Cutting out cold in the kitchen

One of the coldest rooms in our house is the kitchen which has a whopping window on one side and a tiny radiator on the other that we hang towels in front of. Thought that a Radiator Booster might get some of this heat up over the towels and into the room and bought one from the Good Energy Shop. Neat little device but found that it blew the heat along the wall in the direction of either the fridge or the door rather than directly into the room. The Good Energy people were good enough to allow me to send it back.

Good find with the other fireplace

The other fireplace did not lend itself so well to a wooden cover and I spent forever with my head up the flue trying to measure where I could fit a Chimney Balloon which I’d seen on the Good Energy Shop web site. Having been sent back up the flue by Chimney Balloon to get a better measurement I spotted a metal flange which turned out to belong to one of two cast-iron plates built into the fireplace designed to slide across the flue just above the top of the grate – presumably designed by their Victorian manufacturer to block off draughts. Well they did know a thing.

Door draughts

Fitted a new Weatherbar at the base of the front door; there was a tiny label saying EXITEX on the old one and through Google I tracked down the company (in Northern Ireland) and a local stockist D F Wishart in Edinburgh. Cost - £13.99 plus VAT. Fitted new rubber seal around the top and sides of the door and tore off the old plastic strip in the door frame to replace it with the wonderful Atomic Draught Excluder Strip (‘The original copper alloy strip – guaranteed for 10 years’) Easy to fit and even without the ‘Atomic Springing Tool’ quick to get it into its optimum draught-sealing shape with a ball-point pen.