to think old houses are pretty and interesting, but not comfortable (energy bill up 4x)

[alittlethyme]

So I moved a few months ago from a modern terraced house to a detached cottage.

I thought the energy bills would go up a bit, but not x4! The last house often got too hot in the winter this house does warm up but overnight I get woken up with how cold it is. It never seems that confortable. I thought with double glazing, loft and wall insulation it would be fine but it isn't. I spend 150 on 3m of wood for the burner, this has almost been used up and this just heats the lounge!

Both properties are electric only and that has added to the cost I guess.

I hated how boring my last house was, but it was warm. Here is just so cold.

Get the windows changed as soon as you can. Is the loft insulation done properly?

As others have said, it's the detached nature that's causing issue. I'm in a Vic terrace townhouse. Thanks to good windows and a new boiler it's toast, but it helps only having 2 exposed sides.

we live in town and have a woodburner.

We haven't bought any wood at all yet. Dh has a chainsaw and he saws up old pallets, and scrap wood. We have 2 complete trees stacked in our garden to dry out, as when people were having them cut down we offered to take away the wood. If you use facebook and freecycle, you can get loads of wood.
The difference for us is that we can put the woodburner on whenever we like and burn as much as we need, and not worry about cost.

My parents had old draughty house.

1. curtain, thick lined long curtains over windows and doors.
2. dress properly, warm sweaters, slippers, dressing gowns proper pjs etc
3. fit a decent thermostat, so you can have it on at eg 10 degrees overnight and it automatically turns up to higher temp at 6:30 to warm the house ready for you to get up.
4. decent duvet. 15 tog
5. hot water bottle at night
6. hot shower int he morning to start you off.

Hire a thermal camera and record the house. This will show you where you are loosing heat so you can address it.

I live in a big old farmhouse which has been my family home for generations. When DW I took it over and parents retired a few years ago, we got a pal with a thermal camera to come over.
From there on we insulated the hell out of the loft, some of the walls had cavities so we got some insulation in, also the windows were quite bad so we had a lot of them replaced which had to be like for like as it's a listed building but the new ones are a heck of a lot less draughty as they are just better made.

Beyond that, get some central heating in - electric heating is the most expensive type you can have. Either go for oil or get a dirty great big range that'll do the heating and hot water too.
Thick curtains, draught excluders, make sure any wooden floors are sealed in between the boards to stop cold air coming in (they need ventilation from below to stop them getting damp and rotting).

You'll never be as warm as your modern terraced house though as detached (obviously) have 4 exterior walls rather than 2!

High ceilings really doesn't help.

if you think about it, the difference between 12 ft and 8ft ceilings is 50%. so, you have to heat 50% more volume, and you have to heat that 50% first (since heat rises). Of course, if you also have the floor above that heat goes to that floor, but it's still a lot of space that needs heating that you don't use.

We've just moved from a 20yo semi to a 1920s semi. High ceilings (and therefore tall windows) really don't help to heat this house. We have fairly new double glazing installed which although is well fitted, the sheer amount of glass causes a draught. We're going to put thick curtains up in the lounge to keep some of the heat in.

We have a log burner in the dining room, which heats the other downstairs rooms, but don't put it on too much due to buying wood. Once we've settled in I will have a big wood delivery into our garage but at the moment it's full of boxes

I also find keeping the heat on low during the day (I'm a SAHM) helps keep an ambient heat, plus I turn down the radiators in the rooms that do warm up quickly (upstairs in our house). Also knitting and crocheting blankets for the lounge, have bought fluffy socks and slippers too!

Blankets/ slippers/warm jammies.

I sleep in a jumper with two duvets and bed socks at the moment.
My flat is 165 years old. It's chilly.

I agree. I like in a freezing old house, 300+ years old. I dream of an ugly Barrett box.

We rented a detached Victorian bungalow and it was freezing.

The LL's moved back in and spent a lot, tens of thousands, upgrading the windows (those alone were £21,000 several years ago) and the heating system (another 4-figure sum) and now it's lovely and toasty.

I think old houses can be lovely and warm, but only if they have had many, many £££ invested in them to upgrade things.

In fact, these people went to work abroad for a few years to save up the money to do up the house including the ancient plumbing (another 4-figure sum).

Op you have my sympathy. We moved last summer from a large Edwardian semi to a smaller 1930s semi as we couldn't stand another winter in our freezing cold house. I was paying £250 a month for duel fuel (every month) with the heating on a lot but was ALWAYS freezing - even in the summer heat it was cold. I now pay £81 a month & love the warmth of the new house. It's smaller than what we had but we are planning to extend next spring. We tried a lot of affordable ways to improve the heat but to no avail!

Elevated ground floor tenement. 1908.

Fucking freezing.

Dd has to have an oil heater on her room. It's the coldest.

Seriously attempting to get someone to crack the insulation conundrum this year. Everyone seems to understand loft insulation but not basement.

Beautiful high ceilings and no double glazing doesn't help (I love it - we're in a conservation area)

I know exactly what you mean OP. We bought this ice box of a Victorian end terrace 5yrs ago this summer. What a bloody shock! Luckily we have an open fire in the front room, and multi fuel burner in the dining/middle room. We also have solid walls so no insulation, lovely quarry tiles in the dining room so pecking freezing on your feet and 9ft high ceilings. Huge tall draught windows.

