How to Prepare Your Home for the Winter

The winter is soon at hand, and always quicker than we tend to anticipate. Winter is a difficult season at the best of times, as cold temperatures and strong weather patterns threaten the condition of our homes.

But this winter is a uniquely tough one for UK households, arriving in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis that makes heating and comfort more costly than ever for the average household. What are some simple ways you can prepare your home for the winter, to make your life easier and more comfortable?

Insulation

Insulating your home is the single most effect route you can take to effectively preparing for a colder winter. There are various ways in which your property can be insulated, some of which can have profound impacts on the efficiency of your heating system – more on which later.

One of the leading forms of home insulation is cavity wall insulation, which sees insulative materials injected between the leaves of your home’s external walls through holes drilled periodically in the exterior. Cavity wall insulation prevents heat transferring to your home’s exterior, in so doing reducing the average detached home’s carbon footprint by over a tonne annually.

Insulative material can also be installed in your interior walls and used to line your attic, allowing you to trap heat between rooms and further improve the sense of warmth in your spaces. Pipe insulation can also be installed to mitigate the chance of your pipes freezing when temperatures fall.

Heating

But insulation is only one part of a much larger equation. The efficacy of your heating system is also important to monitor and manage, to ensure you are getting the best of it during the worst of the winter weather. If you are content with the quality and effectiveness of your boiler, simply spending an afternoon bleeding your radiators can ensure that they are operating as they should.

If your heating system leaves a little to be desired, though, efficient boiler models are widely available, as with radiators. Government grants also exist for upgrades to eco-friendly alternatives, such as ground- or air-source heat pumps and biomass boilers.

Backup Power

The winter brings with it unique challenges for the UK’s infrastructure – challenges exacerbated by potential gas shortages in parts of the UK, and the prospect of rolling blackouts. As such, preparing for this winter might also involve creating contingency plans for emergency situations. In the event of power outage, you will need an alternative power source. Generators can work well in a pinch, relying as they do on readily-available petrol and diesel – allowing you to keep vital appliances up and running in case of the worst. You might also consider buying up a number of spare rechargeable battery packs, to keep smaller and smart devices charged.

Roofing

Lastly, you may want to spend a little of your emergency fund ensuring your roof is watertight and secure. Adverse weather can quicken the emergence of leaks and tile failures, leading to draughts and even damp. At worst, debris could fall from the roof and injure someone.