No heat or hot water in rented flat with children

It's pretty mild out...

Hi Op, I'm in the same boat as you but at least I live on my own and don't have children. Been 3 days without heating and hot water. Plumber said he can't do the work until Tuesday. Landlord just suggested I buy an electric heater and boil kettles for hot water. I can't afford electric heaters but I don't want to piss my landlord off so I'll just have to grin and bear it. I hope you get sorted very soon x

except that OP pays through the nose, probably, for something that should be in good nick.

I'm not in UK. When this happened to me LL offered to put us in a hotel for one night. And arranged repairs immediately. He lent us heaters and gave us money for the extra electric costs.

And because we are a bit robust, we took him up so we could have one really good shower, and then did bucket showers for the couple of days until the hot water was fixed.

Have you been left any heaters ? Do you have an immersion or an electric shower?

Try ..
Boiling water in electric kettles.
Use hot water to make a warm bath.
Use hot water to fill hot water bottles.

Wrap 20 potatoes in foil and bake in oven for an hour.
Eat some and use others to place in socks.
Use warm potato socks to heat your beds.
(I remember this from reading Little House on the Prairie.)

Wear layers and some of them actual wool.
Woollen blankets and jumpers from Op.shops.

Visit local pool and have hot showers.
Does your council have facilities available in case of emergencies? Showers at sporting grounds, for example.

Use your camping gear. Below zero sleeping bags.
Drink warm soups.
Eat warm breakfasts.
Drive car with heater on.

Buy or borrow electric heated blankets and battery heated coats that out door workers use. Buy an electric heater for the living room.
Go to bed earlier.
Stay with family or friends.

Well obviously ideally he'll supply them but the priority is OP being warm. Having been in same situation last year I managed to borrow some from people on street until it was resolved.

But he’s a plumber, who’s come out on a Saturday? Pretty much what an emergency plumber would do?

Use your local gym or swimming pool for showers. Wear extra jumpersand socks. Keep moving. Get extra blankets.

Ask the ll for plug in electric heaters or to hire some. Do you have an electric shower, can you warm water up on the hob? Even if you were paying the parts might not be available until Monday.

Yes, if the landlord is hard up he can ask on Facebook to borrow some heaters because he needs to supply them to his tenant.

Local Facebook groups are good places to borrow things like plug in heaters and extra blankets. It's shit but don't think timeline is unreasonable.

You need to get some plug in heaters from amazon or argos

You think ITV and BBC would be interested 🤔

You are one of the reasons we sold our rental properties. The audacity.
Landlords are humans and cannot make this stuff happen faster.

I have home emergency cover on my insurance policy so they paid for heaters, a hotel and towards the cost of a new boiler when it transpired ours couldn’t be fixed.

It was just after Christmas, (sounds like we were both pretty unfortunate!) but that home emergency cover was an absolute blessing as they sorted a plumber asap etc which in the Christmas break for us would have been almost impossible and incredibly expensive.

OP needs to ask landlord for portable electric heaters at the very least imo

Parts take time. Ask him to get you a couple of electric heaters if you haven't got one. I assume you haven't got an electric fire or something? Thankfully it's not as cold as last week!

I think the landlord has acted reasonably promptly, and I doubt he could have got the problem fixed earlier.
Where I do think he has underperformed is in not providing you with electric heaters, and additional funds needed to run them.
It also wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect him to pay for entry to a swimming pool or similar so that you can all have hot showers.
My friend who lives in Housing Association property was left 2 weeks without heating one very bad winter, and only lent 2 fan heaters, which used all her electricity credit within hours, but private rents are higher and it’s reasonable for the landlord to contribute.

@Throwaway1999 sounds like your LL is doing the right thing and getting it sorted ASAP.

If the property was your own it would be the same time scale. Parts take time to order. The fact the plumber is his mate might mean it gets fixed faster.

Either buy yourself a couple of oil filled radiators or ask your LL to loan you some. Hot water - use the kettle.

Your landlord should supply you with an alternative form of heating. You can use a kettle to heat water for washing for a few days.

Last time my heating broke we used an emergency heating repair service and it still took 4 days to get the parts to make the repair.

One of the reasons why we got out of renting out a property was that actually half the time the tenants reported a problem, it was them being incompetent. I don't blame the landlord for wanting to come round first.

We had all sorts - the light isn't working, we need an emergency electrician (turned out to be a lightbulb that needed changing and the tenants hadn't actually checked this), the heating isn't working, emergency plumber (not switched on)

And yes sometimes we have been without heating as owner occupiers for a week. Especially this time of year, it's not that easy to get parts fast.

Its always a good idea to have one or two small heaters in the house for such emergencies. You can get small compact ones on Amazon. I have even taken one away on holiday when I suspect the hotel was not going to be warm enough (with suitable adaptor). This can happen to home owners too and takes the time it takes to get the parts.

I have boiler insurance with British Gas and I still had to wait several days for them to visit and then more days to get parts in to fix the boiler. I’ve also been a landlord and needed to find a boiler repair person/company myself and in the winter time of course their service are more in demand so these things will take time.

Landlord hasn’t done anything wrong as he came to check it himself the next day as sometimes it is a simple thing/quirk of the boiler that can be sorted quickly but even so the boiler repair guy came the very next day and you can’t magic parts out of thin air. I think YABU in your expectations. The only thing LL should do if he hasn’t already done so is provide alternative electric heating appliances.

I think the landlord has done a pretty prompt job - notified on Thursdsy, and hopefully fixed on Monday. I think you'd struggle to go faster if parts are required. And yes, we've had that long (and longer) to ger our heating back and running before.

In the meantine: do you have a hot water tank? If so, find the immersion heater switch - remember to switch it off again when not needed!!

Get some electric heaters - ideally provided by the landlord, but otherwise beg, borrow or buy some for yourself.

Can you go for a swim and have a nice hot shower there? And yes, your landlord should be providing heaters and covering the cost. What an absolute Cunt that he hasn’t offered

Google Section 11 of landlords and tenants act. It’s supposed to be legally done in ‘reasonable time 24-72hrs’