How long is acceptable to be left without heating?

[lostandforgotten]

Living in a housing association property and the heating has broken down this morning. I am more annoyed as it was already leaking brown fluid all over my worktops when the engineer came out to look at it and the part was supposed to have been ordered and it turns out it hasn't although I'm not sure if this part is the reason it's broken down. The lady on the phone says it will be tomorrow when someone can come out and couldn't give me a time, they've got till 4 o'clock apparently. They are also refusing to provide any temporary heaters and told me to put some more blankets on . I also have no hot water either expect the shower. It's snowing a blizzard out there aibu that this isn't acceptable and they need to do something today?

@lostandforgotten

I hate this attitude that crops up on Mumsnet frequently that if you live in any kind of social housing you should be grateful for it and not complain even if the roof was hanging off you should just be eternally grateful for any scraps they throw you because you're in a COUNCIL HOUSE don't you know . Like we are a sub species that don't deserve equal service the same as you would expect from a private landlord. I see it often on here and it's so damaging. Anyway, I didn't mean for this to descend into a social housing thread so I'll leave it here now. My friend says she has a couple of heaters that she can borrow me so I'll take the two buses across town to fetch them.

I agree, you pay rent and the HA are expected to carry out repairs and maintain the house.

Do you know what your tenancy agreement says about the length of time it says a repair should be carried out in? I've just checked my landlord site and it says they should come out the same day or within 24 hours if you have no heating,

I would definitely put in a complaint about the fact they did not fix the leak before the heating broke down completely.

My boiler broke down this morning, same as you, and it's not getting fixed till Friday which I'm grateful for.

HA is different to owner occupier. They have a responsibility and should deliver. 24hrs sounds pretty quick, but yes ask about alternative sources of heat. £30 to purchase plus running costs is not cheap. I know you are borrowing some, but they aren't cheap to run.

I do understand why you have been getting the responses you have though.

Also. I know HA is different but this:

In my experience our local ha is sloooooow with all repairs, even changing light bulbs can take months

Not from the op but seriously . The HA are responsible for changing light bulbs??!!

Also in a housing association property, 24 hours. Have been in the same situation last winter when it was Baltic, you have my sympathies.

To the pp who said "you have a hot shower so be patient " - really? She's supposed to sit under the fucking shower? Your privilege is showing my love.

@TierFourTears

So, this morning your heating broke, and they have already been out, identified the issue, ordered a part and will come back tomorrow? I think you are receiving really good service. Yes, tonight will be cold. Beg borrow or buy a heater to warm one room.

I agree. This is quicker than my insurance home emergency cover managed to get someone out when our heating broke recently.

in my experience our local ha is sloooooow with all repairs, even changing light bulbs can take months
Are they hard to reach or special light bulbs? Just interested!

@WhipperSnapperSteve

Also in a housing association property, 24 hours. Have been in the same situation last winter when it was Baltic, you have my sympathies.

To the pp who said "you have a hot shower so be patient " - really? She's supposed to sit under the fucking shower? Your privilege is showing my love.

My heating was broken for most of January. I was really bloody thankful that my immersion heater meant I could still have a hot shower. It'snot privilege to say that!

It's always a pain when heating or hot water goes off. Having even just one of these on helps in the short term.

The HA will have timelines for repairs, but it is simple here - if a part is needed then time is needed to obtain that part.

Having both the heating and hot water off will need a quicker response. Its lucky that someone else will be sorting this out. This thread has many homeowners who have had long waits for both heating and hot water to be repaired because of parts.

You just get by. Blankets, hot water bottles, we used family showers when ours went off or took ourselves swimming and used theirs afterwards. Ours (heating and hot water) was off for six days until we were able to get a whole new boiler installed.

@ChloeCrocodile

The landlord doesn't have a trump card over other home owners, they probably made the first appointment that was available

Landlords have greater legal responsibility than home owners. A person who owns their own home can choose to leave a broken boiler indefinitely if they wish. Landlords legally cannot. Which means things like boiler repairs may be more expensive (to get the next available person rather than waiting for a cheaper one). And it's rare that you couldn't find someone within a day or two, provided you are willing to pay enough.

Which the HA have done - someone is coming within 24hrs.

I have always had home emergency cover for things like this through my insurance, but it is rare to get someone out in less than 24hrs, even when you report the fault immediately and make the earliest possible appointment. I'm not sure what else the HA can do about this?

