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A few helpful tips to reduce your energy bills during winter.
Cold and windy winter weather has a nasty habit of finding its way into your home through gaps and cracks around your windows.
Here we offer a few effective tips to help you weatherproof your windows and keep out cold draughts.
Weather strips.
Weather strips are a cheap, quick and easy way to seal any draughty gaps around your windows and doors. These come in the form of compression, V-type and foam strips.
Just the job for sealing window sashes and swinging doors, compression weather strips are a durable solution, while V-type weather strips can be fitted to the side of a window or door jamb. Both these methods effectively stop cold draughts.
Foam tape has an adhesive backing and is the easiest weather strip draught stopper to fit.
In each case you simply clean and dry the area of installation, cut your strip to fit the length of your window or door, and press the tape to seal.
Window film.
Window film isn’t a complete solution to draughts by itself, but it will provide a useful extra layer of thermal insulation, besides reducing the amount of heat lost through the window glass.
First clean the insides of windows. Cut the amount of film needed to cover the entire window (including some of the frame area) and apply the film, gently stretching it as you work your way from one corner of the window to the other.
Caulking.
Caulking is the name for a means of filling cracks and gaps around windows and doors with special weatherproof acrylic filler, effectively seals off a way for daughts to get in.
You can apply caulking either as a string of ‘beads’ that you divide into lengths and press to seal into place, or by using a caulking ‘gun’ applicator to apply the sealant. Always thoroughly clean the area you intend to caulk first.
Insulated curtains.
Thermal curtains can be a useful contributor to helping keep out draughts. Usually made with 3 or 4 layers of material, they will only create a barrier between a window or door that is likely to be the real source of your draughts.
While they can be a cold-weather fix, in some cases they can help with keeping the heat out in the summer as well.
Door sweeps.
Otherwise known as draught excluders, these are usually made from lengths of rubber, plastic or foam, sometimes with a brush sweep attachment, fixed to the bottom of a door to keep out cold air.
You can choose between heavy duty door sweeps to fit under exterior doors, or a less dense material for inner doors. But to ensure a good fit it’s essential to accurately measure the length of your door and, more important, the gap between the bottom of the door and the ground.
Double glazing.
Most home draughts are, of course, the result of poorly fitting windows or doors. Besides letting in draughts and the weather, some of the heat from your home goes straight through your window glass.
The ideal solution is to invest in quality double glazing. The Residence Collection range of low maintenance uPVC windows, for example, combine classic period design with cutting-edge energy efficient technologies and weather sealing.
Besides putting an end to cold draughts, reducing your heating bills and saving you money in the long term, the Residence Collection will mean you can say goodbye to make-shift draught stoppers once and for all.
Our windows a certified window energy rating of A++, and achieve U-values as low as 0.74 W/m2K with triple glazing and 1.2 W/m2K for double glazed options. Start your Residence journey today. Download a brochure or find your local Residence Collection installer.
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