My heating was on for two hours yesterday…

[AchillesLastStand]

My heating was on for two hours yesterday, on in the morning for an hour and in the evening. We had one bath yesterday which the boiler heats the water for. We shared the same water. I logged onto Bulb to see the energy costs for yesterday, £4.50 for gas, £3.50 for electricity. It’s unsustainable if it goes up again in October. My 8 year old DS is under his bedcovers with his tablet because the heating has had to go off.

@Ionsion

We need to be proactive and start taking the government to task on this. They clearly don’t give a shit and are happy to sit back and let people freeze, starve and lose everything. Are there any protests planned?

I’ve never been to a protest before in my life but I would over this.

Sadly @AchillesLastStand that sounds about average to what myself snd friends paying

Was 120. Went to 140. Then 170 then told April will be 275 a month 😱

over 31 days that’s £9 a day roughly , yours was £8

Been so cold recently that heating needs to be on

Its worrying just to read about the worries people have.

What I see as a foreigner in the UK is two things. One is that houses are built in a way that they get cold very quickly. Thin walls, single windows with lots of draughts coming in. Lots of detached houses, low terraced houses. No cellars. All of this doesnt help with the warmth staying in.
Second thing I noticed, people were happy to waste money, energy, food or just about anything because they could afford it, to a degree I had never seen before I came to the UK /I come from a post-communist country/. I realise its not true for all the people but it was a something I noticed with people I au -paired for. I guess it has to do with Britain having been a rich country for a long time as someone pointed out earlier in the thread.

I have spent last 20 years thinking about all the cultural differences between UK and my home country. Reading about the energy prices worries it makes me think even more and its starting to make a bit more sense to me.

At typical town flat from 1900's in my country, on a second or third floor the warmer rooms orientated to the east wont drop room temperature below 16 even if its around 0 during the day outside and wont have the heating on for two weeks. Colder rooms orientated to the west and situated next to stairs and corridors wont drop below 14. It would likely get a bit lower when the outside temperatures drop below 0 which they do.
That seems to be a big difference to what so many describe on here or what I have experienced in England at winter time.

ColdSeptember - That conveniently overlooks the plenty of examples where homes are warmer at a lower environmental cost.

A private individual in the UK sitting in a home they're already spending at least a third of their wage on just to occupy wishing to heat that home on a day like today where the temperature is 6 degrees outside is being neither querulous nor entitled. And if it is beyond our collective power as a country to ensure that happens then we are failing.

I am happy to sit in the cold and will get a blanket or HW bottle but my son seems to think it’s ok to sit in shorts and T Shirt and have CH on full blast.
He has three or four showers a day he’s going to have to reduce it down

sod that for a game of soldiers. He needs to learn about saving resources (which is also saving money).
I grew up in cold houses, ice on the windows etc and while it wasn't fun it wasn't the end of the world. Putting on another jumper and using draft excluders for doors etc isn't an imposition it is sensible.

Just lately the Global North have been taught a few lessons about life: not relying on so much imported food, the real cost of eating out of season fruit/veg, that people hoard resources and are unbelievably selfish, that it makes no sense to have single suppliers for anything, that corporations (and other shady organisations) own the government etc etc

People should be more realistic and pragmatic. The only people who should be sitting around inside with only a t-shirt on in winter are the menopausal women who are currently having a hot flash.

@MrMrsJones

When I was a kid, we only had heating in the lounge.

People have got too comfortable with hot houses

and my best friend was one of these kids , hes tighter than a ducks butt , lives in a 1900s house ,refuses to put the heating on except when its so freezing he cant bear it anymore with the result that the whole house had constant damp and mould in various different places ,
just because it was like this how many bloody years ago does not mean that we want to live like that in 2022 .

The government have to help people and not just with loans. They have to help people insulate their homes

I'm in Glasgow and we took advantage of a grant scheme for external wall insulation - the scaffolding was just been taken down from our house last week. We paid a small percentage and they fitted insulation on every inch of the external walls of our house, then resurfaced it and gave us new windowsills.

I'm still sitting under my heated throw with a jumper on I have my summer and winter duvets on the bed as it's below zero overnight at the moment. I was so optimistic about the insulation but I think we need new windows, exterior doors and loft insulation before we'll see any real benefit. It's just all money, isn't it?

@Booklover3

It just isn’t acceptable or tenable. My energy bill almost doubled yesterday.

Mine too

Yy @chaosrabbitland not heating a house same as not heating a person leads to long term problems. The UK has a lot of damp houses. Part of that ofc is poor construction, single brick, single glazing and so on, also as I mentioned our problematic water table (we can't have cellars!) but especially with older houses it's also to do with them being inadequately heated for decades.

[quote MurmuratingStarling]@MyNameIsAngelicaSchuyler

The planet has limited resources and we’ve created a world where we take take take without replenishing. No one cares until it hits their pockets.

100% this. ^[/quote]
Yes, unfortunately.
Makes me feel sick. Everything seems to be so interwined in this global world and people have or feel they have no power to change anything

@PaperTyger

Electric blankets.

