AD | Collaborative post
Christmas is the time for loved ones to come together and celebrate from the warmth of home. It’s a period of eating, drinking, relaxing, and spending valuable time with family and friends. For this reason, it’s essential that our homes are kept warm and cosy around the festive period – no one wants to sit in a home that’s draughty and cold.
Luckily, there are plenty of easy ways to make sure your home is prepared to keep family and friends cosy at Christmas time.
Prepare your boiler + radiators
Us Brits are known for relying on our boilers like a lifeline over the winter months, and then forgetting about them completely once the temperature rises again. Leaving boilers turned off for months at a time can naturally cause things to go wrong, so it’s a good idea to give central heating systems some TLC before winter well and truly kicks in.
How? Book in for a professional boiler service in time for Christmas, so a trained engineer can identify any potential issues and prevent them from getting any worse. A professional will also be able to flush your system and get rid of the gunk that builds up over time, to allow your hot water to flow freely and warm your home.
If you’ve had your boiler for over a decade, it’s probably time to go for a boiler replacement. Paying out for boiler repairs for an old boiler can end up costing far more money than it’s worth – something no one wants to be doing at Christmas time. BOXT offer a complete boiler replacement service and can have clients booked in for installations the next day. Christmas is the perfect time to invest in a new boiler and ensure that everyone is kept cosy.
If your boiler appears to be functioning fine but you’ve noticed cold patches around your radiators, there’s a quick fix for that too! Simply grab a radiator key and open the radiator valves around your home to release all the trapped air and let the hot water spread across your entire home.
Set your thermostat
These days, we are lucky to have far more control over the temperature of our home. We can decide when the heating turns on and off, what temperature we want the heating to reach, which rooms we want to be heated and more. At Christmas, plan ahead and use your smart thermostat to your advantage. Set it to come on in plenty of time for family to arrive and make sure it’s set to turn off when out for the day to avoid wasting energy.
Put down rugs
Another easy and relatively inexpensive way to warm up your home for Christmas is to put down rugs on any exposed floorboards or tiles. Floorboards tend to let draughts creep in and can feel especially cold under foot during winter. Rugs are a lovely way to add some colour and cosiness to a home, without having to break the bank!
Install insulation
If you live in an older home, the chances are that it may not be as insulated as newer builds. Purchasing some insulation materials and having them installed in your loft, walls, and around your roof are a more expensive but highly effective way to increase the temperature of your home in preparation for the festive season.
Draught proofing
As well as making an effort to keep the heat inside your home with insulation, it’s important to try and keep the cold out. Draught-proof windows, doors, floorboards, letterboxes, and any nooks and crannies where cold air manages to creep in. Draught proofing doesn’t need to cost a fortune, you can simply head to a local DIY store and purchase some foam draught excluders to place around your window and door frames.