With winter now firmly on our doorsteps, the biggest challenge for many homeowners as the cooler evenings draw in, is keeping your home warm and saving energy in the process. Heating costs and indeed electricity costs go up for many from September / October until April / May time, so trying to find ways of keeping these costs down is always worth doing. When looking at the structure of your home, heat escapes in a number of ways, with the main ones through your doors, windows and ceiling. Additional insulation often helps with preventing heat escaping through your ceiling while double glaze and even triple glazed windows prevents heat loss through your windows. The role that doors play in preventing heat and energy loss is as important as ever.
How external doors can help keep in heat and save energy
Perhaps the most important set of doors in saving heat and energy in the home are your external doors. This shouldn’t be surprising though as external doors prevent heat from exiting your home while internal doors play a role in how heat moves around your home and escapes from one room to another.
How internal doors can help keep heat in
Internal doors play an important role in keeping the heat within your home but in more ways than one. Leaving internal doors open can sometimes help heat spread around your home. Think of occasions when you are in rooms that heat up – your kitchen as you cook, your living room with the fire / stove lit or when you’re running a shower or bath. Leaving the door open in this instances allows heat to move around your home from one room to another, spreading heat throughout your home. This can be extremely useful in smaller, well-insulated homes and a great way of saving money on your heating bills. The material used for your internal door can also play a big part in how heat is kept in certain rooms of your home. Your living room and bedroom are two rooms in particular that you’ll likely spend a lot of time in, so having a good quality, thick door here will help. Engineered fire checked doors in particular can be a great way to keeping your room insulated and keeping the heat in on these cold winter evenings.
Draught-proofing doors
No matter how hard you try, sometimes heat can escape through gaps in your door or gaps between the door and floor. Here are just a number of ways to prevent this from happening:
How external doors can help keep in heat and save energy
Perhaps the most important set of doors in saving heat and energy in the home are your external doors. This shouldn’t be surprising though as external doors prevent heat from exiting your home while internal doors play a role in how heat moves around your home and escapes from one room to another.
How internal doors can help keep heat in
Internal doors play an important role in keeping the heat within your home but in more ways than one. Leaving internal doors open can sometimes help heat spread around your home. Think of occasions when you are in rooms that heat up – your kitchen as you cook, your living room with the fire / stove lit or when you’re running a shower or bath. Leaving the door open in this instances allows heat to move around your home from one room to another, spreading heat throughout your home. This can be extremely useful in smaller, well-insulated homes and a great way of saving money on your heating bills. The material used for your internal door can also play a big part in how heat is kept in certain rooms of your home. Your living room and bedroom are two rooms in particular that you’ll likely spend a lot of time in, so having a good quality, thick door here will help. Engineered fire checked doors in particular can be a great way to keeping your room insulated and keeping the heat in on these cold winter evenings.
Draught-proofing doors
No matter how hard you try, sometimes heat can escape through gaps in your door or gaps between the door and floor. Here are just a number of ways to prevent this from happening:
1. Keyhole – fit a purpose-made keyhole cover that drops a disc over the keyhole preventing heat loss.
2. Letterbox – use a letterbox flap on your door or to ensure no heat loss through your external door, fit a solid door and place a letterbox separately on your wall beside the door or at the entrance to your home.
3. Gap at bottom of door – the best way to prevent heat escaping under your door is to use a brush or hinged flap draught excluder.
These are just some of the ways both internal and external doors can help you when it comes to saving money and saving energy over the coming months. For more information on how to get the most from internal and external doors, call into one of our Northern Ireland showrooms today.