They should have fixed the earlier fault which possibly caused the heating to break, OP is definitely not being unreasonable about that! But now that the heating is broken, it sounds like their response is as quick as it can be.

"Like we are a sub species that don't deserve equal service the same as you would expect from a private landlord."

You are being treated equally to those with a private landlord and homeowners. The big difference with rented and owner occupiers is you won't have to worry about finding the money to fix your boilers.

I worked in a housing association for 10 years and have lived in a HA home. I think the issue is a lack of context with what happens if you are responsible for your own repairs.

We owned our home and the boiler broke down - in the snow. It was actually so cold that the pipes froze. We had two disabled children and a child under five. We didn't have the money to fix it so dh had to get on line and work out how to replace a part via you tube. It took him 3 days and us all living in one room with an electric heater.

There are so many families who desperately need HA homes as there is a huge shortage. Please try and be grateful for what you have.

Some people on here are so out of touch with the real world. £500 rent is 'not much' and 'very reasonable', yes it may seem like it to you but it is approximately 41% of my total take home pay per month for a full time minimum wage job! So to a lot of people it doesn't feel cheap.

What makes me laugh (bitterly) is your entitled strop about having to be without heating for 24 hours. Most of us on here are pointing out that if we were able to get our heating fixed within 24 hours we'd consider ourselves bloody fortunate and yet you're stamping your foot like some kind of princess whose daddy hasn't bought her a new pony

Do what the rest of us have to do in these scenarios: get blankets and hot water bottles.

Of course, if you ARE paying £500 a month for them to look after your heating, the service is indeed shit and for that money, a gold-plated boiler should be arriving within the hour, but if - as I suspect - you simply mean that you're paying rent - 🤷‍♀️

OP - I get that having no heating is shit. Mine has only just been fixed after being broken for a month.

But you can't expect the HA to do something that isn't possible. No one, whether they rent, run a HA, or own, can magic up engineers and parts, and cold snaps like this are when plumbers are in most demand. You genuinely have had a fast turnaround, and hopefully the problem gets fixed quickly (not always guaranteed, in my case it took several visits by different engineers to fully diagnose a fault......).

I don't think people on this thread have been bashing people living in HA homes, they've just been honest about how long it takes to get things like this sorted. No-one is expecting you to accept worse treatment than a private renter, but I think your idea of what a private renter would receive is unrealistic.

I've been without heating for 5 days in the middle of a bad winter, it was freezing. I walked around with a duvet draped over my shoulders and had 3 pairs of socks on. Nip to Argos and buy am oil filled radiator. Shit happens 🤷‍♂️

I'm glad you've managed to borrow heaters. I pay for homecare on my CH system with BG and they're not always coming out on time due to industrial action. It would help though if you got a more empathetic response from the telephone operator and they made an effort to get back to you to tell you what's happening. It's a service you're paying for when you rent a home.

There's a thread on here which makes me so angry 'Am I ever going to get a council house' where the OP has been without heating in her privately rented home since Jan 2020 and the LL won't fix it despite the council asking, she has a toddler also. I'm not in favour of people on limited income having to rely on private landlords.

I hope you get sorted soon but thankfully you can shower.

24 hours is pretty damn quick to be honest.
I've lived in private rental, Army married quarters and now my own home and I've waited longer than a week before now.

24 hours WITH the part is really very good. 24 hours to come out and look then order the part is usual in my experience, then add on a day or 4 or 5 fir the part to arrive.

It's shit it's happened in a cold snap but in reality when your boiler goes it's never a good time.

I'm in my own hone now with a combi boiler. When my boiler broke down kat winter, I'd just come home from a 12 hour shift and had to be back on work 12 hours later. I had no hot water as not even an electric shower here.

I had to wait 3 days fir a repair man to even come and look at it to work put the problem and oarts needed. I'm all O waited 6 days to be up and running.

I bought a fan heater from Argos and wrapped up and lived in 1 room for the week. I showered at work.

Crap and inconvenient but at least you have some guidelines for yournlandlord/HA to abide to. Us home owners have no such guidelines, nor much spare cash to pay for it. Our boiler gets fixed when we find someone available to come out at a price we can afford. In a cold snap boiler repair men/women are as available as rocking horse poo.

