To explain to people that UK homes have never 'not had heating'

[KweenieBeanz]

People keep responding to those worrying about energy costs, don't worry, homes never used to have heating, people survived, just don't put your heating on!
Home did not have central heating. Instead, they had fires and heated individual homes. People did not live in homes with no heating in the UK.

In the UK during the winter if a home is never heated even by late November /December temperatures inside will have gradually dropped to a temperature that's too low.
See the info here: www.cse.org.uk/advice/advice-and-support/heat-and-health#:~:text=Below%2013%C2%B0%20%2D%20If%20your,recommended%20night%20time%20bedroom%20temperature.

There is a huge difference if you even use your heating for just 1hr a day, topping up the temperature to stop it dropping so rapidly.

People need to stop acting as though those struggling just need to toughen up, 'wear more layers' and cope with the heating off this winter as a solution to energy costs, as it's simply not feasible, and it would be better for people to take action now to let their energy provider know they are in fuel poverty and need to access help.

Are you going to persist in calling everybody talking about their own experiences liars?
And even if they did have open fires etc, they had to pay for their fuel so not quite sure what your impossible-to-prove point is?

It's a good point op, houses were all built with heat sources (even the poster who didn't have heating had had their fireplaces removed - They were supposed to be there). Yes, extreme poverty might have meant people didn't light them in every room, but they were there.
This is a problem now - no open fireplaces and chimneys so if you can't afford the bills you are stuck. Better for air quality of course

We use immersion heater for water

Our mains heating is currently off as whole thing being replaced the last 2 weeks. I’m terrified of us and Ds being cold at all like my childhood, and have borrowed plug in heaters and rotating being rooms. Hot baths for Ds, warm foods. It should be back on next week luckily.

Again though - no central heating, but not no heating. There were gas fires taking the edge off communal areas. It's simply not the same as trying to go all winter in the UK using no source of heat inside your home, especially as lots of people now are using airfryers which don't give off any heat, rather than an oven potentially heating the room a bit.

My Mam had a fireplace in her kitchen when she was growing up - but they couldn't afford the coal.

Ironically her dad, who died when she was an infant, had been a miner.

My Mam used to be sent to the railway tracks to collect coal dust which they mixed with water and then formed into balls and laid out on wooden planks in the back yard to dry which they then used as coal.

You didn't answer the question though, do you have open fireplaces? Other sources of heat such as a stove, gas fire?

I'm not arguing with you? That's why I specified no central heating but gas fires.

Are you arguing with people as a way to keep warm.

^
Yup. Loads of these threads lately.

We lived in council flats in the 80s and I remember one gas fire with the bars and that kept us warm.. I remember being cold until we were huddled by the heater in the lounge. Then we moved to a house with just one heater in the lounge in the early 90s and by the mid 90s we had central heating installed. We take central heating for granted but it has changed the way we live.. If we didn't havr it, we would still all be huddled together in one room.

I lived in a house with no heating from 2010-2015. That’s no radiators, no plug in heat sources, no open fires. If you wanted to stretch a point you could count the oven as a heat source - I did used to press against it if it was on. But mostly I used to spend long days at work and then get straight under the covers when I got home.

My point is it's not feasible in the UK for people to think they can manage this winter by not using heating.
I don't want people to rely on that plan and find themselves in an absolute mess in January, when now is the time to be taking action like applying for relief from energy companies, taking on extra hours to get extra money for heating, taking to citizens advice about support they can access, benefits they might not have realised they are entitled to.

My parents bought a newly built house when they married in the early 70s.
It had no central heating although must have had water heating as I remember hot baths.
We had a portable gas fire that one day caught fire and my mum put out with a damp blanket and the fire brigade came.
It was part of an estate of similar (private) housing and was considered modern.
Coping with out central heating is bearable but very limited or no hot water is the really hard thing.

You are very wrong, OP. Of course, there were houses without heating.... how old are you? How long are you referring back to?

