It was originally a four bedroom detached house built in 1990 which we bought in 2000, we added a single story extension on the back a few years later which tripled the size of kitchen into a single big room that doubles up as kitchen, dining room and family room plus a small utility room and a small study that was originally meant to be shared but eventually Mrs Q's ever expanding teacher's stuff ended up forcing me out.
Flog it back to the gas company.
Fill the empty space with empty water bottles, milk cartons, tupperware boxes and similar, applies to freezers too.
Hopefully it won't be empty for long.
The maths I've seen around these claims show that it's not worth bothering with if it takes any effort whatsoever. The difference in an active fridge scenario (eg: it's the one in the kitchen and it gets opened all the time) is quite slight once you factor in that the things you're adding into the fridge need to be cooled. There's also only a difference for appliances that are regularly opened, so for most people's freezers it really won't make any difference at all (and even less so for a chest freezer in the garage or summat like that). Also, never fill all the space in the fridge - the air does need to circulate.
First up, not everything going into the fridge needs to be cooled; except for shopping days, everything going (back) into the fridge is still cool. Our freezer is where we keep the ice-cubes and the bulk of the vegetables we eat so I reckon it is opened up to five times in an evening, and that opening sometimes involves extended rummaging so I'm sticking with my empty boxes thanks. Plus orphaned bits of tupperware are a thing of the past if they are hanging out in the freezer together.
Extra addition that if it's a modern freezer where absolutely everything is in a drawer, it also won't make much of a difference. But if it's a open-plan old style one and you open it a lot, I can see that being worthwhile to fill - added bonus that unlike with the fridge, the freezer doesn't really need air circulation so you can ram it in there. Mine's totally full, but that's because I'm a hoarder and not because I'm hoping to save 40p on the 'leccy.
Given we might have power cuts if of said for freezers full water bottles would be better, yes it will take some time to freeze but also adds a chunk of thermal mass to keep it cold longer.
I switch my 12v/marine fridge freezer off at night, in the winter, because we're off grid, we're only getting about 20 amp hours of solar now, because we're not far from the winter solstice, so we have to generate the rest of our power, switching it off saves about 30 amp hours a day. I have a lot of cool box/freezer blocks in the freezer and I've never had any problems with defrosting. I think a power cut of a few hours is nothing to worry about.
Last winter I accidentally unplugged the large chest freezer located in an unheated garage for a week and it was still below freezing -4 or -5 at the bottom. The garage temp was about 7C to 10C
It's going to be interesting if loads of people are in the same boat and ask for refund in April.
I think you’d have to line it with 4mm fibreboard or similar, which would then allow for painting / wallpaper to give a nice appearance. Wouldn’t work on curved surfaces of course.
