If cranking the heating right up isn’t an option for you, but you’re feeling the cold, you don’t have to suffer in silence as there is a way to keep yourself warm.
As Martin Lewis says, it’s important to heat the person, rather than the home, and you can do this by trying one man’s hack – and he says it costs him just 10p a day, as opposed to using electricity, which can cost around 80p an hour.
TikToker @ndainternet shared: “Did you know that keeping an electric blanket on for four hours a day costs less than 10p? That’s 70p per week and £3 per month. Literally so much cheaper to run than putting the heating on trying to heat up an entire room.
“An electric blanket will keep you warm and cosy this winter”. He said that it’s important to “save money on your energy bills” where you can.
In the comments, some said that if you have your heating off and use an electric blanket as an alternative, “damp and mould will build up,” trying to claim that it’s not a good idea to heat the person and not the home. Someone also mentioned pipes freezing, but you can turn your heating on infrequently to avoid this.
To avoid dampness and mould, you can try the German method of Stosslüften.
One Reddit user has explained the concept of ‘Stosslüften’, which involves opening several windows for a short amount of time to create a draft. This not only prevents condensation from occurring, but as a result prevents mould and damp.
They penned: “In Germany, we have a technique called ‘Stosslüften’, or ‘shock ventilation’.
“What that basically means is that instead of having maybe one window open all day (which is a huge waste of energy), open several windows all over the house for three minutes, creating a strong draft to exchange most of the warm, humid air inside the house with cold air from outside.
“A cool feature about cold air is that it can ‘hold’ less water vapour. If this relatively dry cold air enters your house, it warms up. Being warmer, it is suddenly capable of taking up some of the extra humidity from inside your house.
“This might sound a little weird at first, but it is advocated in schools and so on. I use that technique, and it works. Do this several times a day, and you should really see a change. Maybe get a device to show you the relative humidity inside your house.”
Of course, it will be cold when you open the windows in your home, but if you can keep under the electric blanket while you do this, it means that you’ll be able to keep yourself warm, and prevent damp taking hold in your home.
Raymond Galvin, a researcher at the University of Aachen and Cambridge, echoed this when speaking to Politico: “The correct way to ventilate a home is to employ the Stosslüften, or shock ventilation method. You open your windows completely for three minutes if it’s windy, five to 10 minutes if it’s not.”
Of course, this won’t work for everyone, and it’s important to check behind furniture regularly for mould and dampness.
