Bubble Wrap Draught-Proofing

I live on the top floor of a converted 300 year-old manor house. Unfortunately, planning restrictions mean that I have to put up with single-glazed sash windows, which have a howling wind blowing through them.

During the dark and cold winter months, I used bubble-wrap across the windows as secondary double glazing, and it worked just fine, but now the evenings are light again, and the temperature is rising, I wanted my view back.

Removing the bubble-wrap renewed the view, but I still needed to fix the draught blowing through the loose-fitting sashes...

I used the same bubble-wrap I had removed from the windows, plus some sticky tape.

I cut a strip of bubble-wrap about a hand-span wide, and a little longer than the window is wide.

I folded one-third of the strip over on the long edge, and tacked it in place with short pieces of sticky tape.

Note that the bubbles are on the inside - if they go on the outside, the draught will still blow between the bubbles and into the room.

I folded the opposite edge of the bubble-wrap over to make a three-layer strip.

I fastened it in place with more sticky tape - five pieces spaced along the length of the strip are enough for my needs, but you might need to use more if you're blocking the draught on a wider window,

I gently pressed the folded bubble-wrap to make a flat strip.

The strip is ready to go into place.

If your sash windows are made of single panes of glass, you simply lay the strip on top of the lower half, and press it gently into place.

Because my sash windows are made up of smaller panes, I could not lay the strip down flat, which left gaps the draught blew through. To fix this, I cut notches out of the strip to match the frames of the smaller panes.

That's it.

They're not super-pretty, but they're not obtrusive either, and they were effectively free. The main thing is that I have my view back without having to tolerate the draughts.