How to Bleed a Radiator
How to Bleed a Radiator
Now that it’s winter, temperatures are dropping and will continue to drop, radiators are important to keep the house warm and homely. If the radiator in your home feels cold when you have the heating on, it probably means it’s time to bleed your radiator. When your radiator is not heating up it’s often because your radiator may contain trapped air that’s blocking its normal flow. The trapped air causes the radiator to circulate hot water less effectively and so less heat is emitted, meaning it will take longer to heat your home.
The bad thing about leaving your radiator if it needs bleeding is that you’re probably using more energy and therefore your energy bill will be higher than normal.
Its important to know that if all the radiators in your house are cold, it probably isn’t a case of just bleeding your radiator. This probably means you have a larger problem with your heating system.
Bleeding your radiator is a job you can do yourself, and we are going to tell you exactly how.
7 steps to bleeding your radiator
1: Turn on the central heating - Turn your central heating on and wait for your radiators to reach their maximum heat.
2: Diagnose the problem – Its normal for radiators to need bleeding every now and then. Signs such as the radiator taking a long time to heat up, or the radiator is colder at the top, are both signs your radiator needs bleeding.
3: Check all radiators – Assess each radiator in the house by touching the top and bottom, if the heat seems to be inconsistent then it is recommended to bleed that radiator.
4: Turn off your heating – Its really important to make sure the heating is turned off during the bleeding process. If you don’t turn the heating off this could cause a lot of water on the floor.
5: Release the trapped air – To release the trapped air you will need a radiator key and two rags. If you don’t have a radiator key, you can find them in most DIY stores. At the top of the radiator there is a valve, this is where you put the radiator key. As the air starts to escape, you should begin to hear a hissing noise. Use the rags to a) catch water drips and B) to protect your hands and arms. Twist the radiator key slowly anti-clockwise and this will release the air.
6: Shut the valve – Make sure to shut the valve quick enough so the water doesn’t go everywhere. Once air starts escaping, water will begin travelling to the whole of the radiator so if you don’t close the valve, water will leak.
7: Check the pressure – After bleeding the radiator, check the pressure gauge on your boiler. If its too low after bleeding, you will need to rebalance the pressure. Use your boiler manufacturers manual for instructions on how to do this. If the pressure is normal, switch your heating on and check there are no more radiators with cold areas.
How To Defrost A Freezer
How To Defrost A Freezer
Your freezer is one of the most important appliances in your home, keeping your food fresh and storing items of food for future use. Many new freezers have a feature called self-defrost, this stops ice building up. However, if you have an older freezer, you’ll probably have to do this manually.
If you let ice build up on the walls of your freezer, you’re not just reducing its efficiency, you’re also taking up more room, meaning space for more items is limited.
If your freezer is starting to look like an ice room, then you may want to follow these next recommended methods to defrosting your freezer. It’s important to remember that no matter what method you choose, make sure that the freezer is unplugged.
How often should you defrost your freezer?
No matter what type of freezer you own, it’s recommended that you defrost your freezer once every year, or when ice becomes noticeably thick.
Preparation…
Before you can start defrosting there’s a few steps you must take:
- Remove all items out of the freezer, keeping everything in a cooler or a second freezer if you have one. If you don’t have any space to put the items, then try to eat everything in the freezer in the weeks before you decide to defrost.
- Unplug the appliance and use old towels or something that is waterproof like a shower liner, this will soak up the water when the ice melts.
The methods to defrosting a freezer:
1: Wait for the ice to melt
This is probably the most obvious method, just open the door and wait for the ice to melt. It’s very simple however it probably takes the longest, especially if it’s the winter or you’re in a cool area. All you need to do is leave some old towels to soak up the water or mop the floor every now and then and you are free to get on with your day.
2: Use a fan
If you choose to defrost your freezer during summer, then this may be a good method. By using a fan, you will help circulate warm air around the freezer. This is the same as the first method, however the fan will speed up the process. This method will work best if the air is warm, hence why this is the best method during summer. This method still takes some time; however, it is quicker than the first method.
3: Use a Blow Dryer
This method can be dangerous, however if you use the right safety precautions this is perfectly safe. Make sure you stay clear of water, keeping the cord and the dryer away from any water or ice as this is a hazard. Don’t keep the hairdryer in one place as this can lead to your dryer overheating. The last thing is to ensure your dryer doesn’t get too close to the coils or sides of the freezer, this is because the heat can damage the inside of the freezer.
