Top tips for keeping warm during winter
THINGS are hotting up for north west residents as we all raced to switch on our central heating last week, leading England’s big ‘switch on’, pipped at the post only by the north east.
The data collected from British Gas customers, shows that more people in the north west turned their heating on last week compared with their southerly counterparts, who were still enjoying the last of the sunshine.
With reports of a big freeze hitting the UK this winter, again, and snow expected in the next six weeks, it looks like the north west is already bracing itself for the cold.
British Gas saw two thirds of its customers across the region turning on their heating, a whopping increase of 41 per cent on the previous week. Last year, the big boiler ‘switch-on’ happened four weeks earlier, with half of customers turning on their boilers at the start of September.
But thanks to a late summer this year, residents have waited before reaching for the on-switch.
Joanna Flowers, a local British Gas engineer covering the Manchester area, shares some of her tips to help keep homes warm and working this winter:
1. Bleed your radiators to make sure they are working properly.
If your radiators have cold spots, it probably means you have air in the system, so you’ll need to bleed them to get them working efficiently.
2. Block the breeze by making sure all your home’s windows and doors are sealed properly to stop warm air escaping.
For those that aren’t, fitting draught excluders, which you can buy from most DIY stores, is a quick and cheap way to cut down on your energy bills.
3. Love your boiler and check to make sure it is working properly before winter sets in.
The older your boiler, the more inefficient it will be.
4. Insulate your pipes as burst pipes are a huge issue for UK households during winter months, especially when the pressure drops to freezing.
To help prevent them, make sure they’re properly insulated by using lagging, which can be bought cheaply from most DIY shops.
5. Be energy smart and speak to your energy supplier about a smart meter, which enables you to see how much energy you’re using, in pounds and pence.
This can help you to understand your energy consumption better, and identify where you can make savings.