or is 13 degrees a warm enough home.

[BlackBag]

DH does n't feel the cold. So we have the Spring duvet (8 tog) on the bed and never the whole thing.

The kitchen thermostat is 13 degrees and the woodburner get the sitting room up to 16 sometimes.

The children run around and don't seem to feel it. The cold makes me sluggish, irratable and depressed. If I'm running around tidying up it's ok but once I sit down at the lap top or to read a book I feel like my brain is grinding to a halt during the winter time.

DH is a DIY kind of person but tends to ignore all advice to fit extra radiators or get a proper plumber in to get the ones we've got work properly.

AIBU to want a warmer house.

Dear Gloria,

Thank you for your post, sad though it was. Am now even more determined to make this a warm home. We have been 'getting on with it' for the last few years, this year I'm going to throw some time, money and expertise at the problem. I'd rather then a warm happy home even if we have to cut a few corners then a holiday/special treats.

We have a problem getting our house much warmer than 17 degrees when it's freezing out. I also get very very cold and can't sleep until I have warmed up - that used to take an hour or more under a heavy winter duvet.

Then I bought this: Dreamland 6870 Ready For Bed Fleece Heated Mattress Protector, from John Lewis'.

It is brilliant: heats to toasty in 10 mins and you can heat your own half of the bed separately!! My dh hasn't even plugged his side in whereas I use it most nights during the winter.

Anyways, hope you get the house a bit warmer - 13 degrees is good for a brisk walk with coat on, not for sitting in the house.

Zukie

www.ebico.org.uk/

email is [email protected]

Perhaps you would be able to switch to Ebico (thus paying less for power from then on) and start a separate, new, far more reasonable arrangement to pay Hydro back, with the help of the local Council or Citizen's Advice Bureau?

At present, seems like Hydro are clawing back around 80% of what you put on the meter. That is not on!

13 is tropical compared to my home! I haven't had heading for 2 years... I totally relate to your sluggishness etc during the winter - I just want to hibernate!

Gloria, I am so sorry about your mum, as you say, you just don't think this will happen.

Asteria, and those with very cold houses (who don't actually like it), is it the money factor that puts you off getting extra heating? I stopped using electric blow-heaters as an 'extra' form of heating and use oil-filled radiators. They seem quite cheap and one medium sized one heated a vast room for us with high ceilings when our heating broke recently. You could just heat one room really nice and warm, then get an electric blanket for the bed (the one recommended sounds like my one with separate sides for each partner so you can set your own temp at night). It seems odd that so many people are so very very cold when there are so many forms of heating available now, not all of which are extortionate (I can understand not heating the bedrooms, but the living areas?)

This is way too cold, I have the thermostat higher for the cats when we leave them and much higher for when the humans are in but we are going to get cavity wall insulation to keep the costs down.

13 degrees is how we leave the house when we go on hols in the winter! Definitely too cold but dh does go crazy when I put it at 26. Today I have it on 24 and am about to go and get one of dh's jumpers as I'm still cold!

GloriaSmut, how very sad. I'm so sorry about your mother

We have battles like this - my response is to find a small room, plug in about 3 oil filled radiators and wait for everyone to join me.... Doesn't take long!

Interestingly our central heating packed up over the winter and so we relied on the electric heaters and our fuel bill was actually less than when we use the central heating and it was much warmer. Might just use them permanently!

ours can go down to 13 during the day and if it's above 4 or 5 outside, it's often warm enough to have the door open. but at night I need it 18-20 when sat in front of the telly. or if it's zero outside, it needs to be 16-18 before i start to feel warm inside. snuggled up under a duvet at 13 though would be ok for me.
yanbu though cos being cold is miserable - get yourself a personal heater and keep it all to yourself

I also found this section on Ebico's site.

"Careline: 0800 622 838

Information about special services for the elderly, disabled or chronically sick. Open 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 2pm on Saturday."

I don't know if that would apply to you, or if it's only to actual customers, not potential customers.

Its about where our house is, BUT woodburner gets Living room up to more like 18-20. Have you done the DIY radiator balancing thing? That helped when we had issues with a couple of rads just not warming up at all.

