Cold house

[figgyroo]

I have a 1930s semi which never seems to get warm. I have installed the following:-

New combi boiler
Double glazing
Upgraded loft insulation
Porch doors

The radiators themselves are mainly quite old. They are all placed under the windows (except for the hall), and the ones fitted in the bay are single curved radiators. The others are mainly small double radiators.

Is there anything else I can do to make my house warmer? My bills are huge yet I am rarely warm!

I cannot have my cavity walls insulated as there is debris in the cavities - is there anyway to remedy this?

Thanks

 

[Symptoms]

figgy - my hunch is your rads aren't giving-out enough heat for the size of your rooms. Why not do some heat loss calculations for each room to see if your rads are 'man-enough' for the job. Google - heat loss calculations - for instructions on how to do this (there are even sites that will do this for you). I must say that your boiler installation guy should have done this for you when specifying the most appropriate boiler upgrade.

I've never subscribed to the cult of placing rads below windows, whilst I follow the reasoning behind this IMO misguided thinking, it is often negated by covering them with curtains with the result that the heat is trapped between the fabric and the glass.

If your new boiler has the guts for your installation (after your calculation) then consider swapping the rads to more effective units, say double convector panels appropriate to each room size.

 

[FourFootMedia]

Does your floor have a void under it? If so, make sure there's no gaps between your floor boards and skirting boards.

Our place never seemed to get warm, after a bit of investigation I found that there was a lot of cold air blowing between the floor boards and skirting from the vented underfloor void. Filled these gaps and it made a massive difference. Obviously, when blocking up gaps, make sure you don't block all ventilation.

 

[figgyroo]

Thanks for your replies.

Yes I have a void under the floor. There were big gaps between the floorboards and skirts but I filled these before I carpeted. Still need to sort out the 2 rooms with wooden floors though.

TBH I thought I might need new radiators but wanted to check before getting someone in. I don't know how old they are as they were in the house when I bought it but they look pretty old to me. They do get mad hot to touch, but don't seem to actually give off any heat if that makes sense?

 

[stuart45]

Are your walls solid or cavity?

 

[figgyroo]

They are cavity walls but I cannot have them insulated as there is debris in the cavities.

 

[stuart45]

Sorry, I missed that in your first post. It is possible to clean out cavities in some cases.

 

[figgyroo]

No problem. I didn't know that. Do you know how I go about finding out if that is possible in my case?

 

[stuart45]

The way that the Council used to clean the cavities and wall ties before CWI was to take out a few quion bricks at various heights and use a long length of battens to knock the mortar off the ties. They would also take a few bricks out as coring holes beneath DPC and rake out any debris that was sitting on top of the concrete infill. Its not that difficult in most instances.