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Feeling A Cold Draft In Your Home? Here’s Where It’s Coming From!

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As a homeowner, is there anything worse than feeling a cold draft in your house? It’s annoying for a couple of reasons – the obvious one being that you feel chilly all the time. As a result, you feel inclined to turn the heating up high, which leaves you with staggeringly high energy bills. So, that’s pretty damn irritating as well!

 

Why do drafts happen? It’s usually down to a breach in your home that’s letting cold air in. Firstly, ensure that all the doors and windows in your home are tightly shut. If you still feel a draft, it means there’s a problem somewhere. More often than not, it will be down to one of these things:

 

Windows

Yes, even when your windows are closed, drafts can still come from them. For one, many windows have a little gap that you can open or close to let air in and out. In summer, you have these open to air out your home. If they’re still open when it’s cold, you’ll feel a draft – so close them. 

 

Now, the only possible reasons for drafts from your windows are cracks around the edges or problems with the installation. If your windows have been installed incorrectly, there could be spaces between the panes and the rubber sealant, causing a draft. Here, you will need a window replacement to seal everything up and remove the draft. 

 

If you see gaps around the outside of the window, you can fill them up with some sealant. If this doesn’t work, replacing the windows might be necessary for this instance as well. 

 

Doors

Likewise, drafts can come from your doors. Mainly, this is when there’s a gap between the door and the doorframe. Look at any doors leading to the outside of your home and check for these gaps. They’re shockingly common – particularly in flats – but you can easily prevent drafts. 

 

All you need to do is purchase draft excluders that fit around the door and plug up the gaps. They’re easy to get ahold of, and you can install them yourself without any help. Now, the gaps are plugged up and no air comes through them. 

 

Electrical sockets

That’s right, drafts might be sneaking their way through electrical sockets. Wind and cold air from outside might find their way into your home through cracks and gaps around your electrical sockets. If this is the case, use a rubber sealant to fill the gaps around the sockets, plugging them up. 

If that fails, you might need to reinstall your sockets, meaning they are fitted correctly and don’t have any gaps that keep reappearing around them. 

The good news is that most drafts come from one of these three things, and it’s not hard to identify the cause. Furthermore, fixing these problems is straightforward in most cases, so it’s not going to demand massive investments. Even if you do have to spend money replacing or re-installing things, think about the cash you save on your energy bills without having cold drafts in your home. 

What Are The Least Sustainable Parts Of Your Home?

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There are few problems in the world which unify people quite like climate change. Everyone is impacted when the weather begins to change, whether they live in the coldest or hottest part of the world, and this makes it crucial that people work together. 

 

Of course, though, it isn’t always easy to know what you need to do to do your part. You can recycle, drive less, and try to cut down on the plastics you use, and this is all great, but there is still plenty you can do. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring your home, highlighting some of the most environmentally unfriendly parts of it.

 

The Boiler

 

Most modern homes have some sort of boiler. These machines heat up the water in your place, providing you with heat and pleasant baths, and they can last for a very long time. Like any mechanical devices, though, they won’t be able to work at their peak unless they’re kept in the right condition.

 

This can lead to it taking more energy to keep your water hot, making your home less efficient and increasing the cost of your bills. Having your boiler serviced on a regular basis will help with this, ensuring that it is running at its full potential. Modern boilers are also a lot more efficient than older ones.

 

The Radiators

 

Alongside your boiler, your radiators can often be causing your home to use a lot more power than it needs to. Over time, air can get into these large metal vessels, forcing you to turn them up and using more power. You can bleed your radiator yourself, though it can be a messy procedure, and it’s often worth talking to a professional plumber to help you with this.

 

The Windows & Doors

 

Windows let light into your home, and doors make it possible to get inside without compromising your security. Both of these parts of the building you live in can let heat out of the place. Modern glass usually consists of two panes which have gas between them. This gas is a better insulator than air, and this means that it will keep heat inside your home more effectively.

 

This gas can leak, though, often resulting in windows losing their insulative properties, and a lot of secure doors have small windows on them. A window replacement company will be able to help you out with this, providing you with everything you need to make your windows and doors better at keeping the heat in.

 

The Lights

 

This next area is nice and easy to change. Old filament light bulbs use huge amounts of power compared to their LED counterparts. LED bulbs also last longer, cost less to run, and come with loads more features. You can even find ones which can cycle through different colors. This is something which most people can change for themselves, making it a worthy home upgrade.

 

The Refrigerator/Freezer

 

Cooling things down can take a huge amount of energy. It’s quite amazing that refrigerators and freezers have been around for such a long time, and just as remarkable that they can do their job so well in the first place. These devices can be less efficient when they have less in them, making them use more power. It’s always worth keeping these appliances stocked up, with the dense items inside them holding the chill much more effectively than air.

 

The Cooker

 

When thinking about ways to make cooking greener, a lot of people will find themselves at a loss. There aren’t many ways to approach something like this, though this appliance can use a huge amount of power, and this makes it worth looking for ways to make it better for the planet. Thankfully, there are a couple of easy options to choose from.

 

Cooking on the hob can be easier. When you’re using pans with hot liquids in them, lids will help them to heat up much faster, as they will lose less heat when they are covered. Making food smaller can help its cooking speed in the oven, too. Smaller pieces of meat and vegetables will cook much faster than they would if they were whole.

 

Keeping your home running efficiently can be a very difficult task. Many people struggle with this, but want to make positive changes in their lives. It will be far from impossible to do this in your kitchen and other rooms, and many people already have some of the tools they’ll need to get started.