Hot house– Although this year the cold has been slow to arrive, the low temperatures are already here and, with them, some gas and electricity bills that do not let us sleep peacefully. According Consumers in action the average price of electricity has increased by 12.4% with respect to January (when the new pricing system was implemented), a fateful news for all the people who have to pass the winter pulling electric radiators. As if this were not enough, the tariff deficit threatens to open the melon of the increases in the gas bill , so everything indicates that next year we will pay more. And this without counting that the butane gas cylinder costs 63% more than in 2009.
Advertising warns us that, if we want to save on heating, we would do well to change windows, isolate the house better or install a new boiler … And in the long term it is true, but not everyone can afford an investment of this type . Luckily, there are a series of practices that will allow us to keep hot house by saving on gas and electricity. And it’s not about anything sophisticated: they are common sense things that we had stopped doing thinking that the heat in our home would always be guaranteed.
Keep your hot house at 20 degrees
According to the Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy the ideal temperature
Turn off the heating when necessary
Many people believe that turning the heater on and off is more energy intensive, but it is not true. Although a peak of heat is needed to reach the right temperature again, it is worth turning off the heating if we are not in the house or at night,
If it’s too cold you can leave the heating on at night, but at least the temperature drops . According to a study by the
Close your blinds at night
During the day, the sun’s rays can warm your home somewhat, but the window does not let infrared radiation escape. At night, however, simple windows can be extremely cold. In an old hot house in which the heating maintains the interior to about 20 degrees of temperature, the windows, inside, can get to be at 7 degrees. This supposes a loss of bestial energy. Between 25% and 30% of the heating spent in homes is used to cover
If you want to ventilate, just open the windows for 10 minutes, preferably at noon, which is the least cold
Even if you have double-glazed windows, the temperature of these can drop to about 14 °, which means a loss of energy between 50 and 100 watts per square meter, the equivalent of having an old light bulb on.
The best way to reduce this loss of energy is to close the blind and the curtains as soon as night falls, which significantly increases the isolation . If you want to ventilate it is enough to open the windows 10 minutes, if possible at noon, which is when it is least cold.
Cover the walls and doors
Although more heat is lost through the windows, the outer walls also get cold and make our house lose heat. The walls of our house that face the street are usually 3 or 4 degrees colder than the interior of the house. If these walls are bare, we will lose much more energy. The ideal is to cover the walls with paintings, posters or, much better, a good bookstore. Why do you think the walls of medieval castles were covered with tapestries?
To prevent the cold from moving from one room to another is convenient to install weather stripping and keep the doors closed
The difference may seem insignificant, but it is not. A simple poster can raise the temperature of a wall by 1.5 ° and a well-stocked library almost completely eliminates the loss of heat through the walls.
The doors that face the exterior lose even more cold than the walls. Its temperature can be 15º lower than that of the house on colder nights. A good idea is to cover your entrance with a curtain or some insulating material. In addition, to prevent the cold from moving from one room to another is convenient to install weather stripping and keep the doors closed.
Make life in the hot spots of the house
When there was no heating, all the hot house was concentrated in the home, and it is next to this where all the domestic activities were concentrated. There were even wooden screens that were placed around the fire, to concentrate the heat that this gave off.
Today most homes have more than one source of heat, but stays more hot than others and, more importantly, places within rooms that are hotter than others. There is a basic rule to follow: the further away we are from the outer walls, the hotter we will be.
Sometimes, it is impossible to place the sofa or bed in another place that is not attached to an exterior wall, although the ideal, although today seems strange, is that they are in the middle of the room. But if there is no other left, we would do well not to come into direct contact with the walls : a simple wooden plank increases the temperature significantly. Carpets also help to conserve heat, especially if the floor is terrazzo.