My best tip is try Hotmax for your fire, they are made of wood and generate so much more heat.

Take a hot water bottle to bed, you will no longer wake up cold.

Dress appropriately. I currently have on jeans, vest, thermal t shirt, very warm hoody, normal socks, ski socks, proper soled slippers.

No idea what the temp is in here, our boiler doesn't have a thermostat.

C17 farmhouse here and very cold. Our 1800L oil tank was filled mid December and we've onto 3 now.
Massive log burner helps but my best buy is a long sleeved thermal vest

I'm hoping the stone walls will keep us cool in summer though.

I even have a friend who moved to Canada (yes Canada) because she was so sick of being cold. Now even when the snow is four feet thick outside she's nice and toasty warm in her lovely damp free house.

We live in a vary old house, we've found fitting secondary glazing has made a huge difference.

Another thing I can't recommend enough is wearing thermals! You can get nice ones that are actually very thin. If its cold I wear thermal leggings and long sleeved top underneath my normal clothes and you keep toasty warm.

You might want to consider external wall insulation - there is currently a £4000 grant to help with the cost. This doesn't mean you have to go with render - the insulation can be faced with brick slips or stone slips.

Ugh, we rent a v. old farmhouse which looks idyllic etc etc. and in the summer we really do live the dream but...

the WINTER is a different thing all together. We have storage heaters and 3 small open fires, one of which we use in the lounge and none of that does much. I've bought an electric radiator that screws in at the wall which works wonders and is actually v. economical but still, that's just one room.
We don't have any insulation or double glazing and there are huge gaps all around the outside doors.

Maybe look into a different meter and the radiators I mention. Sorry I can't be more help, but hey, let's start a thread again in the summer about how great our houses are and how we wouldnt ever live anywhere else!

I think old houses can be lovely and warm, but only if they have had many, many £££ invested in them to upgrade things.

This^

Upgrading our place about 5 years ago was almost £80k. Lovely and warm now though and in 10 years or so we'll have got the money back.

Be careful about not heating certain rooms and shutting them off. We did this in our very old, large detached house and it led to damp/mildew in those rooms. Now, we keep the heating on in every downstairs room, albeit very low.

That's why we keep the heating on all the time, at a low level. It prevents a lot of hassle later on... and ensures a certain level of warmth not coldness that we can put up with!

Yes, our previous house was a couple of hundred years old. Nightmare to heat and eye popping electric/gas bills. It was so draughty all the time

Our current house is 8 years old. Our bills are about a third of what they used to be

Also, OP, it's a spendy option but I'd look at upgrading your double glazing. We have sash window and live in a conservation area so can't replace with modern windows don't bloody want to either, they're hideous so we are gradually replacing the sash window glazing with modern micro-thin double glazing. When the company replaces the glazing they also add insulation around the moving parts of the window as well, which has meant a massive decrease in draughts around the windows. It's worth the money if you have it to spend.

IMO with an old house you probably have to get used to a lower ambient temperature than you'd get in a modern one, but there are lots of little optimisations you can make that gradually improve things. For example you can add insulating plasterboard to external walls if you don't mind losing approx 5cm off the size of the room - not a big deal if your rooms are a reasonable size, and makes a big difference if it's a detached house. Not so easy if you have very uneven walls though.

Again, the biggest minimal-outlay improvement we made was hanging door curtains everywhere, including over the front and back doors. We have pets, so couldn't just shut keep doors shut, and just having that extra layer to stop air whooshing about between rooms means that for the first time ever DH was actually 'too hot' in our sitting room the other day

Georgian semi here. Fucking freezing. I dream of a little modern terraced house!

Old houses are money pits. Not just the cost of heating etc, but maintenance is a nightmare. Ours is Grade II so not too bad, at least stuff could be done inside, but we can't afford to do anything to it, anyway.

Sadly its a rented house so can't do anything, will be lovley in the summer but its awful now. Not sure I can not heat some rooms, I tried that but ended up with a huge damp problem with the rooms that weren't heated

YANBU.
Old houses are lovely to live in, and fab in the summer, but in the winter either bankrupt you, or freeze you.

We have door curtains, secondary glazing on some windows, wood stove, one wall has been externally insulated... It's still not warm but it is less draughty.

If windows are draughty, put masking tape round the gaps. Made a huge difference in my old Victorian flat where the curtains used to billow in the draughts. Brr. Also...when it got vv cold I used to do what my dad called "student double glazing" which is basically a plastic film you stick onto the frame, use a hairdryer to get it taut (and thus still be able to see out). B and q etc sell it. It's not expensive.

But you're right, we moved from a Victorian flat to a modern house with underfloor heating and it is so much warmer, even with the heating on far less frequently. It costs less to heat our 4 bed detached house than it cost to heat a two bed flat. And I'm much warmer. Plus I'm at home a lot as I'm a SAHM. Dh had to talk me into buying this house as architecturally it's beige, to say the least and I love old houses (high ceilings, character, etc). I admit it's very practical but still don't love it. Once we are past these years with tiny babies etc, I shall be lobbying for us to move somewhere more inspiring. Even if that does mean we all have to wear an extra jumper.