Winter is coming

Autumn is definitely in full swing now! This weekend was seriously windy (the kids trampoline flew across the garden and landed in my vegetable patch squashing my poor pumpkin plant), along with lots of rain and rather cold temperatures. It was a strong taster of what lies ahead, and a check on how winter proof our new house is. Not very - there are a few issues!
Unfortunately it seems that making your house warm is one of those things that you can’t do on the cheap.

Although our house has double glazing, nobody (including the surveyor) picked up before the purchase on the fact that some of the windows seem to have been recycled from a different property. Obviously recycling is a good idea, and usable windows should not be thrown out, but quite a few corners seem to have been cut when putting these ones in. Some of the windows have no seals, other windows have handles missing, some have a hole where the ventilation grid should be and some just don’t seem to fit together properly. Hooray! We have obviously known this for some time, but because it has been summer it hasn’t really been top of the priority list, but this weekend really proved that we have to do something.

Step one has been temporary measures along the line of putting duct tape over missing vents and around very drafty windows, but not exactly the most effective draft proofing. Step two was to have a look at the net and in the DIY shop for something slightly more appropriate, but as we are not exactly experts in double glazing it became rather pointless, we have no idea what shapes the seals should have or how to fit vents and the manufacturer of the handles appears to have gone bust. Step three was to phone some double glazing repair people to come and have a look, but when I explained the problems to them they sounded far from optimistic and suddenly were very busy - so couldn't come till end of next week sometime. Step four - well either we will be very lucky and the guy actually turns up and is able to fix it very cheaply... (ha,ha,ha) or otherwise we will have to stock up on duct tape and wrap up warm for the winter. Unfortunately changing all the windows is just not possible, putting in new double glazing is so expensive!

All these drafty windows also led us to look at the insulation of the house. My husband found a couple of unused insulation blankets in the attic which is good, but some areas of the house could definitely do with improvements on that front. Insulation unfortunately is not cheap either. Although the Government is pushing for people to get better insulation for lots of good reasons, the grants they are giving just don't cover people like us. The grants are primarily aimed at elderly people and people on benefits, but there is no section for a pretty standard young family of four, who at the face of it should have money as we have an income, but in real life are quite short on cash.

There are lots of organisations promoting home insulation and endless calculations of how much you can save in the long term by insulating your home, but you still need to come up with a fair amount of money to begin with. If you try to google alternative ways of insulating your home, lots of innovative high tech solutions come up (e.g. insulation material made from Soybeans or recycled plastic bottles), but nobody seems to have come up with some really clever cheap ideas, like using empty loo rolls or old books or something. I briefly got my hopes up when I was looking in some inspirational home magazine from IKEA, which happened to have a green theme, and in an interview some Swedish guy said 'you have to think creatively, for example we have used old newspapers for insulation'. It sounded like a great idea, but as IKEA didn't tell you how to use newspapers I went on the Net again to investigate. That quickly stopped my insulation plans. Apparently by using newspapers you are not only creating a haven for rats and other lovely creatures, but also dramatically increasing the fire risk. Not a good idea then!


So right now it looks like we are headed for a cold winter (better tell Santa, that my kids would like new fleeces for Christmas...). When I first started this project I suggested that being green always requires either money or effort, and so far it looks like insulation is something that can only be done with money. No amount of effort I put in can insulate our house at a low cost, I can't grow my own fibreglass matting or make window seals out of cardboard. The only cheap heating we have at the moment I think is our exercise bike - we will just have to take turns at pedalling away...