Boilers die, usually when you need them the most. It's always crap and always inconvenient. 24 hours is really very fast to get sorted out.

Think you're getting a very hard time of this thread OP. And £500 a month is far from a small amount.
But I do agree with some PPs that this is a good turnaround time for parts and repairs. This stuff happens all the time, especially when weather is at its coldest. Glad you have your heaters sorted, maybe think of investing in some small space heaters after this, wrap up warm, blankets, socks, hot water bottles and take a few warm showers. It's shit but it's only 24hrs x

@TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross

What makes me laugh (bitterly) is your entitled strop about having to be without heating for 24 hours. Most of us on here are pointing out that if we were able to get our heating fixed within 24 hours we'd consider ourselves bloody fortunate and yet you're stamping your foot like some kind of princess whose daddy hasn't bought her a new pony

Do what the rest of us have to do in these scenarios: get blankets and hot water bottles.

Of course, if you ARE paying £500 a month for them to look after your heating, the service is indeed shit and for that money, a gold-plated boiler should be arriving within the hour, but if - as I suspect - you simply mean that you're paying rent - 🤷‍♀️

Can I ask - given what the OP has shared about her job and her living arrangements, do you really think she’s a Princess whose frame of reference includes daddy buying a pony?

Really?

What a thoroughly nasty post.

@lostandforgotten

Some people on here are so out of touch with the real world. £500 rent is 'not much' and 'very reasonable', yes it may seem like it to you but it is approximately 41% of my total take home pay per month for a full time minimum wage job! So to a lot of people it doesn't feel cheap.

Yes, it’s an exceptionally low rent. If it’s 40% of your take home then I would say you are living beyond your means and should consider moving into a house share which would be more affordable on your salary. Or move to a higher paid role. Whichever you prefer. But £500 a month in rent doesn’t entitle you to have repairs done within a day anywhere. Maybe time to start living in the real world and stop relying on other taxpayers to subsidise your life. You are being completely precious.

It’s crap but it’s an inconvenience of life. You have to join the queue like everyone else. Homeowners can’t magic engineers that aren’t available. I was without heating for 4 days a couple of years ago - it wasn’t pleasant but I couldn’t stamp my feet and demand it happened quicker.

Also picked up two oil filled heaters from Tesco for £9 last week - have a look.

@AnnabelleMarx
When I worked in low paid jobs I didn’t have a flat to myself. If she can’t afford to live alone she should do what others do. Adjust! She is living in a subsidised property and complaining about a normal life issue and needs a wake up call to shake her out of her victim mentality.

@WhipperSnapperSteve

Also in a housing association property, 24 hours. Have been in the same situation last winter when it was Baltic, you have my sympathies.

To the pp who said "you have a hot shower so be patient " - really? She's supposed to sit under the fucking shower? Your privilege is showing my love.

It's not privilege to say that since she has hot water then that is something, all she has to deal with is the lack of heating as opposed to lack of heating and hot water.

I'm currently on day 4 with no heating or hot water. It is -1°C and I live in a HA property. I would kill to still have the shower working at least because then when the tiny fan heater and millions of blankets just aren't enough to keep me warm I could get a hot shower, not to mention just being able to get washed and clean without having to wait ages for kettles to boil. Add in the fact my cooker runs on gas and I have been living on microwaved stuff as I cant cook or use the oven either as they had to shut off the gas for safety.

The gas pump to the boiler broke on Saturday morning, engineer came out on Saturday afternoon and diagnosed the issue but didnt have the parts to replace it. He ordered them there and then but as it was a weekend they weren't getting delivered until Monday. Yesterday rolls round and I get a call saying that the truck with the parts on had got stuck in snow a couple of towns away and was delayed so the engineer didnt get the part until late yesterday afternoon but by this point he had other emergencies to deal with so asked if he could come this morning instead. As yet he hasn't arrived but hopefully by the end of today I will have heating and hot water again. A 24 hr turnaround is more than reasonable for the OP.

My DP is a heating engineer for a housing association. They give out heaters if they can't fix the problem straight away. They only have limited stock in their vans so can't always fix ASAP. He's been on call this week and has been working 16/18 hour days with the amount of call outs he's been getting

My family of four were without heating and water for five days during the cold snap in Dec. We were also working from home, as was one of the kids, so had to buy plug in heaters and shove many layers on.
To get somebody out within 24 hours is very fortunate indeed.