Helpful home advice for the winter months

The winter months can put a huge demand on your home with potentially more chance of suffering an emergency or breakdown such as bust pipes, broken boilers and electrical faults. So it's important to be prepared


So here you'll find heaps of practical tips and tricks to keep your home toasty this winter, plus loads of other useful home advice.
 

Video Guides
 

Featured video: How to bleed a radiator

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Why not take a look at all our 'how to' videos with over 40 useful guides to help you out including useful winter tips & advice:

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BIG Freeze Guide

  1. Use kitchen salt & warm water to unblock frozen drains.
  2. Use kitchen foil behind radiators to reflect heat into the room.
  3. Leave your loft hatch open a little to stop pipes and tanks freezing in the roof space.
  4. Keep blinds and curtains closed to minimise heat loss through windows.
  5. Keep candles and torches to hand as power cuts are more frequent during the winter.
  6. To stop pipes freezing when nobody's home leave internal doors, even the kitchen sink cupboard open and central heating on low.
  7. Shut off all outside taps and drain standing water to stop burst pipes.
Need a Heating Engineer? Call us free on 0800 923 9090 - lines open 24/7

Don't forget plants, pests and our fishy friends

Here's some advice to keep pests away and plants and fish happy.

  1. Use cat litter as an alternative to salt to clear ice off your paths - it doesn't kill your plants like salt can.
  2. In winter we often throw food out for the birds, this can encourage unwanted pests like mice, rats and even squirrels. Use hanging bird feeders available from garden centres.
  3. Putting a tennis ball in ponds with fish before it freezes means you can remove it to allow oxygen into the water.

Worried about sharing your home with pests? Take out Pest Contamination Cover for only £3.49 per month.

Useful information

Take care this winter. Here's some useful links to keep you in the know about the weather and travel conditions in your local area.

Roads - Highways Agency


Rail - National Rail


Weather - Met Office


Airports - BAA



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