The £0 fixes that cut a home's biggest bills, before spending anything on anything else

It's tempting to jump straight to the big-ticket fix — new boiler, new windows, loft insulation — when a bill feels too high. Those can genuinely be worth it. But there's a shorter, free list worth working through first, because a surprising amount of wasted heat and money leaves through gaps that cost nothing to close.

Bleeding radiators is the classic example: a radiator that's cold at the top and warm at the bottom has trapped air reducing how much heat it actually puts out, and fixing it takes a radiator key and two minutes. Checking boiler pressure is the same story — most boilers have a simple gauge, and running below the recommended range means the system is working harder for less heat, for reasons that usually take thirty seconds to fix.

Draught-proofing the obvious gaps — letterboxes, keyholes, the gap under external doors — is barely a cost at all (a roll of draught excluder tape is a few pounds) but the heat loss it stops is constant, all winter, every year. Closing curtains at dusk rather than after dark, and keeping furniture away from radiators so heat actually reaches the room instead of the back of a sofa, are the kind of habits that don't show up on any invoice but do show up on a bill.

None of this replaces a genuinely failing boiler or single-glazed windows in a cold climate. It just means the free fixes are worth doing first — not because they solve everything, but because they're the only fixes where getting a second opinion costs nothing.