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.

Fire is heating.

That's exactly what op is talking about. "Heating" is not "central heating".
Fire, even in one room was heating. Most houses had that.
You heat with it, it's inteded to heat, it's heating.

What houses didn't have was heating in all rooms or central heating.

in the eighties when we bought our first house we had no cosy roaring log fires. we had a paraffin heater in the kitchen - and hot water bottles when we went to bed and yes we did wear coats and yes it was very very cold. It was an old fisherman's cottage and didn't have cavity walls, roof insulation or underfloor heating. but winter only lasted till February....BUT we were young and didn't know any better. As children (in a small village) we had a fire in the sitting room when very cold (which it was my job to chop wood for and light when I came home from school (social services eat your heart out.. 😁) but all very normal ...and no I wasn't deprived, poor , yes, because DD had scarpered, but not neglected

Why are you questioning someone's life just because you think you are right?

@Kidsfortea "I'm in my 60's. I grew up in a house with no heating. Small fire in the living room is all."

Exactly what the OP is saying! You grew in a house with NO CENTRAL HEATING as did most of us. You had heating in one room. Yes the bedrooms were cold but you had a warm fire in the living room.

Fireplaces and chimneys were designed to warm the brickwork so they did in fact have a heating effect on the whole house. My current house has two fireplaces downstairs that would have heated the walls above them. Unfortunately these fireplaces now contain woodburners and have stainless steel flues so the effect is not the same. The woodburners however do chuck out a lot of heat so if you leave the door to the room open they will heat up most of the house.

My mums house has never had central heating.
We had a plug in fire in the front room we could only afford to turn on a couple of times a week for about an hour. We would get dressed in front of it. She has an electric blanket on her bed now but still no central heating, no fireplace, just one electric heater.

I do have central heating but we haven’t turned it on yet this winter. Electric blanket on each bed though.

@QuebecBagnet

Same

Fireplace in every room in our small Victorian 3 bed

So for the people who say they didn't have any heating and especially the ones who say they don't have any heating now: how cold does your house get? What temperature does it go down too?

In my parents' 1970s flat , we had no central heating and no fire in the living room ( or any other room.)
We had a paraffin heater that was lit up for about an hour a day.

I can see the thread’s got long now and I haven’t read it all, but the OP by this point had said where she was going quite clearly; trying to debunk the idea that people can manage with absolutely no heating.

"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."

Ageism? How old do you think someone has to be to have experienced homes without central heating? I'd be very surprised if anyone hadn't at least stayed the night in a home that used some other type of heating.

OP…you seem convinced that every home had a fireplace. I grew up in a basement flat in the 70s, Victorian property but all fireplaces had been blocked up/ripped out.

I grew up in a 3 bed Victorian mid-terrace in the 80s. We had one gas fire in the lounge that I only remember being put on in the morning. The previous owner had taken the all the other fires out and decided an open plan living and dining room was a great idea, coupled with single pane windows and high ceilings.
Bathroom was in a single skin extension in the yard with zero heating (no way to get the heat from the lounge in the front) that was always mouldy and got so cold there was ice on the inside of the windows. My bedroom was in the extension above and was freezing- my mum said one winter she had to throw a load of my clothes out because the inside of the wardrobe got mouldy.
It was so bloody cold and I never take central heating for granted now. Also given me a fear of cold bathrooms! We did move after a few years and now their house is akin to being in a furnace (well, it was before the gas bill was more than the GDP of a small country)

We had a coal fire. The house was freezing. I've on the inside of single glazed windows. That was 40 years ago, we absolutely should not be living line this and definitely shouldn't be normalising these things!

Lots of things were shit in the past, doesn't mean we should have to 'just toughen up' and go back to those days..

I hate all this performative “just put another jumper on” nonsense. I lived in houses with no central heating in uni and it was miserable (this was in the 90s btw) Ice on the inside of the window, everyone sat around the fireplace, arguments about someone leaving their electric heater on in their room all day. I do think more carefully about putting the central heating on now but we live in a terraced house with damp issues so the heating absolutely has to be on to some extent in cold weather. We had issues with our boiler breaking a few years ago & it always seemed to happen on a Friday, leaving us
without heating for a weekend. We could literally see our breath after two days & no amount of jumpers is going to make you feel better about that.

My living room is currently 17 degrees, bedrooms are 18 degrees. We have smart thermostat valves on the radiators so can see each room individually. We haven’t yet had any heating on at all. It’s not even cold and apart from an extra blanket in the bedrooms we haven’t yet taken any measures to keep warm. I expect to get to after Christmas without heating to be honest, with thick duvets, blankets, extra clothes and hot water bottles.

I get you op. No central heating not a big problem, no heat source at all - unless you are literally unable to buy food of any kind for your family don’t make this choice.

I grew up in a non central heated house with a coal fire in the living room lit only in the evenings. Gas cooker/oven and boiler in kitchen which did make a massive difference. Portable two bar electric fire used when very cold or excitingly when I had exams to study for and was allowed it in my freezing bedroom.

