There's a lot of history and emotion tied up in this house.

I can completely understand how you are attached to this house which you shared with your late husband, and which you and your boys have been working on too. I have never missed a Christmas in that house! I am absolutely attached to places and it will be traumatic, I know, for me when mom is no longer in that house. I've been in my home 27 years, and my mother is still in the home dad built her before they married in 1951. I didn't make my moving suggestion lightly. Also in your basement, if you have one, you might see a place to shut off heat to a particular 'run' of ductwork, but that depends on how the heating system was set up when installed.So you do have a furnace? I took your question to mean that you were using a spaceheater only. On the registers you can slide a slider to close the louvers to shut off much of the heat. Forced air systems have ductwork which brings the hot air through the house through the registers. You didn't mention that you had a furnace in the first comment so I made the assumption that you did not have a (working) furnace. That's why I mentioned the general principle that heating single rooms successfully is dependent on your ability to close them off entirely with no air leakage. I don't have any idea about how your home is constructed other than the fact that you mentioned high ceilings which can be challenging to heat. Each room has rads that they adjust to be on or off depending on whether they are spending time in the room. They open and close these doors all the time when they pass from one room to the other. (I'm not talking about people nowadays over there who have ripped out walls and doors and created 'open plan' living.) I have friends in England who have a door on the kitchen, then a door on the dining room, and then from the front hall, a separate door into the 'lounge'. But their homes are built with individual rooms with doors everywhere that people actually use. You mention England, and yes they have that tendency to heat a particular area and not others. Perhaps if you live in a climate where the temperature never goes below freezing, you could cope that way. As a Canadian, I don't think I could survive a winter with a spaceheater heating one area at a time. I don't know if you're from northern Canada or down in Florida or not in North America at all. Susan, we have people on here from all over the world.

Caprine challenger