Best insulate a 1930's cottage ?

[dave45]

You asked for best - this stuff is the best http://www.proctorgroup.com/products/th ... spacetherm - aerogel superinsulation.

Its just phenomenally expensive.

[Thomzo]

Getting a King Charles Puppy to sit on or next to you is not a problem however getting her back off you is another problem right enough but you are dead right she is a great hot water bottle they are well know as very lovable lap dogs that must have a much higher blood temp than our own as she is always boiling....

Hopefully she's better than this wet cat that's just jumped on my lap - yuk!

Someone once told me that a cat or dog generates as much heat as a 1kw fire. Not sure how accurate that is.

I resorted to putting a curtain across the living room door at the weekend. There is a perfectly good door that fits the frame well (almost too well it can be a bu99er to open sometimes) but if I shut it I have to keep getting up to let a cat in or out. If I leave it open, then I get a draught from the hall and kitchen. The compromise is a curtain that the cats can push through, or fight around.

Zoe

[scotsmart]

Zoe
You could be right our puppy sleeps in a crate at the side of our bed at night from roughly 10.30pm till around 5.30-6.00am and since being very young always has done, whereupon she generally wakes wanting out! after which she races back to the bed before whomever let her out gets there now just of late the past few weeks (really since Scotlands temperatures have quite significantly dropped) she instead of stealing your pillow (since being a tiny puppy she has given 1/4 of a chance fought to sleep on your pillow? which also helps to keep you warm a real live hot hat!) anyway for a while now she has been going under the quilt (you can feel her cold fur so she is outwardly cold) but with-in 5-10 minutes she is warming your cold toes/legs dependant on where she is lying so in view of this i would tend to agree with at least a 1kw fire but with far less running costs per kwh and in anycase far more enjoyment for your buck anyday....

As for keeping the heat in anyone room we have the same problems given that we have a cat and a dog, although the dog is 99.9% of the time glued to one or other of our sides, dependant upon whether im having a bad day and therfore a day in bed will depend on whether the door issue is a real problem or not, the cat on the other hand just screams if she wants in or out if shes not in or wants out of a room, where she is unable to get in/out of however given that really none of our doors shut properly due to being so badly warped it really isnt an issue for her/them only for us in attempting to keep the property semi warm? we have been promised new internal doors by our HA but dont know when, i mean not even our bathroom door shuts (my fear here is that one of the issues with this idea is we accepted this house and one of the reasons we did so was based on it having all original doors, hinges and locks even down to the big old fancy keys in every lock and now there is a great chance that they will ruin the interior completely by fitting horrible plain ply doors) no happy i have to say about that one, yeah it might help heating it but it will look absolute rubbish?

A small point to note we bought a velvet thermal curtain on the net specifically for going over a door that has amazingly cut down on the draughts coming in the front door (which we barely use anyway) so it remains shut most of the time, although we are going to change its current curtain rail to that of a net curtain rail or rod to get it closer to the frame and thus cut even more of the draughts down, we are considering (for nightime useage only of course) due to our double glazing being pretty poor in thermal qualities fitting adapted door curtains tightly across all of our windows and thus hopefully cutting a lot of the draughts from there also with the thought that every little helps if we can cut heat loss and draughts were hoping to save valuable heat, and for curtain and for rods to attach at around £15-20 a window should pay themselves off this winter in savings .... (i will let all know in due course the difference if any it makes when completed)

[Lost-in-the-Day]

Some of our double glazed windows let in daughts so we fixed the problem with gaffa tape along the broken seals. Obviously we haven't done that on all the windows as we still need some ventilation but it works well and is cheap.

[scotsmart]

Yeah the wee top ventilator doofers definately let in cold air but ive always been told you cant block these as there has to be some airflow getting in otherwise they will condensation.