You need a smaller house or doors. Our house is 1200 square feet. My husband does have a 400 square foot art studio that we keep heated as well.

 

Makes sense to me! When we were in the big old farmhouse in Wisconsin we sometimes hung blankets across hall and doorways for just that purpose. The new house here in Arkansas is small and except for the bedrooms is one great room so it's not a problem anymore.

 

I've done it in the past, but not so much now.

 

Pooh...thought i am somewhat strange smile...
Just got a few "interesting" looks from US friends so far and started wondering if this is just a frugal German thing...
Smaller house is not possible, just bought his as a fixer upper for "cheap" and going to ramp it up for a nice living over the years...but i just cant crank heat up for a whole house...makes my stomach ache
Same with my car...
Always they on the mpg display and running races against myself if i can "beat/increase" my mpg value with next fill up (at 43 mpg right now)

 

Why don't you just install some doors?

SBJ

 

I don't but I guess I could. I took down all of mine for a remodel 20 plus years ago and only put the closet doors back up.

 

I have done the blanket hang many times. Even a sheet of plastic on beams from open floor plans to keep heat on first floor. I do keep bedroom doors closed. Mostly to keep pets out. We all do what works.

 

You might be better off buying some blue board and closing off the rooms you are not using by cutting it to fit the doorway. That way you can reuse it until you either install doors or heat the rooms.

 

I had my daughter do that in the last house she lived in. Also put plastic over the north side windows . That old house was a drafty hole. I shut the door to unused rooms.

 

My parents used to hang quilts in doorways of the old Victorian we grew up in. My sister was lucky because her bedroom had the chimney going up through one wall, we'd end up doing a lot of slumber parties in there when it was really cold, with towels stuffed under the doors. Plastic stapled to the windows too because we couldn't afford storm windows. Bread bags over the shoes instead of snow boots, the whole shebang

 

That is thinking outside of the box

 

We replaced our windows and put a thick layer of insulation in the attic. Used to be drafty enough we would plastic some windows but that isn't necessary for now. And the $300 worth of insulation made just as big if not bigger difference than the windows which cost a lot more. When the heat isn't rising out of the house, cold air isn't getting pulled in.

 

Hello...

I am wondering if this is a typical frugal German thing or if others do the same thing...

I am a frugal Dutch person and I do the same thing

 

Most American houses don't seem to be built with heating efficiency in mind. I kind of shake my head when I see a house with an open ceiling. That 14' tall unusable space still needs to be heated!

 

Usually people that buy those houses can afford to place beauty/aesthetics over practicality. (But they still complain about heating bills

 

Yes. Absolutely hang curtains in doorways to reduce heal loss down the hall.

 

Thx...what a relieve not to be alone "out here" haha
Cant wait to get that house air tight this year...
Still looking for an idea to separate upstairs with downstairs to minimize heat rising/exchange

 

Blanket hung at bottom of the steps.

 

I had a piece of that blue 1" insulation cut to fit the opening at the top of the stairs. A friend with construction experience was concerned about the central air conditioning coping with that. I'm not convinced.

 

I see nothing wrong with segmenting larger house off to cut down heat expenses and boundaries. just make sure you know where your pipes and such are and they get enough to not freeze and burst. but honestly, there doesn't need much heat to most rooms., though I am a hypocrite saying that personally. My house is almost 6k sq ft, and I keep it 78ish, and most of the space I do not hang out in really. just a few rooms. I have a closed hot water/register heat system, and I have turned most of the registers down but it is still a lot of wasted heat.

 

Meineke, I had to chuckle when I read your post because it sounds so much like me. I can afford to heat those rooms but the waste would drive me up the wall! I have to really watch myself because I've been know to spend more money to fix a waste then the waste would have cost but the piece of mind is priceless!

 

My parents were from Holland. The house I grew up in was built in the late 40's and was not at all open concept, There were doors to close off the dining room, living room, sunroom,and stairs to the second floor and stairs to the basement. Most of those doors stayed closed unless you needed to be in that room or using the stairs. There were storm windows on all windows, and in late fall some of the light north facing curtains were changed out with heavy lined ones that also reduced draughts. About the only doors that we didn't close were for our (childrens) bedrooms. There was a heat vent in the hall, and one in one of the bedrooms, but that was it. Thank goodness for heavy wool blankets.

 

Not anymore as I finished all the attic insulation today and have all the new interior doors in, low of 7 tonight.

 

We grew up in a one story house so no stairways. My mom used to hang blankets over our bedroom curtains to block out drafts. My aunt and uncle had curtains over the stair doorway and a hallway doorway. I always thought that was so cool. They were like heavy drapes.

 

We have a curtain before the stairs so the heat or AC doesn't go upstairs. Bathroom and kitchen doors are kept closed, too.
Have a curtain over the bedroom door to block more light, not heat/cold.

 

I hang quilts across the alcove doorway from my generally unused living room into the kitchen in winter to retain an extra 15 to 30 degrees in the occupied sections of my place during winter.

 

I try to keep my back bedroom at 10C I keep potatoes cabbages onions plus all the canning there. I just play with the amount the door is opened

 

My dad has always done this to either keep out drafty cold or just keep the rooms we were in cooler. And it's another reason I am anxious to move, current house has a really tall ceiling in the living room and it's always hard to warm up that room in winter. We keep unused rooms shut and block around the openings above and below the doors to help with drafts. Our house we are moving in to has shorter ceiling and seems to be better insulated. Already planning on making insulating thermal curtains for windows and will probably have a curtain for the hallway isolating the living room/kitchen area.