I remember being cold but knowing how to get warm. You got out of the bath fast and into Pjs hanging by the fire. Beds were heated with hot water bottles. You dressed fast in the morning and then went downstairs to the warmer kitchen heated by the boiler and the cooker where you had breakfast and warmer up. Meals eaten in the kitchen and evenings all spent in the front room by the fire.

there is a huge difference between living in a house with unheated bedrooms/bathrooms but one or two warmer rooms where you can “live” and a house with no heat sources whatsoever and the one/two warm rooms will stop the whole house dropping below freezing even if only used for an hour or two in the evenings . If there is no heat at all then the house will freeze surely just having walls and a roof isn’t enough. Living without central heating is perfectly doable - living without any source of heat at all (no fire, boiler, electric blankets, cooker, paraffin stove, electric heater or similar) particularly in a detached house (terraced houses get considerable heat from the houses either side) is going to be extremely harmful to peoples health and not what people usually did in times gone by when unless in abject poverty they had one heat source of some sort in the home.

I don't understand how you are getting from "able to afford a normal winter fuel bill" to "can't afford any heat at all". Ok some people are so poor they are in that position. But for anyone who could afford to heat their home last winter, surely they can afford some heating this winter too, albeit less? It may mean heating only a single room or turning the thermostat down or reducing the number of hours it is on for or only putting it on when outside temperatures really fall. But that will still probably be better than many posters here who grew up with only a gas fire in one room etc.
Not ideal and not what we should aspire to. But to say people cannot afford any heating at allis a bit ridiculous.

My bedroom had no heating and there was ice inside the windows. You could see your breath. We had radiators but couldn’t afford to use them. An old gas fire that we used to fight to sit right on top of. My mum used to warm our clothes in front of the fire.

so some heating but nothing like now (of course all windows single paned. So not quite no heating but not much better

Op might as well be saying let them eat cake! It’s such an entitled post.

So those who did, or do, live without any heat source at all, what temperature were your home interiors?
We were away for a few months last year and arrived back in late winter. I'd just put my heating on frost setting, I think around 4 degrees? And it literally got down to that during our absence, despite it being a modern and well-insulated new build. Did heat back up quite quickly but no way could anyone have lived in it at 4 degrees.

Even the most basic bothy I have stayed in Scotland has had heating using a single fireplace, we would all bring some coal and would keep warm every night.

When I was a kid everyone, I knew in the North East had a single fireplace in the living room or a range cooker in the kitchen and a coal bunker in the garden.

@SnackSizeRaisin indeed so many posts from people saying they can’t afford to put any heating on so won’t be putting it on at all this year. Unless you were before only putting on an electric heater for 20mins or so per day last year then prices haven’t gone up that much that no heat at all is now achievable.

people start getting cold related illnesses at below 16-18c and hypothermia at below 10c and as winter temps are around 5c in the day (lower in Scotland) then obviously some form of heat is and was needed to ensure survival. It doesn't mean people felt toasty warm in the past but there had to have been some form of heat in there houses or they would have died (obviously loads did die due to inadequate heating but we’re taking about the “never had any heating when I was a kid and I was fine so put on an extra jumper” brigade)

In terms of basic survival humans need water food and heat. Some people can’t afford to eat and that’s truly shit and the country should be ashamed but that’s not most people. After family is fed then next thing is to work on heating one room to over 10c and ideally 16-18c for a few hours in the evening - be that by a cheap electric fan heater or turning off all other radiators but that room or lighting a fire (yes is more economical to run central it all the time to maintain heat but if you can’t afford that then heat one room for a few hours each evening and sleep in that room if you need to). Anyone suggesting that people instead try and have no heat source in their home throughout winter and just wear a jumper or two is utterly mad.

Blimey OP! You're just not believing we had no heating are you? I assume you're quite young?

Well young to me! I'm guessing a millennial!

Grew up in the 60's in Scotland. We had an open fire downstairs. So used to wake up with ice on the inside of the windows and got dressed in bed. And remember we didn't have double glazing either.

It was fucking freezing! On weekdays, Mum used to get up before us and make up the fire.

But it was still fucking freezing.

Bath once a week in a Sunday when the immersion when on.

In the Winter of Discontent we had no electricity 3 evenings a week and had to use candles.

Blimey written down it sounds hideous. Let's hope we never have it that bad again.

OP when I grew up in the 60s and early 70s we had a fire in the dining room with a thing called a baxi boiler that helped heat the hot water. There was a fireplace in the sitting room but rarely lit. Upstairs there was NO heating. As others have said I also remember scraping ice off the inside of my single glazed bedroom windows. We had hot water bottles, bed socks, flanalette nighties and eiderdowns. In the mid 70s we got central heating, which changed everything, but I clearly remember running up to bed in my warm nightie, socks and woollen dressing gown and slipping my gown off quickly to burrow under the covers in my chilly bedroom.
I grew up in a very middle class household and it was the norm.