We had a new radiator installed on the opposite wall to the old one, here’s how (and why). Why move the radiator at all? The poorest part of the insulation in the study is the window. Even with new glass, the double-glazing will end up with a u-value of about 1.1, compared to the rest of the exterior walls, with a u-value of about 0.22 (remember lower is better, meaning less heat loss).

After 9 months, we’ve insulated one room! When I started this blog I said that I intended to insulate the house and document the process (and that I might fail in one or both of those). Well over the last 9 months or so (boy did I underestimate how little free time I have!) we have managed to insulate one small room in our house, and now - all I need to do is write about it!

An easy and fairly fun job to get started One of the first, and easiest, insulation projects that we did was to put foil-bubblewrap insulation behind our radiators. This is a simple job, and I was able to do the whole house over a couple of afternoons one weekend, even with the help of a 6 year old. The whole job was pretty cheap, and I’ve heard anecdotally that it’s one of the best value things you can do in terms of getting your money back in savings.

This is the start of a long-ish journey Insulate the house, and document the process. That’s the challenge. I’ve taken the first few steps on the house but I’m months behind on the writing up, so here we go. Like a lot of people working from home unexpectedly, I’ve now shivered through two lock-down winters with one eye on my zoom meeting and the other on the gas bill. At some unidentifiable point in that process I resolved to do something about it.