Cheap and Effective Seasonal Double Glazing

My family and I recently moved home which was just fantastic, once we had recovered from the stress of moving! As the autumn came and went and the winter weather started to creep up on us we started to notice the house was obviously getting more and more cold.

Having just bought a house money isn't growing on trees for us so we had to think of some cheap and effective ways to protect the heat in our house to keep ourselves not only warm but in good health as well. One of our big issues were our windows. Old sash windows. Very old sash windows! The draughts coming through these were astonishing, blowing our curtains and blinds in bad winds and we knew straight away that most of our heat was leaving the house via the big gaps in the old frames.

The obvious option is to buy new uPVC double glazing. But this is expensive and as much as these windows are cold I love the sash windows. They take pride of place in our house which was built in 1898 and just keep the original character alive. There's always the option of secondary double glazing, which is much cheaper than uPVC double glazing but for all the windows in a house can still add up to quite a cost.

I researched companies who can renovate the sash windows to their former glory, also adding additional brushes to block the draughts. This is not as expensive as buying all new windows but still above our measly budget.

Then I looked into seasonal double glazing, something I'd heard of but never seen or used. It also comes in many guises. You can purchase magnetic strips to put around the frame and each winter put up cast acrylic or even polystyrene sheets at differing levels of thickness to provide different degrees of insulation. You can attach them with screws, or seated into lips attached to the window frame. All these options are great, and not very expensive, although you will need somewhere to store this alternative double glazing during the summer periods.

As I mentioned though, we really don't have much money at the moment, and even this option would have been stretching our budget somewhat, so what else was available to us? Well, I came across seasonal double glazing film. It comes with a roll of double-sided sticky tape you can place around the window frame and a rather large sheet of film, enough for 4-5 of our sash windows. I can't give you an exact amount as we ran out of tape, it appears they don't supply enough tape to go with the amount of film provided. So we will be popping down to a stationers to try some tape from there today so we can finish off the last window in the house.

It's a fairly fiddly process to put up the film once you have the tape around the sides, but with two people it can be performed quite easily. Once the film is up, don't worry too much about the smaller wrinkles, as a quick run over with some heat from a hair dryer will tighten the film and like magic, all the wrinkles and creases will disappear.

Don't get me wrong, you will still have some heat transfer as this double glazing is only a very thin film of plastic, but it blocks the draughts brilliantly. Our heat is no longer being sucked straight out of the house and replaced by cool blustery winds. It's helped warm our house by a noticeable couple of degrees all by itself which has turned our house from being unbearable to slightly comfortable. Now with just a little heating applied around the house it's perfect and we're looking forward to a great Christmas season in our new home.

If any of you are out there and feeling a bit chilly due to old windows, seriously think about getting your hands on some of this double glazing film, it's made my family a lot happier in our new home and saved me from some more complaints about the cold!

How To Make Friends When You Move House by Emma Harvey

Sash Windows: To Replace or Restore by Eleanor's Words