No heating or hot water for over a week??

[MsMarvel]

Can a landlord do this?? Freezing cold, children in the house. What can I do to fix this?

Call shelter for advice.

I've been there. Renting is shit. You have my sympathies.

Its even shitter when its supposed to be a private housing association and you are meant to be protected from shit like this.

Engineer was meant to be out today, was told it would need to be after 4pm for me to get home from work. Guy apparently arrives at ten to 4, and leaves straight away. Obviously just wants to clock off for the weekend. So now nothing till Monday at least.

Have you got alternative means of heating? (Morrisons currently selling electric heaters at less than £30 and one oil filled radiator seems to be working better than my ancient central heating here) Try heating just one room if possible. Kid will be fine in bed, just put them in socks and a jumper in case blankets come off.

Do you have an electric shower? If not a kettle and bowl of water for a strip wash works but is not bloody fun at all. (student days. unheated bathrooms/unheated house exposing the least amount of bare skin as possible at any one time)

some houses can cope with little to no heating (eg my flat as Mr downstairs heats our flat too) some can't.

Sympathies.

We have two small fan heaters, but they appear to be instant heat. As soon as they are turned off its freezing again. And will be costing a fortune on electricity bill.

aha, housing association. Why am I not surprised? They seem to answer to no-one.

sorry, private LL haters. You'll have to suck up the bile on this one. A private landlord has to give direct contact details and is regulated against not fixing stuff. There is of course no defined time frame, because life's not like that, but private LLs don't tend to use the work-minimisation contractors set up with the housing associations.

That said, OP, have you got any electric heaters? Everyone should keep a couple on standby. They aren't pricey.

Sorry you have to rent from a housing association.

fan heaters are usually 3kw, so you can work out what they will cost. You will of course not be using gas, although that is a cheaper form of heating.

sounds like sod-all insulation in this place. What is the EPC situation, or are housing associations allowed to ignore that too?

A quick Google tells me that at this time of year they must repair your heating/hot water within one day for it being reported. Do they have an out of hours line? If they do, call and report it as an emergency repair. How old is your youngest child? When our boiler broke the HA had to get someone out within six hours of us reporting it because we have a child under 5.

I didn't have heating or hot water for four months last winter (private landlord).

For keeping warm tonight make sure all doors are closed to stop draughts, even doors to rooms you're not currently using. Shut all of the curtains and tuck them in behind the radiators, I know the radiators aren't working but again it cuts down on draughts. Layer up on clothes - vest, t-shirt, jumper - put on the most fleecy pyjamas you have and use extra blankets if you have them. If you don't have extra blankets them use towels, spare sheets, spare duvet covers and so on and layer them up. Have you made dinner yet? Sit in the kitchen while the oven is on, it'll be nice and warm, then once dinner so done and the oven is off leave the oven door open so you benefit from the warmth coming out of it.

Get an oil heater. Our place is very old and terrible for heat so we've had one in our son's room. They're meant to be more economical than blow out electric heaters as they switch on and off depending on the temperature you want.

I'm sure they're not meant to let you go without heating or hot water for longer than a few days.

Tarla could you link the info from your Google search? Would be good to have that info to take back to them.

Tomorrow night and Sunday night the forecast is below zero. Just feel totally fobbed off. They are now saying that because we weren't in to allow access (at the time we told them in advance we wouldn't be in...) then they are not responsible. Ffs I want to hang my head against a wall just now.

www.thetenantsvoice.co.uk/advice_from_us/heating-and-hot-water/

This was one of the places I looked, has lots of info from Housing Act on it and states you shouldn’t experience loss of heating during the cold season for more than 24 hours. Anything more than two days can be interpreted as a hazard to the tenant’s health and therefore a serious breach in the tenancy agreement. The 'cold season' is from 31st October to 1st May.

Ring and kick off, be very firm. I don't usually advocate kicking off but at times like this it's usually the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

Are your local council open on a Saturday? Their website will tell you. You can contact Environmental Health and/or the Housing Standards Team (they often work within the department). You've had no heating or hot water for over a week and with the weather it constitutes a hazard. They can force the landlord to repair it.

Tarla you are an absolute star. Going to phone environmental health tomorrow, and take it from there.

DSD is staying with her auntie tonight as its just too cold for her in the house. Both DP and DSD are asthmatic so its not ideal.

Have you got hot water bottles? We also kept one room warmer using a fan heater and have the kids hot water bottles for night time when we had no heating for days in winter.

Used to work for a HA- tell them you need heaters - and that you will bill them for additional electricity. It won't fix the problem faster but will at least mean you are warm (ask for oil rads)

You should be able to call your gas/electric company for them to fix this. Cover of your appliances will be part of lease agreement.

Sorry but whether you are renting or a homeowner if something is urgent YABU to expect the plumber to fit round your work commitments. After 4pm on Friday? you'll be lucky. Most HAs have an out of hours emergency service though, which may be worth a call. Buy some fanheaters and take the kids round to a friend for baths.

The plumber came at ten to four and then left immediately. He didn't ring the OP to say he was there, he didn't wait, he just left. I've had emergency repairs done before but have still had to do things like pick the DC up from school. On occasions where the repair person has arrived they've always rang to see where I am, I've confirmed I'm at school or whatever and will be there in five minutes and they've always waited.

I understand that it can't always work around our schedule. But when someone on the phone has agreed to our request that its after a certain time, then I expect that to be followed.

If they had said on the phone that it would not be possible to work around that, we could have tried to organise having someone to let them in, but as far as we were aware, it was not going to be needed.

The issue is that they are not classing it as an emergency repair, so will not be able to send someone out after 5pm, or at the weekend. This is where the main dispute is because I believe this now counts as an emergency.