We are too used to Central heating..

[Dampclout]

Until the 1980s very few houses had central heating. Most people heated one room, had hot water bottles at bedtime and wore warm clothes. I can recall quickly going out of the warm front room and shutting the door behind me, if I wasn't quick enough there would be be the shout of ‘shut that door’
Nowadays I wear a tee shirt in winter and keep my house at 20c… I think I will be going back to my childhood ways this winter..

I'll give up the cheap chocolate, crisps, junk food and fast fashion we've become used to but fuck going back to freezing under a blanket and washing my hair with a jug of warm water from the kettle. I grew up in the 80s/90s, coal fire, no heating upstairs. My parents have only just started using their central heating properly now they're in their 70s, we deserve better.

Nowadays I wear a tee shirt in winter and keep my house at 20c… I think I will be going

^^
this is extreme, and very wasteful.

I wear i jumper in the house in winter - I’ve always done this. As soon as I left home I moved into a very old building and have lived in old houses / buildings ever since in one form or another. But I’m quite glad to be able to use the heating some of the time so that it’s not freezing cold!

Its not really healthy to have the house at 20 degrees all the time - people who have the house so hot constantly seem to be ill all the time. Do you also never open a window in the winter?

Oh it’s not a waste dear. Nothing is a waste if you enjoy it 😅

I could wear a jumper, but I won’t. I’m not wrapping up in my own house when there’s no need. I can afford to heat my house to this temperature and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t.

Yep, same here.....always freezing cold as a child. I remember thinking bitterly that when I was a grown up I would never be cold at home again. And I luckily haven't been....until this winter I guess!

Its not really healthy to have the house at 20 degrees all the time - people who have the house so hot constantly seem to be ill all the time. Do you also never open a window in the winter?

@GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing It’s not healthy to drink alcohol or smoke, but people still do it because they want to.

I keep my house hot because I want to. I’m very rarely ill, but you’re right, I don’t open windows in winter.

You don't get it, do you?

That gas won't be there for you to buy it. At any price. The futures markets are going up by hundreds of pounds per MWh a week now. What's your limit? 10% income? 25%? 50%?

Eventually, you're either going to be throwing most of your discretionary income into it, or you'll be forced to ration. Like in the '70s, and there won't be any say in the matter.

And look to this coming to petrol and diesel after LNG in the new year too, once America decides to stop exporting distillate at the expense of their own people.

If not clear, I have my house reasonably cool most of the time (my heating comes on morning and evening, but sometimes I over ride it, to bring the temperature up to 19 or so) and wear a jumper because I prefer it. Not as competitive frugality.

House is not damp because this is plenty of heating to stop damp, and you do need to remember to open the windows sometimes.

Dont like to be in a stifling, airless house.

Maybe we should set fire to our shit and burn it for fuel

I've heard worse ideas.

I want the house I owned back, it was so well insulated we only needed the heating on for 2 hours a day in the middle of winter.

Just make a fire in the middle of the room like in prehistoric times. So brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?!

Yes I did miss that, It got down to minus 2 in some parts of the UK overnight.

@Liebig Oh calm down and stop being so overdramatic.

Your unnecessary panic won’t change how I live my life.

'We survived the winter of 1962, it wasn't fun but we got through it.'

Errrrrr.... not everyone DID survive the winter of 1962.

Over the winter periods between 1950/51 and 1965/66 there were on average 62,000 excess winter deaths, more than twice the average over the winter periods between 1998/99 and 2013/14.
Source: ONS
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/highestnumberofexcesswinterdeathssince19992000/2015-11-25

Also from the same source:

Between 1950 and 1965 there was a strong relationship between the average winter temperature and winter deaths. Analysis of data from that era suggested that there were more deaths in colder winters than in recent years.

A large part of this may be explained by home improvements meaning that homes are easier to heat and keep warm now than they were half a century ago leading to more stable indoor temperatures.

In the 1950s and 60s, the majority of houses did not have central heating, and were instead kept warm by fireplaces and stoves. Today, over 90% of houses have central heating. In 2013, 80% of homes had full double glazing, up from 30% in 1996; and approximately 9.6 million dwellings had cavity wall insulation in 2013, up from less than 3 million in 1996.

Anyone spot any important details in this?

Yay for double glazing, cavity wall insulation and global warming!

I agree. There is a middle ground. I remember last winter (or perhaps the winter before) doing video calls to parents due to lockdown. The kids would be sat there in T-shirts or even no tops at all and the parents in strappy tops or T-shirts. I was in a jumper with a blanket. Putting a jumper on just doesn’t seem to occur to some people.

@Liebig Calling someone a 'prig' is uncalled for. Are you incapable of making a point without resorting to nasty labels?

My grandparents didn’t have central heating, but they did have a lovely coal fire in the livingroom. We would get really toasty and then go to bed with hot water bottles. The beds were made up with such a weight of blankets that, as a child, I used to feel I was being squashed...but they were lovely and warm. I have lovely memories of this, including that warm rubber smell from the hot water bottles.

Having said that, there was condensation on the single glazing that we had to wipe down every morning and getting out of bed was absolutely awful - you’d inch to the edge of the bed and try to get into your dressing gown (which you slept with on the bed as an extra blanket) then peg it downstairs to the electric fire in the kitchen. It was freezing. The coal fire was never lit until after lunch and I remember being very, very cold and being told to put another jumper on and move about more. It was miserable to feel like that.

Central heating is wonderful and everyone should be able to afford to keep warm. It’s truly awful that we are in this position in 2022. DH and I earn very good money but have had to sit down this evening and have the sort of conversation I never thought I’d have to have about which rooms we will heat and which radiators we will turn off, what blankets we have, what extra clothing we need to get to keep DC warm, whether sitting watching TV with a hot water bottle and a blanket will be warm enough or do we need a plug in throw, does everyone have hats and gloves for wearing in the house. It’s surreal.

I grew up and at university had no central heating, ice inside the windows ,you could see your breath, gas fire only in sitting room and not allowed to be on fully -I swore I would never be cold again in my life. the government need to get money off the energy companies etc are we going to listen to a millionaire chancellor? Time to vote with our feet protest marches, bombarding MP s with emails

I lived in a house with no central heating and single glazing for 6 months with an ex, it was utterly miserable. We spent all our time indoors under quilts in bed or on the sofa and dreaded needing the toilet.

Hmmm. All those lovely plastic fumes in an enclosed space. Better than a scented wax melt.

Putting a jumper on will be nowhere enough.

Just what we need. Another I'm all right Jack telling people who were already dressing warmly and limiting heating to what they could afford that they were having it too good.

I am 60 and the only time I know we didn't have central heating was up to when I was 5-- even in the late 60s we had it!!

I appreciate people are stressed but comments such as 'didn't do us any harm' are Brexit all over again!! Going backwards to give orgasms to a certain type of nostalgia oddball.

If energy companies were barely breaking even then there would seem to be a point. This is simply not the case- the supply companies are making billions in profit- and the gvt can't control this aspect because unlike many other countries they fully privatised it and retained no control whatsoever !!!!