Investing in home insulation is essential to ensure your home remains at a comfortable temperature regardless of the season.
It’s also important to insulate your home to ensure you’re being as energy efficient as possible, as a poorly insulated home will likely drive your energy bills through the roof if you’re not mindful.
Insulation works to keep your home warm in the winter, and cool throughout the summer.
There are various signs that you can look out for that indicate that you should update your home insulation. These signs include, but are not limited to:
- Your energy bills are increasing
- The temperature in your home is uncomfortable
- You’re constantly having to put the heating on
- You can feel draughts around wall sockets
1. Your Energy Bills Are Increasing
The first sign you might need to update the insulation in your home is that your energy bills are increasing.
While the cost of energy has increased dramatically recently, the energy price cap in the UK means that you should still be able to gauge whether your energy bills are increasing due to poor insulation.
Having a smart meter is a good way of tracking how much energy you’re actually using, as the in-house display lets you easily compare your usage with previous months.
By using a smart meter, then, you can determine trends in your usage, and figure out how much energy you’ve been using in order to make your bills increase.
That said, if you’re using more energy than you normally would just to keep your house at a comfortable temperature, this is a clear sign that you need to update your home insulation.
2. The Temperature In Your Home Is Uncomfortable
A clear indication that you need to update your home insulation is if the temperature in your home is uncomfortable.
Any temperature extreme feels uncomfortable in your home, and this applies to both cold and warm weather. A comfortable temperature in your home is around 18-21°C during the winter.
As such, if in winter the rooms in your home feel freezing, or if in summer they feel uncomfortably warm, then this is a clear sign that your insulation could need updating.
To measure any dramatic differences in temperature in your home, it’s a good idea to invest in a high quality thermostat to gain a better understanding of how energy efficient your home is.
If the thermostat is showing sudden dips or temperature increases once the seasons change, then your insulation is something that you will want to investigate further.
3. You’re Constantly Having To Put The Heating On
Another sign that your insulation likely needs updating is if you’re constantly having to put the heating on.
House temperatures in winter will naturally drop, especially when you consider that ‘less than a third of UK homes have updated their insulation in the last 20 years’.
That said, constantly having to put the heating on just to keep warm is a sure sign that your house isn’t retaining heat very well.
Having your heating on constantly not only has the potential to wear out your boiler and cause it to need more repairs, but will also drive up your energy bills very quickly.
That said, feeling like you need to put the heating on more regularly often indicates that your insulation could do with being upgraded.
4. You Can Feel Draughts Around Wall Sockets
Last, but not least, if you can feel draughts around the wall sockets in your home, then this is a sign that you need to update your home insulation.
While there are ways to draught-proof your home, such as draught excluders, if you’ve got sub-par insulation, the cold air in the walls will push its way through any gaps that it can find.
Draughts are a sure way to waste heat, and if you fail to draught-proof your home, it will continue to decrease in energy-efficiency and you’ll continue to spend money on extortionate energy bills.
As such, if you begin to feel a draught, it’s important to get to the bottom of the issue and investigate your options for improving your wall insulation.
Hopefully this article has given you a better understanding of the signs you can look out for to determine whether it’s time to update your home insulation.
Written by Jemima Thomas on behalf of Towy Heating, leading suppliers and installers of domestic boilers and home insulation in South Wales and Carmarthenshire.
Article provided By Towy Valley Heating
