'I tried viral £1.20 radiator hack to keep heat in and results were unexpected'
Heating hacks have been going viral this winter, and we're here to find out if they actually work.
The UK has been battered by severe weather throughout January, with the snow and ice that many parts of the country faced last week turning into blustery winds and lashings of rain this week as back-to-back storms Isha and Jocelyn hit. With the weather this miserable, all we really want to do is curl up in the cosy warmth of our homes and wait for it all to blow over - but with the cost of living crisis making our energy bills more expensive, it's not always that easy.
This winter has seen heating hacks go viral as people search for ways to keep their houses warm for less, and one such trick claims that you can make your radiators more efficient for just £1.20 by ensuring more heat is kept inside your walls instead of being lost to the bricks. But does it actually work? That's what I'm here to find out.
Kitchen foil should bounce the heat back into your room (Daily Mirror)As someone who works from home in a room with three external walls and a flat roof, I know a little something about feeling the cold indoors. Winters are spent wrapped up in just about every warm piece of clothing I own - Oodie and heat-up slippers included - and for days when I really can't stand it, there's a small portable heater I can use without putting on the central heating for the whole house.
So, when I heard people on social media claiming that you can stop heat from being lost behind your radiator, I was all ears. All you have to do is stick kitchen foil - commonly called tin foil, or aluminium foil - behind your radiator, with the idea being that the heat will bounce off the reflective surface of the foil and back into your room. The trick - which has even been backed up by experts - is supposed to be extra effective if your radiator is mounted on an external wall, which mine is, so I was eager to try it myself.
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As life hacks go, it's pretty cheap; you can buy kitchen foil for as little as £1.20 from Asda. But does it really work? To find out, I had to do a little bit of science with a £5 room thermometer I bought from Amazon. I'm not entirely sure how accurate it can be for just £5, but it did the job well enough.
To start, I took two days of readings without any foil behind my radiator so I could get an idea of what I was working with. I'm not a millionaire, so having my heating on all day is out of the question - we have it on for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. Because of this, I took my readings at 8am and 6pm, when the heating was on.
I tested this hack out last week when the south coast where I live was enduring frosty mornings and temperatures as low as -4C, although we were thankfully spared from the snow. On Monday morning, when it was 3C outside, my inside thermostat read 16.1C with the heating on, and when temperatures dropped to 1C in the evening, my heating got my room up to 15.8C.
Unfortunately, the foil didn't make much difference to the room's temperature (Daily Mirror)Tuesday was another control day with no foil, and in the morning the inside temperature only managed to reach 14.7C, while the outside was a freezing -4C. At 6pm, when things had warmed up outside to 3C, my bedroom was reading 16.0C.
With these temperatures in mind, it was time to line my wall with tin foil and see what happened.
I took my second set of readings on Thursday and Friday, and I have to say, the results are not what I expected. On Thursday, the outside temperature at 8am was -3C, and I was pleased to see my thermometer reading 15.2C, which is warmer than the temperature readings I got on Tuesday morning - although not by much. However, at 6pm, despite the outside temperature warming up to 1C, my radiator had failed to raise the indoor temperature by a full degree compared to the morning, as it was 15.8C in my room.
Friday was a similar story, too. We were back to -4C outside in the morning, and while the temperature without foil had been 14.7C indoors, with the foil in place it was 14.9C - which I'll admit is warmer, but not in a way that you'd feel. In fact, despite it being 3C again at 6pm on Friday, my indoor temperature was reading 15.3C, 0.7 lower than the temperature without foil on Tuesday evening.
Verdict
So, does the hack work? It seems like the answer is no, but I do have theories as to why not.
As explained, my bedroom has three external walls and a flat roof, so that's four potential places for heat to very easily escape to the outside world. Putting kitchen foil behind my radiator may have stopped heat from being lost to the wall directly behind my radiator, but there are still two other walls and the roof to contend with.
Without covering my entire bedroom in kitchen foil - and spending a lot more than £1.20 in the process - I can't say for certain whether this hack works. It may be better suited to rooms with just one external wall, but I'm not sure it would be worth the faff if it only improves your heating by a fraction of a degree.
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