More hot weather has returned to the UK this week – and it’s set to stay hot. According to the latest Met Office forecasts, London has already hit 33C forecasts at the time of writing, and it’s hot all week, with a range between 28C and 31C from Wednesday to Friday, followed by a ‘cooler’ weekend at 26-27C.
It does mean that lots of us will be looking for any way to keep cool and reduce the temperature in our house, preferably as cheaply as possible. While fans don’t actually cool your rooms down, and air conditioning does work, but is very pricey to run, people are increasingly looking for cheap and easy solutions to bring the temperature down.
And, of course, homes in the UK are largely built to trap and keep heat in, thanks to our usually moderate climate, which certainly doesn’t help. But there is a little known trick to keeping your house cool which needs only a £1.20 roll of tin foil or kitchen foil – such as that sold in Asda as well as other supermarkets like Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Aldi.
People desperately trying to keep cool have urged others to roll out kitchen tin foil and spread it in your windows, especially any windows in direct sunlight.
Normally, when direct sunlight shines through a window, it magnifies the heat of the sun and makes your house even warmer – this is how greenhouses work to keep plants warm inside.
But foil works by reflecting the sun off the window, sending it back outside instead.
Other options include keeping your windows open but your curtains drawn, blocking direct sunlight from entering. But this will still warm your room slightly through the curtains, whereas foil reflects the sun more.
You may remember that foil reflecting heat works in winter too, after people were advised to hang strips of tin foil behind radiators to help them reflect their heat into the room.
The other advantages of tin foil or ‘aluminium foil’ are that it’s non-toxic and it doesn’t melt until it hits 660C, so even in a heatwave, it’s going to manage perfectly fine with hundreds of degrees to spare and you don’t have to worry about the foil melting in the sun.
Other tips to keep a house cool in a heatwave include:
Opening windows and doors only in the evenings, to allow cooler air to circulate through the house, but closing any windows and curtains which face direct sunlight in the daytime.
You can also place bowls of water through the house in different rooms that will evaporate and help keep the air temperature cool. House plants also keep a home cooler. They act as natural air conditioners, regulating the temperature of a room by generating moisture into the air in a process called transpiration.
You can also turn off appliances that aren’t being used. Every appliance, such as an oven, toaster, laptop or a PlayStation, could generate small amounts of heat on standby that all contribute to the general heat level of a house.
The same goes when charging items like your phone, the small amount of heat generated could help warm a room slightly so it’s best to charge at night.
Energy saving LED lightbulbs will also help cool your house. Regular lightbulbs such as Halogen produce an enormous amount of heat as they light a room and several Halogen lights or spotlights can warm a room up quickly at night.
Try swapping to energy saving LEDs and keep lights off as much as possible – which will also save you money.