Home Improvement Blog

Posts Tagged ‘heating’

Many houses fall well below the minimum thermal insulation standars set under building regulations. Although some forms of insulation should be carried out by a professional, there is still much that can be done by the home handyman.

Before you begin the process of keeping heat inside where it belongs, it is useful to understand the ways in which heat is lost from the house. The amount of the heat lost does depend on the nature of the building, its aspect and exposure to winds -  and figures vary form the house to house.

In a typical uninsulated house approximately one quarter is lost through the roof, one third through the walls, one tenth through the doors, one fifth through the windows and one sixth through the floors. After insulation these losses can be cut down to approximately one twentieth, one tenth, one twentieth, one ninth and one tenth respectively.

So although insulation does not prevent all the heat escaping, it substantially reduces the amount of loss and correspondingly diminishes that size of your heating bills. It shortens the time it takes to heat a room and enables you to keep down the number size of radiators and the size of the boiler – or to install a less powerfull and therefore less expensive central heating system around the  home. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have a open fireplace, its all important to fix your chimney cleaned at least once a year. Suitable fireplace and chimney maintenance will forbid risks like fires or carbon monoxide envenoming and sustain your home and your family secure. As fires burn up, smoke arises the chimney. Several smoke will concentrate into coal-tar creosote on the inside of the chimney, or what is called the flue. Coal-tar creosote looks like a tar and it’s really hard since it easy builds over time after each fire. If creosote passes off to catch fire, a chimney fire will ensue, which will be so aloud that it will sound like a jet engine.

The absolute majority from expand of creosote happens as fires are being lit. Cold chimneys will concentrate more smoke than hot ones. An uninterrupted fire is more improbable to build creosote than several separate fires. As Creosote can burn so hot, and often without detecting, nearby walls and rafters have been recognized to explode into flames. Chimney fires can banquet so fast that the fire department often comes too late to have any encroachment, and often well after the fire has destructed the home.

Read the rest of this entry »