Cheap ways to keep warm including the oven hack that will heat up your home without using more energy
Energy bills are still high but there are a few ways to keep yourself and your house warm without cranking up the heating.
Jordan Chance, product manager at PlumbNation suggested households take on a little challenge: “An excessive heating bill can be easily rectified with the ‘step-down’ challenge.
“By turning your heating down by just 1°C, you can save up to 10 per cent on your heating bill.
“The typical heating range is between 18 and 21°C… so why don’t you see how low you can go?”
Households with elderly, young or ill members should keep their house as warm as they can afford during the winter months.
But for anyone else looking to turn their thermostat down but stay toasty, here’s how.
Keep doors and windows shut
If you’re heating yourself or just one room, don’t let the heat escape.
Keep doors shut, especially those leading to hallways and stains.
Jess Steele, heating technology expert at BestHeating, added: “One of the easiest ways to lose heat in your home is from leaving doors open.
READ MORE HEATING HACKS
“The cosy pre-heated living room is wasted and cold within a matter of minutes when the door is left open allowing all the heat to escape.
“Keeping the door shut will trap the heat in the room, maintaining its warmth for longer.”
Maximise this by adding draught excluders at the bottom of doors, or if you’re on a budget, get an old towel and roll it up to stop any heat escape through cracks.
Open your oven
If you’ve used your oven to cook dinner then leave the door open afterwards – but be careful if you have young children or pets at home.
Safestyle’s Adam Pawson told Good To Know: “A really simple way of heating up your home is to leave the oven door open after cooking – that way you can heat your home and cook while using the same amount of energy.
“To maximise this hack, make sure to keep windows and doors closed to retain the heat.”
Most read in Fabulous
Rearrange your rooms
If your radiators are on, make sure nothing is blocking them – sofas, side tables long curtains etc.
And if you have radiator covers, it might be worth removing these temporarily so the heat from the radiator can warm the room efficiently.
Blocking your radiator with furniture stops the flow of warm air around the room and can make your boiler work harder to heat your home, meaning higher heating bills.
To make your radiators super efficient, place reflector sheets behind them – they can cost around £8 per roll and can improve heating efficiency by 20 percent.
Layer up
Wrap yourself up in a few layers of wool or fleece to keep your body warm – whether you’re inside or out.
Natural fibres like wool and fleece are better than man-made because they trap air which adds an insulating layer between you and the material.
Blanket hoodies are also trendy and a great way to keep snuggly warm.
But don’t forget about your feet! Most of our body heat is lost through head, hands and feet, so keep them cosy with a pair of heated slippers that have been slashed to half-price.
Add short blasts of heat
Hot water bottles are a handy, budget-friendly way to stay warm, and it only costs around 6.8p a time to boil a kettle and fill it.
Whether you’re working at a desk, sitting in the living room or want to warm up your bed before you hop in, hot water bottles are a cheap and flexible way to add heat to yourself.
Electric blankets are another alternative, and one TikTokker shared her £20 buy that means no more chilly nights in front of the TV.
You can also get electric blankets for the bed which are placed underneath your bed sheets and can be switched on 30 minutes before sleeping to warm up your duvet and mattress.