Day 6: Improving energy efficiency in the home

When I'd spoken to my dad last week about energy efficiency in the home, he said that many buildings in the UK just weren't set up to retain heat - ours definitely fits into that category. We live in a Victorian house with sash windows. The windows to the front of the building aren't double glazed, and you can feel the chill blowing through if you sit near it, as such we tend to shut it off from the rest of the house most of the time and in the evenings just close the curtains and wrap up in blankets.

The silly thing is that the radiator is right underneath the window and so for those times that the radiator is on (the thermostat is in the warmest part of the house, so it's not on for too long) the heat is almost immediately lost. My dad suggested we try that heat retaining cling film you can get, but I was sceptical.

I bought it for around £7.99, and found it was relatively easy to fit. If you're planning on doing it to your windows take note that it pays to clean your windows first - if I placed the tape on dirty parts of the frame it wouldn't stick.

I painstakingly taped up all the panes individually and then magically shrunk the wrap so that it was almost clear and tight across each pain. As they're sash windows the breeze was also getting in through the joints, so I carefully filled all holes with tissue, so that you couldn't see it at all. I can't now open my window but we wouldn't want to until the summer.

The difference that glaze has made is incredible. I actually managed to heat up the lounge and not cover in a blanket all evening. I even went on to do the bedroom and my boyfriend complained it was too hot in there! Success!

Looking at our energy efficiency certificate our house is in band D, with the potential to be in C if we insulated the floors and walls. It also suggests that we could replace all lighting with low energy and save ourselves £51 over a year. It's not our house so we're not able to do much to improve this, but we can physically feel the difference from the film.

This is the product we went for - Stormguard Insulating Film. Unfortunately the website doesn't give any indication of the level of percentage reductions it can make to heat loss, it just states that it saves money, saves energy and saves the environment., so i'm not able to calculate any further. But the proof will be in the heating bill in a few month's time...