Put wood in t'hole

[KnowtheBand]

This was a constant refrain of my childhood. Just in case, it's not rude, it means close the door!

In those days it was perfectly reasonable to have only one warm room (two including the kitchen) and keep doors closed to keep the heat in that room and avoid drafts. Bedrooms would be cold with plenty of blankets, thermal PJs and maybe an electric blanket.

Would it really be so awful to go back to that. Haven't we got used to being wasteful of both cash and natural resources but expecting the whole house to be toasty, even little used rooms and leaving internal doors open? Is this the end for open plan living?

Thank you - some good tips there!

The bit that is worrying me is the standing charge increases. No cutting back will reduce that.

I would have hoped we kept that low and helped the people who have to use a lot of energy with the cost.

I rent as do many others. No loft insulation and no double glazing. My dp is disabled and cannot work or keep moving. I don't put the heating on often at all. We are trying to move but it's tricky.

Here are the energy calculators fit domestic users, but I'm not sure closing a door is going to help British businesses.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/what-are-the-price-cap-unit-rates-/#tool

www.which.co.uk/news/article/energy-price-cap-rises-to-3549-how-will-it-affect-your-bills-aZkHR2p2t2P7

Here are the energy calculators fit domestic users, but I'm not sure closing a door is going to help British businesses

I know, and all at the same time as people will be cutting down on eating out and anything else non essential because they have had little or no pay rise and have far less money left for non essentials and the £14 pint or £60/80/100 for a mid range restaurant meal for two looks like terrible value for money out of a declining disposable income, and that's if you have the disposable income in the first place. Its a perfect storm.

I heard that a bit from other people, but the following 2 posts WERE my childhood 'were you born in a barn'??? & 'it's like Blackpool illuminations in here!' Generally followed by '..and how many time have I asked you to shut the bloody curtains when it gets dark!!'

I miss my Dad!!! 🥲

after I left home, when he came to my house he'd always say it was like an operating theatre! 😂

@KnowtheBand

I don't think it's terrible or unnecessarily wasteful to want the living areas of your house to be warm enough not to sit huddled under blankets or dressed to look like the Michelin man!

we might need to find other ways to achieve it more quickly, but wanting to be comfortable to move around the house isn't a crime in my books.

I lived here 4 years before I got the GCH put in & coming home to a very cold house was horrible (didn't trust the timers on the oil filled radiator. The OFT was pretty efficient at heating the sitting room, but it was miserable being cold in the loo/kitchen/other rooms. It made me not want to get on with things as it was too miserable so laundry would stay on the clothes horse, I wouldn't clean the bathroom etc, it all got done at the weekends, which in turn, made the weekends a bit of a misery too.

my greatest delight at the GCH wasn't the speed it heated the house up, or non freezing bathroom in the mornings or even cComing home to a warm house, but the freedom to move around my house comfortably in the evenings.

I don't think that makes me a terrible person.

i LIVE big, open plan kitchen/dining areas and actually would probably still do this, but only (now) if I had a small living room that could be made cosy. <dreams of openfire place>

@BarbaraofSeville

Except the OP is not about wearing Warner clothes, turning heating off overnight or turning lights off in unused rooms. It's about only heating 1 room.

I've read your plan for the internal cat flap on a few threads. Can you pist a photo when you've strong armed Him indoors to do it. Have you found a suitable cat flap yet?

@Creepymanonagoatfarm

No heating at all isn't going to be good fir your health or your house.

We used to have heavy blanket type curtains over all the doors and draught excluder sausages ! I think open plan livers are going to feel the pain as opposed to rooms that can be individually shut off. When I was growing up we didnt have central heating, and all water had to be heated in a kettle. Took forever having an all over wash in the tin bath ! Frost had to be scraped off the windows in the morning. I wont be going b ack to those days whatever the costs !

@stilldumdedumming I read the explanation for raising the daily standing charge the other day, it did actually make sense. It went something like... if they hadn't the price per kWh would have had to go up more & that penalises the least able to afford it as according to statistics they use more fuel to do the basic living things than those better off. (Those better off tend to have more fuel efficient appliances as well as go out more to eat, entertainment etc).

In our house I'm always asking others to close the doors. The conservatory door makes a draught and so does the kitchen door

@TooMuchToDoTooLittleInclination Yes I think I understand. I think what Martin Lewis was saying is that you could have vulnerable people and that would have to include those in poorer housing on a different tariff to make up for it. I am not convinced that would be workable but I do wonder how much working out the cost of an extra light bulb will do if the standing charge is so high?

I was only saying to DH yesterday that we needed curtains and a sausage dog stuffed with tights for our front door. He looked at me like Clem 🙄

Do I want to go back to those days? No.

When bedrooms had condensation and then black mould round the windows due to the cold and damp? The effect on breathing, etc isn't great.

To older people, small children and the most vulnerable struggled for the basics of keeping warm and well fed? No.

To have the simplest of meals, with the cheapest of ingredients that took the smallest amount of cooking? No.

I suspect you are remembering with rose tinted glasses of ideas of huddling round the fire watching tv together and handling under eiderdowns, blankets and sheets. The reality for the parents and grandparents back then was less rosy and much harder.

We shouldn't be returning to times where people were struggling for the basics. And yet we are.

Heating a house doesn't have to be terrible for the environment. It's ridiculous to suggest we all have to put up with cold and damp from now on to "avoid using finite resources". Our central heating and hot water are powered by air source heat pump. Theoretically can be totally derived from renewables. We plan to install solar +/- wind at home asap but obviously if electricity in the grid is generated that way it's the same outcome re carbon and fossil fuel usage. The answer should not be to go back to cold and misery but to fund new, greener technologies.

The irony is that despite having slashed our total energy usage our bill stands to go up way more than if we were still heating with a lot more kWh of gas because of the cost per unit electricity being so much higher than gas.