I was born in the late 50's into a cottage without heating.
Yes, there were 2 fireplaces, only one worked; at one point my mother used that fire to cook on as well as heat the living room. But after a chimney fire she became too scared to light it and after that there was NO HEATING AT ALL.
We woke up in winter with 'jack frost' over all the windows and icicles hanging down inside. We had to wrap up well, but I don't remember being unhealthy and my memories aren't of being cold.

My parents only had storage heaters fitted when I'd grown up and left for University.

That isn't to say that I'm unsympathetic to those who can't afford to heat their homes these days....I really feel for everyone in difficult circumstances. But your assertion that homes always had heating is wrong.

You are wrong. Even if houses had fireplaces they weren't always safe to be used.
It was miserable.

@KweenieBeanz Kweeniebeanz
Are you being deliberately obtuse. You obviously have no idea it how cold it was in winter even with a gas fire. How cold the bathroom or bedroomswas with no heating. We had 4 bar gas fires we had to crowd around, they did not reach the rest of the house.
Central heating is a lovely luxery today compared with what i grew up with

In the 1990s as a student we had a storage heater in one room of a 5 bedroom house. Ice would form on water in glasses in any other room. We just layered up. Later on - 97-2000 I lived in a flat share in Olympia. Again no central heating at all. One storage heater in the living room (which made no difference to other rooms). When the gas bottle ran out one mid-November we never bothered getting it replaced. We had NO heating and no fireplaces. It was just never a problem. We wore hats in the house, had thick duvets and would be warm during the day at work. Having an escape during the day (a centre, a library etc) will be important

It must be feasible (if uncomfortable) as lots of us did it, literally no heat source or money to fuel/power one, and are alive.

think the real question is, is this aspirational in 2022.

I grew up in a house with no central heating.

So did just about everyone born before 1980. People used other forms of heating.

There used to be ice patterns every morning on the bedroom windows.

I never saw ice inside of windows until moving up to Scotland in the mid 80s and lived in a very poorly insulated top floor flat.

My grandparents lived in a Tudor house in Kent and only had one fire in the living room and no heating upstairs. They also had an outside loo until the 80’s when they then just linked it to the house with a corridor, in winter you never sat down! We used to use old fashioned stone water bottles in the beds as once you left the living room the house was freezing. They were used to it and used to only ever living in a house with one fire.

Yes I was thinking this too. Was about to engage with the thread but then the rudeness from the op made me think twice

What a shame. Might have been a good thread otherwise

Maybe the OP could actually the us where she's going with this instead of refusing to believe people. Or thinking that having a coalfire in the kitchen in 1969 made you warm in the upstairs bedroom at the opposite end of the house.
That one with ice on the windows all day and where you put more clothes on to get under your damp sheets than you had on all day.
Either:
OP is very young and thinks we all lived at Downton with our roaring open fires keeping us toasty.
OP is somehow shoehorning in a bit of ageism by trying to tell older people they are lying when they say they had no heating.

Deeply unpleasant whichever it is.

We had heating in our 1970s newbuild but DF wouldn’t allow it to be above 16 degrees on the thermostat as it was too expensive and we couldn’t afford it. It also had huge single pane windows that would get ice on the inside in winter and it was bloody freezing. We loved going to friends houses that were warmer. Just like today, just because we had heating it didn’t mean you could use it. Was very used to wrapping up to stay warm.

People are totally misunderstanding me. I'm not saying it wasn't bloody cold with only a gas fire!!? I'm saying people need to realise they won't be able to manage this winter with heating completely off unless they have SOME other source of heat, however small, whether a gas fire, or open fire, or stove!

I just don't want people to be relying on using no heating this winter, as a solution to fuel poverty.
Using no heating isn't a solution.

We had one gas fire in the lounge in the 70’s, you couldn’t get near it for the cat who smouldered quite regularly.
Another one with ice on the inside of the bedroom windows waking up.
Parents put night storage heaters in eventually, a great brown box of bricks which was never more than tepid. They had a frosted glass shelf on a bracket over the top. I remember sitting on one and it snapping, incredibly dangerous.
I do remember lining Minstrels up on them though, so the chocolate inside melted… delicious!