4: Place a bowl of hot water on the shelves
Again, to speed up the process you can place bowls of boiling water on each shelf, the steam from the hot water will melt the ice quicker. Once the ice starts to melt you can start to scrape the ice off the walls. You will have to replace the water every 10-15 minutes to keep the process going. To make sure you’re not damaging the shelves from the heat, place a towel under the bowls of hot water.
5: Hot Cloth and rubbing alcohol
If you’re looking to remove a thinner layer of ice rather than large chunks, then this method will be best for you. Dip an old rag in boiling hot water and pour rubbing alcohol onto it. Wipe around the ice on the edge of the freezer to loosen the areas. The ice should start melting quickly.
6: Using an ice scraper
This is probably one of the most popular methods to speed up the process of defrosting the ice. Just use a traditional ice scraper. Make sure to be careful when doing this as you don’t want to damage the wall of your freezer.
If you’re using a method that requires you waiting around, you can always use that time to clear out the freezer, get rid of any food that is past its expiration date.
A quick tip if you want to slow down the process of ice build-up; avoid over filling the freezer. The freezer needs space for cold air to circulate as this keeps things frozen and reduces the build-up of ice.
After you have defrosted:
Once all chunks of ice have been removed from the freezer walls you can place them in to the sink to melt completely. After you have done this it’s a good time to take the opportunity to give the inside of the freezer a quick clean with a piece of cloth and some soap. Rinse and dry and then wipe the door seals down as well for maximum efficiency. Once this is all done you can then restock the food content and plug the freezer back in.
If you’re tired of defrosting your old freezer then you may want to think of investing in a newer appliance with a self-defrost feature.
Dont forget here at Smart-Sure we offer fridge/freezer insurance from just £6.29 p/m. Get a quote today in seconds.
What is Excess Protection, and do you need it?
What is Excess Protection, and do you need it?
What do you mean by 'excess'?
If you make a claim on an existing insurance policy, for example your car, the excess is the amount you are required to pay towards the cost of a claim. When you take out the policy there can be two types of excess, either compulsory or voluntary.
Compulsory excess
When you get a quote from the insurer you will see a set excess amount. It is not always negotiable - it is the amount you will have to pay towards any claim you make. The amount of excess you will have to pay will all depend on certain factors, e.g. for a car it would depend on the type of car and your age.
Voluntary excess
This is an amount of excess that you can control and set yourself; some people add extra voluntary excess on top of the compulsory excess, as this can reduce your premium. Ensure you pick an amount that you can afford if you were to make a claim.
Paying excess for an insurance claim can be expensive, but there is a way to recover the excess cost - this is called Excess Protection.
For example, if you buy your car insurance policy with an excess of £400 and you have an accident that causes £2000 of damage to your car, the excess on your insurance policy was £400. Your insurer will ask you to pay that £400, and your insurer will pay the other £1,600. Once you’ve paid the excess you claim it back with your Excess Insurance.
By purchasing Excess Protection, you will be saving yourself from excess costs. For example, if you pay £80 a year for excess protection on an excess of £500, when you make a claim you will have saved £420.
How does it work?
It is an insurance policy that covers the cost of your excess if you should need to claim on another insurance policy.
If you claim on your insurance, you will pay the excess amount that you entered when buying your policy, but with Excess Insurance we will return the money to you.
What types are there?
There are two main types of Excess Insurance:
Single policy: This covers the excess on one insurance policy, for example your car or home insurance.
Lifestyle policy: This covers the excess on several different policies, for example your car, home and health policies combined.
How much does it cost?
The cost of excess protection always differs between insurers and will depend on things such as the amount of excess covered. If you have an excess of £200 on your policy, you will pay less for excess protection compared to if your excess was, for example, £500. Most insurers will start excess protection from as little as £2 per month.
Is it worth the cost?
Is excess protection worth the money? This really depends on how high your excess is compared to the price of Excess Insurance.
If the amount of excess is little, or near the amount you would pay for the Excess Insurance, then you’re not going to save money. The best thing is to get a quote and find out how much you would pay for Excess Insurance. If your excess is less than the price of Excess Insurance, it is not worthwhile. However, most Excess Insurance should be significantly cheaper than your excess - this is when it will be worthwhile.
Do you need it?
Excess insurance can benefit you if you have an insurance policy with an excess; for a small amount of money you can save yourself a large amount.
Excess insurance is especially good if you are hiring a car. Most car hire companies will make you pay a large amount of excess, sometimes up to £1000. If the car is damaged during your hire you will have to pay the excess. Excess Insurance can save you from paying this large amount.
