Like many home maintenance things you need to pay for, there are certain times of the year when it’ll be cheaper and easier to tackle them. Your heating system is no exception. If you want to amp up your comfort levels for winter, now is the perfect time to tackle the task.
Why should you update your heating system in the summer? The benefits are two-fold: if you start sorting out your system in the spring or summer, it’ll definitely be done in time for the cold winter plus it’ll probably cost you a lot less to do your updates when the weather is warm.
Here are some things to consider when you’re planning to upgrade your home heating:
Seasonal prices in spring and summer
When we’re not thinking about a product, the suppliers tend to offer discounts in order to encourage us to shop out of season. For example, you can get bargain swimwear in the winter compared to during the summer holidays. And this seasonality is no different for radiators – they’ll be cheaper when we don’t need heating during the hot days of summer.
Wondering when is the best time to buy radiators? If you’re planning to revamp your whole heating system, look around for the spring and summer sales to get discounts of up to 50% off. Perhaps you want to change all your old radiators for some lovely heritage-style column radiators to up the elegance in your home? Or do you simply want to stay warmer next winter by upping the output of the system?
If so, you can use a BTU Calculator to find the ideal radiator for the size of each room in terms of watts. This allows you to choose radiators that aren’t too small to keep you warm but crucially aren’t too big either – that way you won’t be using more energy to power the system than needed, saving you on your winter fuel bills too. Once you know what you need, snap up those modern designer radiators for a fraction of the usual cost via seasonal sales.
Better availability of specialists
In the summer, it’s likely that there will be more heating engineers available to work on your system. Often, they can become very busy in the autumn and winter so you won’t be able to book an engineer as easily, and certainly not for a long job such as renewing your whole system.
Engineers become more busy at the end of the year because, when we switch our heating back on when the temperature drops in the autumn, that’s when we’re more likely to notice a problem with the system and will need to call out a specialist to put it right.
Plus, many of us like to get our boilers and heating system serviced before we turn it all back on in the winter, so many engineer appointments will be taken up with these annual checks. If you want to get a head-start on your heating, book your service now so that you can take advantage of the less busy summer months and it’ll all be done and dusted before the cold weather comes.
Add a little extra comfort
In the winter, I find that there’s nothing nicer than having a warm, fluffy towel to wrap yourself in when you get out of the bath. So, if you want that level of luxury during those cold, dark days, now is the time to install a heated towel rail in your bathroom.
This might sound like a bit of a project but actually it can be quite a simple upgrade. You can switch out an existing radiator and add a bathroom towel rail within the loop of your heating system – just make sure the width of the new rail is a good match for the old radiator and the pipes should fit easily without too much adjustment.
Or, you could add an electric heated rail, which won’t need plumbing into your system, it just needs installing with the correct bathroom-proof writing and fixings. Alternatively, there are freestanding towel-warming rails available that you can move into any room of the house. Again, when the sun is shining, sales of electric heaters drop so you might find a good price for this type of heating product too.
It’s a good time
The way I see it, there’s never a good time to be without heating in the winter. Shivering while your system is shut down for maintenance or replacement is not ideal so, if you know you want to make some upgrades to your system, do it in the summer when you don’t really need it.
This also helps you to spread the cost – in the winter your monthly budget for heating will be eaten up by the cost of powering your system and will all be spent on your bills. But, in the summer, you might find that you have extra money in your budget that you’re not currently spending on fuel, so you can allocate it towards a new radiator or an annual service instead.
I hope that these hacks have given you some inspiration to tackle your heating upgrades now if you’re planning to refresh your heating system ready for winter. Let me know in the comments below if you manage to get a great deal on your radiators or installation, I’d love to hear all about your bargains!
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This article is a sponsored collaboration. The pink links in the content indicate a sponsored link or information source. The blog post reflects my own experience and the sponsor hasn’t had any control over my content 🙂
