Home DIY The Way You Fit Your Flooring Can Save You Money

The Way You Fit Your Flooring Can Save You Money

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Man installing wood flooring in home.

During autumn and winter, we can lose a lot of money trying to heat our homes. OVO Energy found that the typical small sized house in the United Kingdom will spend up to £465 per year on their gas. This figure hits almost £670 for medium sized houses and £900 for large ones.

Many of us face a difficult choice at this time of year – putting up with the cold or increasing our energy bills beyond our means. Why put up with either outcome, however, when you could be insulating your home more effectively be revising how your flooring is fitted? Make the right choice of flooring and you could be saving yourself money all year round – not just in the colder months.

Carpets

Many people will choose a carpet thinking that it’s bound to be the best choice for insulating their homes and reducing energy bills. While it’s true that carpets make for good insulators—they trap around 10-20% of heat in the fibres meaning that it can’t escape easily—carpets simply can’t do their job without suitable underlay. Make sure that your flooring is fitted with both underlay and carpet. This will allow it capture the maximum amount of heat and ensure it’s not simply escaping through your floorboards.

Vinyl or Laminate Flooring

Again, this comes down to whether or not you have underlay installed. While extremely resilient, these flooring options are prone to taking on the temperature of whatever they have been directly installed over. If you haven’t added any underlay, for instance, you’re likely to find that your vinyl or laminate flooring will be the same temperature as that chilly concrete subfloor. Underlays are affordable and can save you a lot of money in the long-run. Leader Floors has a tool that allows you to see how much you will need, and at what cost, depending on the square footage of your floor.

Exposed Floorboards

If you are mid-way through a DIY project, you may end up with exposed floorboards over winter. In order to temporarily prevent heat from escaping your home, laying down rugs and blankets can help to trap the heat in the room. If your exposed floorboards are staying as a design feature, it’s strongly recommended that you fit the floorboards properly by filling in any cracks and gaps with a silicone-based filler that can expand and contract with the natural movements of the boards.

Wood Flooring
When fitting wood flooring, you must again be sure to use underlay – but sometimes this step alone isn’t enough to prevent heat from escaping. We recommend that in rooms that are fitted with wood or wood effect flooring that you fit rugs in any areas that are prone to drafts. Rugs disrupt the flow of air at floor level, so a simple rug or carpet runner can contribute to keeping heat in your home in a big way.

By making sure that your flooring is fitted with the proper underlay and finish, and that drafty rooms utilise heat-saving decor such as rugs, you can keep the heat in your home over winter and save yourself plenty of money on costly energy bills.

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