Local Focus winter hacks: Moving the hot stuff around

With winter making itself at home across the whole country, one expert says the most economical way to warm your home is to move the warmth away from your main heat source around the rest of your house.

Dr Nelson Lebo, Eco Design Advisor for the Palmerston North City Council, said the problem with New Zealand homes was that there was often one warm room with a great heater, but the rest of the house was cold.

Instead of buying more heaters, sometimes the more economical option would be to move the heat you're already generating.

Lebo said if you've got a wood burner, a great place to start was with an eco fan, an amazing Canadian invention where a fan generates power from the heat of the fire and spins faster the hotter the fire gets, pushing out the heat into your home.

The problem with older New Zealand homes, he said, was the higher roof stud where heat got trapped high up in the ceiling and wouldn't move down towards the bedrooms.

"Here's a $10 hack to make that happen involving a desk fan and a gib screw," Lebo said.

"Take the screw and put it in the top of the archivatry so no one will see it, loop the fan over the screw and point the fan this way [towards the bedrooms], plug it in and the warm air from the ceiling is going to be pushed down towards those bedrooms."

Lebo said if you've got a heat transfer system in your home it's probably not working to its maximum efficiency.

"Here's a $100 hack that will deliver 4-5 degree warmer air straight to your bedrooms," he said.

"The problem with the ducting that comes with your heat transfer system is it just doesn't have enough insulation to deliver warm air all the way down to the last bedroom, so we just put ceiling insulation over the top, which makes all the difference."

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