Heat it up

We need to dress our homes correctly, so they are better heated without costing a fortune.

Most people’s comfort zone is from only about 15 deg C to 25C.

Some ways of making homes more comfortable are remarkably simple; others more complex and expensive:

● Build a passive house. Based on the German Passivhaus standard, they are designed to maintain an even temperature and healthy ventilation with minimal additional heating or cooling. A formula measures the precise energy required per square metre of floor space.

● Double-glaze windows and install good, layered curtains. You can even hang some in front of doors or walls.

● Install a ducted heat recovery and ventilation system to remove warm, damp air from the kitchen and bathrooms, transfer the heat to fresh air from outside and recirculate the warm, fresh, dry air into living areas and bedrooms.

● Install a heat pump; they are 400 per cent or more efficient, producing, for example, 400W of heat for each 100W of energy used. But it needs to be the right size for the space, and the house well insulated. Ground-sourced heat pumps are four times as efficient as air-sourced.

● Use roof-mounted photovoltaic panels to power a heat pump to heat water, which is pumped through in-floor pipes or radiators.

● Install a trombe wall which transfers sun-warmed air inside.

● Install an ultra-efficient woodburner. - The Press