The 2 upstairs bedrooms have very old single radiators with no convection fins, so are not heating the rooms anywhere near as effectively as a single or double convector radiator.

One of these bedrooms is 4.5 square meters with 2.5m ceilings, so I’m pretty sure an old 300mm x 1500(?)mm radiator is pretty useless for a room this size.

The living room also has an old single radiator.

Re my earlier comment. I know I’ll get laughed at but this is the toys/toy box that was uniformly and neatly put away and fully closed.

Wierd.

Anyone looking to change radiator sizes should look at doing the calculations. A simple version is at:

http://www.radcalcs.com/

and

http://www.theradiatorcompany.co.uk/heatoutput/

There is no point in putting an oversized radiator in if it compensating for other problems like draughts or poor insulation, both of which are cheaper to fix than heating the room repeatedly.

A dehumidifier is no substitute for proper ventilation.

How would one get ‘proper ventilation’ in a late 1800s stone-built terrace, incidentally? (Sorry for the hijack)

TooTall, not sure if we’ve spoken off forum before, but is there any chance you could pop me an email (in profile). Cheers.

http://www.retrofitforthefuture.org/

That has loads of good stuff for improving the energy efficiency of your house. Some of it is a bit OTT but pick out the bits that might be of use.

Cougar – can’t say as you’ve not said how you live in the house. Questions like ‘do you dry clothes on radiators, what windows do you have, open fires, how many live there, 24 hour occupancy or not, cook a lot, shower a lot’ all matter.

Don – I’ll mail you later when I get home.

Cougar – can’t say as you’ve not said how you live in the house. Questions like ‘do you dry clothes on radiators, what windows do you have, open fires, how many live there, 24 hour occupancy or not, cook a lot, shower a lot’ all matter.

Clothes dry in tumble-drier or cistern cupboard, not rads. Non-vented double-glazing at the back, original (I’m guessing) single-glazed wood frames at the front. Gas fire in the back room. Two people, two bedrooms, out at work during the day, cook evenings and weekends, shower’s in daily usage. The heating works but is archaic.

The front of the house suffers from damp. The problem started donkeys’ years ago when I wasn’t using the rooms and so just left them fallow with the doors closed, and a leaky gutter hasn’t helped. Assuming these are the causes then I’ve ‘fixed’ them but the house isn’t really drying out.

There’s what looks like a vent brick on the front which has been covered over (plastered / papered) inside, and the gas people helpfully put a “vent brick” in the back room (“regulations, mate”) by removing a great big stone from the wall and leaving a force nine gale belting through it. Needless to say, that got covered over fairly quickly too.

I’ve been toying with getting a dehumidifier for a while, but I don’t know whether that’s “the solution” or just a workaround.

TooTall – thanks for those links, most useful.

Hardly surprising my downstairs bathroom is freezing so will probably replace electric towel warmer with one that runs off the central heating. Am really quite cross with myself for thinking that electric would be better and have wasted money. 🙁

A decent plumber should be able to add in an extra radiator for £100 tops plus the cost of the radiator in the existing radiator network’ (you could supply it yourself from screwfix etc).

There will be STW’ers who will say ‘no! do it yourself its easy!’ however I’d prefer someone to do it who does it every day…….not muppethands..