We've all got used to beautifully warm homes. the house I grew up in was freezing.
Ice inside window panes, wooly hat in bed, layers and hot water bottles a life line.

May be , but it's 2022 and we shouldn't be going backwards ,i bet Johnson , his chums ,and the fat cats at the energy companies won't have to wear extra layers.

Our house is insulated in one of the ways Insulate Britain has been campaigning for. For the last 10 years, we have had our heating on for 1 h 45 mins a day, when necessary. Thermostat shows temperature consistently at a comfortable 17-18 degrees.
Our insulation has saved us £££ over the last decade, and it'll be much appreciated now.
It is such a pity IB and others who have campaigned and tried to raise awareness of the benefits of insulation weren't lent a more listening ear earlier.

@ToothGrinder

Yy *@chaosrabbitland* not heating a house same as not heating a person leads to long term problems. The UK has a lot of damp houses. Part of that ofc is poor construction, single brick, single glazing and so on, also as I mentioned our problematic water table (we can't have cellars!) but especially with older houses it's also to do with them being inadequately heated for decades.

Thats interesting. I always thought that British houses dont have cellars because they dont need them with the mild winters. Thanks.

I don't see where the press quoted % increases are coming from as we were using 1.30 worth of gas a day and now will be 2.30 a day. 77% increase

It's an average.

Say you used 1000KWH of gas in a month.

Old tariff: 31 days @ 25 p = £7.75 in standing charges
1000 KWH at 4p = £40

So the total is £47.75

New tariff:

31 days@ 27p per day = £8.40 standing charge
1000 KWH at 7p = £70

Total - £78.40

Percentage increase = £78.40/£47.75 = 65% increase

But that's for a specific usage - and it will vary depending on how much gas you use.

I’m hoping this is finally the issue that kicks the tories out of power- it’s disgraceful and they are totally out of touch. This will be bad but October onwards will be horrific. Consider the fact that most European countries have taken action to make sure their citizens energy bills increase by about 5pc only. And that Boris boasted that energy bills would be reduced due to Brexit.

I have lost count of the number of green initiatives that seem to come from Government with a massive fanfare and then disappear shortly afterwards.

Our house was not heated when I was a child - when dionsaurs ruled the earth - you could run a hot bath, get in and the bottom.of the bath was still cold! I go round after husband switching off lights etc. Any little helps. I pay gas by direct debit, already in debit according to them...

I really don’t know what happened in my house yesterday but a circuit breaker flipped, the boiler stop working and when I looked at the meter it said 80kw of electricity for the day (we use less than 10 normally).

It is only the second day of the month I am already owing £17 in electricity just from yesterday.

Any electricians that could explain this mastery? It makes absolutely no sense to me.

AmusedBush, it is external wall insulation I'm referring to. But we also have fiberglass loft insulation and regular UPVC double glazing and front door. The combination is effective.

This does not make my other points null and void. A huge proportion of people are wasteful and lazy.

I’d love to see the statistical data for this assertion.

We have a smart meter, the charges seem the same as before (so I am mentally doubling every reading) when will they update to show the increased charges? Does anyone know?

Yes, we are very wasteful with our resources, and yes we should be doing more to lose less energy, but it's always the poorest in society who are expected to just suck it up isn't it?

There are people in the UK today sitting in their homes cold and scared about fuel costs, petrol costs, NI costs and food costs.

At the same time the wealthy will carry out with their lives totally unchanged. They will have multiple homes, private jets, throwaway wardrobes. their pets gets treated better than some people.

We are living in a country where the divide between the haves and have not is growing ever wider. During the past two years of covid the UKs wealthiest people grew wealthier at a faster pace than ever before. No one in the UK today should be so poor that they are unable to heat the rooms they live in. No one should be running out of money in their meters before the end of the week. It is shameful.

Using the argument that all of this is a 'good thing' because it's better for the environment is a red herring. The energy that the poorest people are consuming in their homes is a drop in the ocean.

@katepilar the water table is a massive issue in Britain. A lot of our houses are either old and shonky or new and shonky which doesn't help either. I used to live on a street where loads of houses including mine looked like they had rising damp. When people started ripping up the floors because of damp they found actual standing water there. This is a property hotspot. In fact all of those "delightful period properties" are built on dirt, no real foundations, single bricks and the water is literally touching the floor. Of course they are damp. They are still selling for half a million for two bedrooms though which is fucking insane.

The planet has limited resources and we’ve created a world where we take take take without replenishing. No one cares until it hits their pockets.

This is such a bullshit argument. Someone living in 3 bed semi, trying to keep it warm and dry for their family is expected to think about the resources they are “wasting” when towns and cities are full of buildings burning light and heat whilst barely being used. Industry pumping out co2 and heat into the atmosphere, using millions of gallons of water and tonnes of fossil fuels rather than investing in the green technologies that can be far more energy efficient and reducing emissions. But people think the solution to the energy crisis and saving the planet is for people to use hot water bottles and huddle in the living room round a single heater. Have a word with yourself.