I wear more layers in winter and put an extra jumper on if I'm doing sedentary stuff.

YANBU to want a warmer home, but what are YOU going to do to make it happen?

another 20/25 here - but I do like to have fresh air in during the day if that makes sense.

Don't like stuffy.

Try to leave it off at night unless its freezing and have a summer weight duvet.

Can't sleep if I have cold feet and hate to wear anything in bed.

I like to feel free and unrestricted me.

Hate to dress up in loads of layers when Im indoors.

I don't know if it's been mentioned as I haven't read all the comments but I learned today that women are four times more sensitive to cold than men. Might be worth pointing out to your dh that just because he doesn't feel cold doesn't mean you don't. And I'm very surprised he isn't cold at 13 degrees, he must be baking at 21, the recommended room temperature!

Gloriasmut So sorry about your mother :(

To blackbag - If you are not comfortable with that, then you're definitely NBU.

Your house sounds very similar in temperature to mine, but with the difference that our living room is generally warmer, at 18-20C with the wood stove going. We have the excuse of Winter temperatures like today's (-29C) though!

We do like cold bedrooms and thick duvets, rather than keeping the whole house warm, and when we first wake up in the morning and the wood stove needs re-lighting, it's generally dropped to around 10C everywhere...

Re: Ebico (it was me who posted but had to run to a meeting so v.short...) they are a non-profit organisation that buys energy from Scottish electric and sells it on to consumers.

They have several unique benefits in addition to not being for profit. There is only one unit price for everyone - so you pay the same whether you pre-pay or whether you are billed. You can be billed however you like at no extra cost - monthly, quarterly, on line, on paper, in advance. the unit price is a flat rate so, unlike other suppliers, you do not have to use a certain amount of energy in order to get a better price.

I think the background is that it was started by a bishop who was concerned about fuel poverty. As it's not for profit, the prices can be held as low as possible. I just changed to them - not the cheapest for me in my area and with a metred supply but cheaper than my previous supplier plus the inequity of charges to pre-pay customers really makes me grrrr. The more people who join Ebico, the more power they have to drive the prices that they can negotiate with Scottish power down. you can't access Ebico through switching sites (though they appear on them), you need to contact them using their website.

It does amuse me that, theoretically, if everyone joined Ebico we could nationalise the power industry again!

I never realised that pre-pay customers pay more - how on earth is that fair?! Surely that's penalising the people who can least afford it? Is Ebico just for scotland?

No. I used them down in Southern England.

"I never realised that pre-pay customers pay more - how on earth is that fair?! Surely that's penalising the people who can least afford it?"

Yup, that's the way it works!
It costs money to be skint, in lots of ways. This is a prime example.

Also, if you've got you're electricity meter on emergency it costs even more. and let's face it, who's going to be on the emergency more often - the rich or the skint? hmm, let's see ...

Another great thing with the energy market is that if you're off grid and heating by storage heaters (as one tends to have to if you can't afford to install oil central heating) you also get shafted. You can't access the cheaper rates for dual fuel customers because you only use electric, albeit a lot of it. And in the past I found that our tarriff, Total Heating Total Control which is designed for storage heaters and is very expensive, increased by a higher percentage than the regular tarriffs. Fair? Er, no.

Another example. You can only get grants towards installing insulation in buildings with cavity walls. Which buildings need it most? You guessed it, solid walled buildings - no grants available.

Is 13 degrees the actual temperature or the thermostat temperature? Our thermostat is in the hall and 13 degrees is about what we usually have it set at. That usually equates to an actual temperature of 18-19 degrees in the living room. It's on 13 degrees at the minute and the actual room temperature is 19.3. 18-19 degrees is colder than lots of people have their living room but is perfectly safe and comfortable.

I'd be surprised if your DH and kids weren't cold at 13 degrees. It's also lower than the background temperature of our quite draughty Victorian house - without heating on the living room is about 15 degrees unless it's very very cold outside. I think it's unlikely that the actual temperature is 13 degrees - do you have a room thermometer?

Whoops, ignore my last message just seen your room temps on the previous page!