How flooring can help keep your energy bills down
At a time when we are all looking for ways to save energy and reduce bills, it’s worth remembering that, for a lot of homes in the UK, one of the leakiest places energy-wise is your floor. This can be for a number of reasons – anything from the depth of the ‘crawl space’ under the floorboards to badly-fitting flooring. And while you can’t re-floor the whole of your home, it might be worth looking at the worst-offending areas to see if you can make improvements that could make a difference.
Installing good underlay
Like any method of reducing cold air coming into your home – or warm air leaving, your flooring needs to be close fitting. For many types of flooring this can be achieved by a good quality underlay.
Not only is a new underlay important for the lifespan and performance of the carpet, but it is also a good insulator and can reduce cold air coming into the house and reduce the amount of warm air leaving.
Many of our carpets come with our award-winning Combi-bac® backing, which work perfectly with all types of underlay. Its soft and flexible construction will help to stop the disintegration of the underlay over time.
But you can use underlay with other types of flooring too – particularly under laminate and wood flooring. This helps to keep the warm air inside your home, provides an important layer between your flooring and whatever is underneath, and can also extend the lifespan of your flooring.
Think about deeper-pile carpet
Carpet is a great choice for insulating homes. Well-fitted carpet runs from wall to wall and is properly fixed to avoid any cold air coming in. Our award-winning 100% Carefree fibres are also very long lasting, so no patches or wear and tear that thin your carpet out and let the cold air in. The deeper your carpet pile, the better insulated your room will be, so if you’re considering carpeting your living area or bedrooms, take a look at the deep-pile carpets available.
Consider vinyl and LVT
Of course, there are areas in your home where deep-pile carpets isn’t the best choice – kitchens, dining areas and bathrooms, for example. For these areas, you might want to consider modern vinyl and luxury vinyl tile (LVT). These types of flooring are close-fitting, hard-wearing and long-lasting. With either foam or felt backing available on the latest cushion vinyl products, you get an added layer of insulation as part of the flooring, as well as a wide range of contemporary patterns and designs.
Professional fitting
One of the best ways to ensure that your flooring is doing a good job of insulating your home is getting a professional fitter in. Unless you are an expert DIY-er, laying your own flooring is a bit of a risk. There may be areas where the flooring doesn’t fit exactly – often an issue in older homes – and you will be surprised at the amount of cold air that can home into your home from a small space. Just a little extra investment will help you to achieve a perfectly-fitted floor that can help your home stay warmer over winter.
