To think the long term solution to the heating crisis is for families to live in apartments rather than houses?

[misspontypine]

I have been reading the recent threads about the large number of families who can't afford to heat their homes.

It makes me so sad to think of people especially young children being cold in their own homes :(

I live in a very cold country (winter temps are bellow freezing for months and months and months and bloody months often below -10 and sometimes below -20. No matter what the weather homes are usually between 20 and 23 degrees and they are never ever colder that 18 degrees.

The difference between here and the UK seems to be that most families live in apartments or small houses. Everyone we know lives in a home with no spare bedrooms, I don't know anyone who has a dining room, the dining table is in the kitched or the living room. The homes here are generally much smaller with much less wasted space then English homes. (I do live in a capital city and I think there is a differance when you go out to the countryside.)

It would be seen as very illogical here to live in a house that you can't afford to heat. If a family had for example a 2 bedroom house that they couldn't heat they would move to a one bedroom apartment and the parents would sleep in the livingroom.

We live in a one bedrom apartment and our dc sleeps in our room, we plan on doint this untill he is 5ish.

I know that moving costs money but should the longterm solution to the heating cost problem be that families are encouraged to live in much smaller homes so that the heating and rent/mortgage is not so expensive and hopefully nobody is cold in their own home?

How much on average do you pay for heating OP?

We pay around 300 pounds for heating/water/hot water/broadband internet/cable tv/parking, ground rent/maintenance.

Our heating comes from the heat given off by local industry ( I have no idea how that works but it seems to work well)

I find that the desire to live in a house is very strong in the UK, I don't know anyone who lives in an apartment in the UK.

I think that heating is seen as equally as vital as food here, probably because of the extreme cold.

I know that families struggling with bills right now won't be able to move but maybe as an idea for the future small, well built apartments with fantastic parks and communal spaces would be a better option than rows of houses that some of the occupants can't afford to heat.

The biggest issue in the UK is damp, rather than cold. If you look at the poorly built flats from the 60s and 70s, you'll see why the idea of living in blocks fell out of favour in the UK.

Well built, well insulated apartments are all that's being built in my part of the country now (which is a pita for me as I can't sell my flat )

I suspect the fact that your heating 'comes off local industry' has something to do with how low your bills are too...

About six years ago I lived in a 'new build' flat. An old factory that has been completely gutted and remodelled inside. It was a largish one bed flat and had underfloor heating. We rarely used the heating however, as it was always lovely and warm. I suspect that we were kept warm by neighbours having their heating on? However, I had dd1 in that house and I was quite precious about the house ending warm. I think it was well-insulated, high spec, and consequently very toasty.

I now live in a 4br semi, about 10 years old. Despite having crap double glazing (apparently offering little thermal value according to the survey. We keep reasonably warm and have only hit boost on the heating about three times so far since the weather turned.

We keep unused rooms doors closed, ESP bathrooms as they tend to be colder. I am cooking tuna pasta bake for dinner and have made a cake. The oven has seemed to keep our openish plan kitchen, diner, living area nice and warm.

we live in a council house. very old, very cold. we cant afford to move and we canrt insulate either.

we al.so have to eat. ive been selling bits of furniture, and car b a bit of spare cash to heat our place for even 10 mins a day, weve stocked up on socks, hats and scarves for the wnte as I really cant afford the heating.

apartments are just as cold, weve lived there too. its the blood energy companies ALL hikin up their prices and the bloody Gov too not giving a toss.

Sorry in london and I am actually agreeing that houses need to be built better!

car boot, winter. sorry, old keyboard!

Our 4bed (new build) house is cheaper to heat than our (1950s ex council) 2 bed flat used to be. So yanbu, I don't see your argument at all, OP. Every flat I've ever lived in had had problems with damp so needed the heating on regularly. Where do you live, OP? I don't think brits are obsessed with living in houses. I know lots of non-british Europeans who live in apartments yes but who have country houses/farms/log cabins to go in summer which is very unlikely for most brits. Could this be an explanation?

My 4 bed house is cheaper to run than any of our previous (smaller) flats. That's simply because it is newer and of better build quality than the Georgian, Victoria, Edwardian and 1930s properties we previously lived in.

Building energy efficient houses and retrofitting existing houses is the solution.

From your description my guess is you get heat via combined heat and power schemes? Are you in Central Europe?

I have to say our apartments have always been easier to keep warm than houses - I think there's less air circulating and you don't get an influx of cold air every time someone opens a door. We just moved out of a house back to an apartment for this reason BUT British blocks of flats are mostly crap, unless you have a very new build one. It's to do with insulation. Granted we currently reap the benefits of 2 floors heating from below and the floors above insulating us but we also have double glazed windows amd very little wasted space.

So yes, well designed flats could be a solution but there are precious few in the UK!

We used to live in a tiny 2 bed (2nd bed was box room, could just fit single bed). It was new build.

My DSD was miserable there. She couldn't go and play anywhere without us (no garden) she was cooped up in a tiny TINY space. No room to put her toys. It was always a mess because we had too much stuff and not enough space. She couldn't really have friends over.
In short, we did not really have much of a family life.

It was also always cold, and very, very damp. Mostly because there was nowhere to dry washing other than inside the flat.

Now we live in a 3 bed house. It is victorian and it does get cold. We use hot water bottles, jumpers, and have a fireplace.
We are extremely happy here. We have 100% better quality of life, that is not an exaggeration. Honestly there were times when that depressing, poky flat make me feel awful.

Also - my understanding is that the people hit hardest by the heating crisis is Older people 0p who are often housed in small, one bed flats or bungalows.

I hope the bloody dickheads in charge of the country aren't reading this thread. Buildings a load of highrise boxes and cramming us all into them with high rents.

My mother lives in a flat, it's utterly freezing. Completely depends on the type of flat, outside walls, ground floor or upper etc etc.

So if you are rich and can afford high heating bills live in a house. If you are poor you'll live in an apartment.
This is generally what already happens in every major city.

And why would anyone with a family choose a communal garden over their own space? I can let my 6 year old out into our garden unaccompanied, I'm hardly likely to want to do that in a communal garden that anyone can access.

I don't think UK homes have 'wasted space' either, we have tiny homes generally compared to other countries.

URGH flats.
I would never buy or live in a flat if I could in any way help it

I'm moving out of my two-bed apartment in a month. Baby number two is on the way, and with two dogs in the household, we have come to the conclusion that apartment living is far too much of a squeeze and a real drain on our sanity. Spacious house here we come (we do have solar panels, though, to offset any guilt).

Sorry I didn't mean all European flats don't have wasted space just that our current apartment has very little wasted space compared to our previous house (also European). We have a small hall/vestibule type thing, a small corridor which runs the length of the flat and the rest is living space. Our house had a big hall, stairs, landings on each floor etc - UK terms of habitable m2 our current place is about the same but 20m2 smaller overall.

When energy was nationalised with a Gas Board, Electricity Board etc there was never any heating crisis (?fuel poverty) in the UK. Just saying...

What, like those blocks of flats in The Soviet Union?

Yes, we could all live communally too

So people used a reasonable amount and it didn't keep getting priced out of their reach. I was a child around the same time btw.

I live in a ground floor flat of a converted house built in the 1880's/1890's. It's flipping cold during the height of summer and Baltic in the winter.

Flats are not necessary the answer.

hate flats, love being able to go in garden and hang washing out.

The British are obsessed with living in houses. British building regulations were until recently woefully inadequate with regards to heat efficiency, but they're two unrelated problems.