Without boiler cover, how would you keep warm?

Even simply thinking about a freezing cold house in the bleak winter is enough to send a shiver down the spine. Whether it happens in the middle of the night or in the afternoon when you’re at work, a boiler breakdown can be seriously frustrating. Of course, your first thought will be to get an engineer out to fix the problem, something that’s much easier to sort out when you’ve got heating cover. However, once this is arranged, how would warm yourself back up?

Recent research by uSwitch has looked into the ways the nation fight the cold in their home – and has found that many are becoming increasingly creative. More than half of those polled (52 per cent) said they’d wrap up in a blanket while sitting down to ward off the cold, while 37 per cent claimed they would leave their over door open after cooking a meal, presumably while huddling for warmth in the kitchen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 13 per cent of people would evacuate their home entirely and visit their friends, family or even the local library to warm up.

Perhaps most worrying of all, the research discovered that not everyone who would deploy these tactics would do so after choosing to switch off the heating, rather than having suffered a boiler breakdown. More than half of those polled – amounting to around 14 million UK households – said they had deliberately switched off their heating to save money at some point. An even higher number of Britons – 76 per cent of the nation – have at least rationed their energy use to save money on heating bills.

When it comes to uncovering the reason for such frugality, the comparison service blamed energy firms and their continuing price rises for leaving the nation shivering on its sofas. However, director of consumer policy at the website Ann Robinson also cautioned that Britons need to get used to thinking about energy in a different way to previous generations. "The impact on health and quality of life should not be underestimated. There really is no room for complacency – we must all start thinking about and managing our energy usage very differently to in the past," she remarked.

Of course, one of the best ways you can save money on your heating is to have boiler insurance in place, which allows you to call in the experts whenever you suffer a breakdown - without a nasty bill to worry about at the end of the repair work. By paying a small monthly premium, you’ll never have to worry that an unexpected heating howler will leave you family needing to huddle for warmth rather than tackling the problem head-on.