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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

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

74 replies

misspontypine · 21/10/2013 15:46

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?

OP posts:

Caitlin17 · 21/10/2013 21:32

Scotland is a bit different as we've had purpose built flats in the main cities since the 18th century and, especially in Edinburgh, purpose built Georgian and Victorian flats or divided Victorian houses are amongst the creme de la creme of the housing stock.

If I sold my 3 bedroom city centre flat I could probably get a modern 4 bedroom detached house with garage in the suburbs, with change to spare, but I'd never want to.

HesterShaw · 21/10/2013 21:41

Yes well, there were also more easily accessible fossil fuels to go round in the 60s and 70s. Not quite so much to spare now.

dementedma · 21/10/2013 21:47

We live in an upstairs flat of a converted house and its really cold. Ancient and inefficient central heating and bedrooms under the sloping roof leads to damp and cold. WD have put in double glazing and had the attic lagged, but its still bloody cold.

McFox · 21/10/2013 21:54

I agree with Caitlin. We're in a flat in central Edinburgh and these are really desirable properties. We have a lovely shared garden which is private and safe, and it's cheap to heat too - our energy bills are less than £50 a month. I love it here - its quiet, safe and the neighbours are lovely. I'm shocked by some of other responses, what a load of snobbery!!

Chippednailvarnish · 21/10/2013 22:01

It's nothing to do with snobbery.

It would be impossible to have the "small, well built apartments with fantastic parks and communal spaces" that the OP has misguidedly suggested, when we can barely build enough small badly built apartments to house the thousands of homeless families we have now.

Suggesting that we all move to smaller houses to ease energy bills is completely ignoring that fact that most people haven't got enough room to swing a bloody cat as it is. After all how many people on this thread have a spare bedroom and a dining room?!?

gamerchick · 21/10/2013 22:05

I have a spare room and a dining room. Pay through the nose for energy for this house though.

If things go the way they are I'll be giving this house back in a few years though... If I'm not forced to buy it that is.

dementedma · 21/10/2013 22:06

I would love a spare bedroom and oh, a utility room. We have one bathroom/toilet (no shower), one kitchen which we eat in, one sitting room, a bedroom for me and dh, a bedroom shared between adult dd1 and dd2, and a box room which fits one single bed and not much else for Ds. 5 adults and no inbuilt storage. I would KILL for extra space

OddBoots · 21/10/2013 22:07

I live in a mid-block town house, it's always lovely and warm and not too noisy, I love it.

Chippednailvarnish · 21/10/2013 22:07

I don't know anyone my age with either a spare room or a dining room.

HeadsDownThumbsUp · 21/10/2013 22:14

I think that saying URGH Flats I would never live in a flat if I could help it is snobbery.

I'm with Caitlin and McFox, there are lots of beautiful, city centre period flats and I would much rather live in one of those than some 4 bedroom thing in the suburbs.

Permanentlyexhausted · 21/10/2013 22:30

We have a spare room and a dining room. We also have a well insulated house and are just simply used to living in a house where the central heating is never set above 15 degrees (we also have a log burner and currently a free supply of wood).

foslady · 21/10/2013 22:30

So we should look to live in high rise flats and that will be the answer?

Just like it was in the 60's.....

mousmous · 21/10/2013 22:39

a agree it's more a matter of insulation (and lots of listed/old buildings where no secondary insulation or double glazing is alloud/desirable wtaf!) than fuel prices.
my parents live in another european country. fuel prices are much higher than in the uk. but the house is properly insulated (despite being old), triple glazed, efficient heating system, so their 5bec detached costs less to heat than the 2 bed newbuilt we used to rent.

HeadsDownThumbsUp · 21/10/2013 22:43

Just think of all those poor souls in Manhattan. Life must be awful for them.

HeadsDownThumbsUp · 21/10/2013 22:48

Idiots living in Park Avenue apartments when they could have a 4 bedroom house in New Jersey!

Laquitar · 21/10/2013 23:04

Are our houses really the smallest in europe? If you compare london with their capital cities? Wich countries? I m just curious.

I think that monkeymama makes a good point about having country houses and log cabins for weekends and they usually escape there.

SeaSickSal · 21/10/2013 23:10

Yes. Because moving families into 'apartments' worked so well in the 60s didn't it?

SeaSickSal · 21/10/2013 23:12

We have the smallest in all of Europe by quite some way. Ireland has the next biggest and I think they are almost double the size.

McFox · 21/10/2013 23:26

Saying "Urgh" to living in a flat is entirely snobbish! Some are horrible, that's a given, but not all are.

To each their own - my ex and I lived in a huge 4 bed Victorian house for a while and hated it. If was lovely but it felt too spacious, we rattled around in it and I didn't feel safe. I'm much happier in a big flat, especially seeing as my dh works away a lot.

NotYoMomma · 21/10/2013 23:33

its not snobby to say urgh, its not about the fact its a flat (ie one floor and smaller)

its the urgh at more potential for arsehole neighbours next you you bit also above or below, communal spaces that not everyone respects, it only takes a couple of awful residents to make life hell in flats

NotYoMomma · 21/10/2013 23:35

unless they are like mega posh kensington flats but most are not. we have some 1970s monstrocities in the north.

or 'trendy' flats on the quayside. no ta

fatlazymummy · 22/10/2013 00:11

I lived in a flat when my eldest was a baby - it was hell on earth. My downstairs neighbour used to bang on the ceiling whenever my baby crawled on the floor. One morning she called the police because he was kicking in his cot. I was actually afraid to put him on the floor.
Never again - I'd rather be cold than be afraid to move around my own home.

Notcontent · 22/10/2013 00:23

Me too fatlazymummy - would never live in a flat again exactly for that reason.

Agree that UK housing stock is very badly insulated. My tiny crumbling Victorian terrace is freezing. You can actually feel the cold air coming in. So very expensive to heat. But it there is very little I can do to change that. Would love to live in well insulated house.

KCumberSandwich · 22/10/2013 00:31

my one bed flat was so cold last year i had to move to my mums for a few weeks. this year i have a fairly large two bed house and i havent even put heating on yet.

i don't see how your suggestion is realistic at all.

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