Six innovative insulation tips to keep your Sheffield home warm

Insulation provides a cost-effective means of making your home less fossil fuel dependent and therefore helps you save on those all-important bills.

From altering your curtains, to insulating your attic, experts at property buyer GoodMove have shared some handy tips on how to keep your home warm and cosy during those chilly months.

Firstly, seal drafty doorways and windows. Make sure to use rubber weatherstripping to fill spaces between the sides and bottom of your door and the door frame. If the space between the bottom of the door and your floor is extra-large you can also use a draft stopper.

For external doors, ensure that your keyhole, letterbox, or cat flaps are covered. These accessories can make a massive difference to your home’s insulation.

Secondly, insulate your pipes and hot water tank. Buy a tank jacket, which can help you save on money by keeping your water hot, and consider insulating your pipes, especially if you have any external pipes outside your home. Invest in foam tubing, or ‘lagging’, that wraps around the pipes, to protect them from extreme temperatures and keep your water hot.

Thirdly, check floors for cracks and gaps – heat is prone to drifting upwards through cracks in floorboards. This is especially true of older houses that have genuine wooden timber floorboards. Rugs are a cheap and stylish way of preventing heat from escaping. Carpet is also an option to consider for long-term investment.

Fourthly, add thick curtains to your windows to provide an added layer of protection from those bitter nights. Options such as Thermaliner blackout curtains are a committed way of keeping your home insulated.

Fifthly, make your radiators more efficient by checking that they’re in good working order and maximising on their location. Make sure they’re bled regularly, and that there’s no furniture in front of them that could be absorbing heat.

If your radiators are located on external walls, consider lining them with foil to reflect heat back into your room instead of it being wasted and escaping into the wall.

Finally, insulate the attic. If your home is without adequate insulation, you could be losing up to a quarter of your home’s heat through your roof. Therefore, the key to future-proofing your home is to prevent the heat from rising and heating the attic instead of living spaces.

Insulation is fitted to the floor of the loft, trapping the heat in the main part of the house and stopping it from rising up to the loft. This is perfect for property owners that use their loft as excess storage space.

Plus, insulating your attic can make your home much more sustainable, through reduced energy usage. In today’s property market, where sustainability is a key box-ticking requirement for buyers, this can set your house apart from similar properties on the market.

Nima Ghasri, director at GoodMove, said: “We hope that our top tips can help to provide a simple, and cost-effective, method of keeping your home warm over the winter months.”

For more information on how to insulate your home, visit: https://goodmove.co.uk/blog/selling-advice/how-to-winter-proof-your-home