Here at Smart-Sure we offer excess insurance from just 6p per day. You can protect an excess worth £1000 for just £100 per annum, saving you a whopping £900 in the long run should you make a claim. Get a quote today. https://smart-sure.com/excess-protect-insurance/.
How To Save Space On Your iPhone
How To Save Space On Your iPhone
While iPhones and most technology is developing every day, not all features are keeping up with our needs, for example the limited storage space. Whether you use your smartphone for photography, apps, music or just calls, when it comes to storage space, you’re likely to have hit a breaking point at least once in your life. There are many ways to get hold of more available storage on your phone, such as buying a higher spec iPhone with more memory, but this is quite an expensive option, and nobody wants to pay more money by buying a phone just for extra storage.
There’s nothing worse than when the “no storage available” message comes up, especially when it decides to do it just as you’re about to take a picture. The first thing you think of is having to delete all your favourite pictures, or your favourite songs from your music playlist.
You may not know it but there are many other ways to inch back some space on your iPhone without deleting the things that are important to you. Being ruthless with deleting files on your iPhone will always help, but there are several tips you can take up before you get to that stage. Here are some suggestions for a quick phone clean up.
Delete what’s taking up the most space
The first step is finding out what exactly is taking up the most space. Go to settings > storage > iCloud usage > manage storage, here you should be able to see a list, of every app in order and just how much space they are taking.
If you click on a specific app you will be shown two pieces of key information.
1: The amount of space used by the app
2: The amount of space used by the apps documents and data.
For example, if you were looking at your photos and camera app, it will tell you how much the app itself is taking and the amount the photos are taking.
You should be able to use this information in the storage usage section to guide you through your iPhone. Think about what apps you prioritise and what apps you haven’t used recently. For example, if an app you downloaded last summer is taking a lot of space and you haven’t used it in over a month, its probably not important to you, so think do you really need it? If you do delete it, remember you can re download it again whenever you like.
Delete Apps you have only used once
When you have looked through all the apps, there will be at least one app that you forgot was even on your phone and you probably haven’t used it since you first downloaded it. So be brutal and just delete it. By deleting a few apps, you can free up to 500MB.
Even if it’s an app you’ve paid for, your details will have been saved, so you can still download them at any time, free of charge.
Back up your most important photos
While photos and videos on your gallery may hold a lot of meaning for you, the reality is they do take up far more space than you realise. You shouldn’t delete these forever, however it is a good idea to back these up so that they are available to download at any time.You can use Google Photos, or iCloud to back up images and videos rather than storing your entire photo and video history on your device. Another option is to make a Drobox account linked up to your iPhone – as this allows you to back up your files directly from your phone, rather than connecting it to a laptop or desktop.
Don’t keep your double saved photos
If you don’t want to back up your photos and videos to somewhere like Dropbox, then I would recommend going through your gallery and deleting photos/videos that may have been duplicated, for example if someone has sent you a photo multiple times. Photos and videos that you don’t need anymore can be deleted, for example when you screenshotted a pair of shoes you wanted, and you bought them, you no longer need the screenshot right? Deleting photos, you don’t want, or need is one of the easiest ways to free space as photos can hold the most storage and you’re not losing anything by deleting them.
Stop storing text messages
Deleting conversations such as text messages or WhatsApp messages is a very good way to up your storage. When you take time to look you realise how many messages are on your phone. If you have conversations from over two months ago, or if you sent a lot of images on a text, then it will be hogging a lot of space. For example, you text your boyfriend all day every day on WhatsApp, you’re going to have a chat that starts from a few months ago and is still present, chances are you don’t need those 400 messages, or the photos either as they are already on your gallery, so deleting your conversations is a good option.
If you want to stop your phone saving texts automatically you can now go to your settings and change the amount of days your phone keeps them. To do this open your settings > messages > message history > keep messages. Here you can change “forever” to 30 days or 1 year.
Deleting old playlists
All of those songs you start to download soon add up, and unfortunately music takes up a lot of space. So, deleting songs that you don’t listen to anymore, or even playlists that you made a long time ago can help you earn back your storage space.
If you store music on the apple music app then deleting individual songs is a very easy job for you, go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage and find Apple Music on the list. You can swipe to delete individual songs, or you can swipe on All Songs at the top to delete all.
However, if you use a different app such as Spotify then it can be slightly harder as you will have to open the app directly to delete songs.
How we help
Don’t forget here at Smart-Sure we offer iPhone insurance! We use trusted engineers in many locations, meaning when you need help you are closer than you think to a helping hand.
