Keeping warm is a costly business

Just over a week ago, we were all huddled up in our house wearing hats scarves and even skiing thermals! t was -5 outside and, clearly not much warmer inside. The fire was lit and the central heating was going at full throttle, sounding like a 747, but did it make any difference? No, as we all shivered and moaned, it reminded me of scenes from Dr Zhivago (setting light to the chairs for a morsel of heat!)

Our house, in the midst of the lovely Herefordshire countryside is a Georgian rectory, a little piece of history. Lovely in the short summer months, come winter it turns into a fridge. All heat, desperate to escape flees from every “original feature”.

A new study by the Energy Saving Trust shows that, even in an average year, a family in a three-bedroom Victorian/Georgian will pay £250 more in energy bills than a family in a three-bedroom new-build semi. With the price comparison service Energyhelpline predicting that British families will pay £1.9 billion in extra heating charges as a result of the cold snap, it is clear that the discrepancy will be even greater by the time that the next batch of bills arrives.

When environmental campaigners talk of “toxic heritage”, it is houses such as ours that they are making reference to. We may be able to do certain things to bring our houses in to the 21^st century, energy efficient wise, but the cost can be more than the house is actually worth!

In recent years there has been a vogue for knocking down walls to create an open-plan space. But of course, these older properties aren’t designed for this. Originally you had smallish rooms with a single radiant heat source — and a door. If you wanted to keep a room warm, you closed the door. The idea that it’s desirable to heat a whole house to a uniform temperature is a very modern one.

I wonder whether this cold bitter winter will propel a boom in sales of the new build. Who knows, perhaps it will. A May 2009 YouGov survey carried out for the New Homes Marketing Board found that would-be buyers were increasingly concerned about eco-efficiency: it was their third-most important criterion behind having a garden and somewhere to park a car.

I have given some top tips on trying to retain some of the heat in an older draughty property! Stop draughts by blocking gaps between floorboards and around skirting boards; around poorly fitting sash windows and doors; around the loft hatch; and unused chimneys (buy a chimney balloon to block it up). Remember letterboxes and keyholes, too Make sure you have the recommended 270mm of loft insulation Look into installing secondary glazing if you can’t afford to replace the windows Solid wall insulation, either internal or external, is an option, though the former will compromise room size and the latter is hard to fit in a way that is architecturally acceptable