As Winter approaches and temperatures drop, it could be time to prepare for higher energy bills. Did you know, heating and hot water make up over half of the average UK home’s energy bill? [1]. 2.73 million households in England were still in ‘fuel poverty’ in 2024, spending more than 10% of their income on energy [2].
So, it’s worth getting ahead of the chill and seeing if you can save some energy with our easy heating hacks to try before Winter.
1. Seal Draughts and Insulate
Even small gaps around windows, doors, or vents can let your warm air escape and let cold air in. Here’s how you can fix it:
- Check for Draughts: On a chilly day, run your hand around window frames, door edges, keyholes, and letterboxes and feel for a cold breeze. You can also light a candle or incense stick and move it slowly near the edges. If the flame flickers, or the smoke moves towards the gap you know air is coming through.
- Fill the Gaps: There are a few easy and cheap ways to seal up draughts.
- Use self-adhesive weatherstripping tape around doors and windows to fill the gap.
- Use silicone sealant (or a draught-excluder seal) for cracks or holes around vents and skirting boards.
- Add a draught excluder to the bottom of doors. To save even more cash, a rolled up towel or blanket works in a pinch!
- Insulation window film is another relatively cheap and easy way to keep heat in and breeze out. Simply peel it off the roll and stick to your existing windows.
- Hang Thermal Curtains: thermal curtains are made from several layers of material rather than just one or two, like standard curtains. These layers are designed to work together to control the temperature of a room.
2. Use a Programmable or Smart Thermostat
- Set Schedules: Lower the temperature when you’re out and raise it for when you get back, so you aren’t heating an empty house.
- Smart Thermostats: These devices learn your habits and optimise heating automatically, saving energy and money.
For example, Hive users have saved £325 million and avoided 1 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions over the past decade.
3. Maximise Natural Heat
- Open Curtains During the Day: Let the sun warm your rooms naturally.
- Close Curtains at Night: Trap the heat inside by keeping curtains closed after the sun goes down.
4. Maintain Your Heating System:
Schedule maintenance to make sure your heating system runs as efficiently as it can.
- Book in an annual boiler service. Only use a Gas Safe registered engineer, you can find the official list of qualified engineers on the Gas Safe Reister website.
- Regularly bleed air from radiators. If your radiator is cooler at the top and warmer towards the bottom it probably needs bleeding. If you feel able to, you can do this yourself at home. Here’s a simple YouTube video explaining how.
- Insulate your pipes or replace old insulation if it needs it. See below for how government schemes can help you with the cost of this.
- Run your heating system briefly in the summer, just to make sure there are no problems when the colder months do hit.
- Make sure your radiators are clear of debris. Are they blocked by furniture or boxes? Move things around so the heat reaches the room.
5. Find out if your property is eligible for Help to Heat funding:
UK Government have a page on their website, where you can see if you can get help with your energy costs. This includes:
- The Boiler Upgrade Scheme, giving grants to property owners to install low carbon heating systems such as heat pumps.
- The Warm Homes: Local Grant, provides energy efficiency measures and low carbon heating to low income households in England.
- The Great British Insulation Scheme is a government project that can assist you in insulating your home, improving energy efficiency, and reducing energy costs.
Over 4.1 million energy efficiency measures have been installed in 2.7 million properties since 2013 through government schemes [3].
6. Use Space Heaters Strategically
Space heaters can be expensive, but if you are staying in one room for a long time it could be worth it.
- Targeted Heating: Shut the door and warm the room you are in or use most instead of the whole house.
- Safety First: Keep heaters away from flammable items and never leave them unattended.
7. Layer Up Indoors
- Wear Warm Clothing: Layering helps you stay comfortable without turning up the heat. Think thick socks, vests under jumpers and thermal leggings.
- Use Blankets: Keep cosy throws on hand for lounging or working from home. Electric blankets are also very economical if you aren’t keen on using the heating just yet.
By implementing these hacks now, you’ll be ready for winter with a warmer home, lower bills, and a lighter environmental impact.
If you enjoyed reading this, check out our blog on: 5 Sustainable Household Swaps to Make Today.
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