Contact us via our website or call us on 03333 449 669 if you would like to find out more, our customer service team will be happy to help with any questions or queries.
motor breakdown article
Motor Breakdown Cover
Wherever it happens breaking down in the car is stressful, especially when there is somewhere you need to be. Whether it be on the motorway or on a quiet street road, break downs can cause panic, if you’re unlucky and on the motorway, it can be difficult to find help. Most drivers will experience a breakdown at one point in their lives and, therefore, feel that breakdown cover would benefit them.
What is breakdown cover?
Breakdown cover is sometimes known also as roadside recovery. It is designed to help anybody who drives a car, has broken down and is otherwise unable to get help.
Different providers will offer different types of cover, but the main aim is to get you back on the road as quickly as possible. Your car could be fixed on the roadside or it will be towed to the nearest garage for a repair.
Having breakdown cover will relieve some of the stress if you do breakdown as you know you are in safe hands and one call away from help.
What types of breakdown cover are available?
There are only two different types of breakdown cover to choose from but there are 5 different features that cover may have. The two different types of cover are standard policies and pay and claim policies.
Standard policies – Standard policies charge you an annual fee that covers you for the year. You are given a certain number of callouts per year, which will vary depending on the provider. This is a simple policy that a lot of people go for, if you break down a mechanic will fix your car at the scene or arrange for it to be towed to a garage.
Pay and claim policies – pay and claim policies are quite different to the standard policy, you call out a local firm to fix the car, you pay upfront and when the car is fixed you make a claim to the insurer to earn your money back. Depending on your situation this can sometimes work out cheaper for you, if for example you own an old car that is more likely to break down. As the car is more likely to break down you don’t know how many callouts you might need, this policy doesn’t have a limit for callouts so might suit you better.
Some breakdown cover policies include extra features, some of these are:
Roadside recovery - provides help in getting your car restarted at the roadside and getting you and your car to the nearest garage if necessary.
Vehicle recovery - includes all the benefits of the first feature, plus ensures you and your car are returned to your home or your planned destination.
Home assistance/home start – this feature restarts your car within a quarter of a mile of your home, this one can be more expensive, but it is very popular.
Onward travel - this option ensures you’re not disrupted by providing a replacement car or by public transport costs and accommodation while your car is being fixed.
European breakdown cover - if you break down abroad then towing, repair, accommodation and repatriation could be covered.So, do you need breakdown cover?
If you break down it can be extremely expensive to get quick call outs to fix your car, if you travel by car often then breakdown cover is a sensible option if you would rather be safe and not go through this hassle. Breakdown cover is highly recommended for people who drive older and less reliable cars, and if you often drive on motorways or quiet roads as you are more at risk of breaking down.
Cover may also be useful if you commute a lot for work, if you travel for your job or you’re a family, cover may be more expensive if you fall under this category due to the high number of miles you use.
Which cover do you need?
1: If you’re someone who travels but not too often on motorways with a fairly new car then basic cover is more suited to you.
2: If you’re someone who travels very often, with an older less reliable car, on motorways then its worth spending some time looking at different cover and buying a higher level of cover that offers more features.
Is my car protected or me as a driver?
Good question, this you can decide yourself. If you take cover in your name this will protect you no matter what vehicle you’re in if you’re breakdown, your even covered if you’re not driving the car, so if you travel in numerous different cars then this option is probably best for you.
If you don’t get cover under your name then you can get cover under the specific vehicle, meaning that vehicle is covered no matter who drives it. So, if you share a car with someone or more than one person drives your car then this option is probably better for you compared to the first.
European driving, can you get cover while in Europe?
Breaking down in a foreign country is even worse than breaking down in the UK, you’re stuck in an unfamiliar place with people that don’t speak your language and aren’t able to help you.
The answer is yes, you can get cover for breaking down in Europe. European cover offers you the access to English speaking people who can organise for you to get to the closest garage to fix your car, this allows you to get on with your trip without the stress of being stranded in a foreign country. Many breakdown companies do offer European cover, either as a stand-alone product or they will ask you to add it on to an existing policy for example your car insurance. If you are taking the car on a one off visit your best option is to buy a stand-alone policy.
How we help
Don’t forget here at Smart-Sure we offer Motor Breakdown insurance! We use trusted engineers in many locations, meaning when you need help you are closer than you think to a helping hand.
Contact us via our website or call us on 03333 449 669 if you would like to find out more, our customer service team will be happy to help with any questions or queries.
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