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.

We had coal stoves when my parents moved in when I was about to be born. Changed shortly after for central one, but stove in every room. Why did uk at the same time seem to have no heating in most house is beyond me.

This exactly what I was going to point out. Our house had central heating and a fire, built with no oil in the tank and no coal for the fire they weren't much use!

My recollection is that people did try to keep warm with portable calor gas and paraffin heaters etc but bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens were usually unheated. Ice on the windows and frozen water in the kitchen sink are genuine memories for me and plenty of others. I wouldn't want anyone to have to go back to that, but it seems here we are. It's been an exceptionally warm autumn so far, so relatively easy to tough it out, but unfortunately that won't last.

The number of child deaths from unsafe paraffin heaters was horrifying in the 1950s. I was born a bit later and we had one open fire in the sitting room, which only heated that room, though I concede that it must have made a small difference to the rest of the house. Keeping it fuelled was a major exercise all winter, and home was cold, damp and just not a very comfortable place to be. for 6 months of the year.

As a child in the 60’s we had a coal fire in the sitting room, and paraffin heaters in the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms, we wore warm pyjamas and a sweater at night and hot water bottles in the bed. We ALL had chilblains, very itchy and unpleasant. It was wonderful to move to a house with gas central heating, plus a gas fire in the sitting room as a booster in my teens. Being cold is miserable. Plus clothes don’t dry well in a cold house.

PS the paraffin heaters were just to warm the bedrooms up, very seldom left on overnight, if ever. They put out a lot of moisture I think, and could be smelly. Good in that you paid fir the heating upfront, but potentially VERY dangerous, which I didn’t realise as a child. Quite fun to melt things on them, I recall!

BUT we are a wealthy country, and it’s outrageous that some fairly wealthy politicians think that heating and insulation in this day and age isn’t a fundamental right for people in this cold country.

It's like that Monty Python sketch. Competitive childhood poverty. Most homes in the 50s had a fireplace. Coal was relatively cheap (and filthy, of course - we had a lot of poisonous smogs, but that's another issue.) And we had a paraffin heater too. I remember the smell. But you're right. In freezing conditions, people get ill and sometimes they die. As they will this winter. It's unconscionable. I suppose it also depends on where you are in the country, and how bad the winter is. It's OK right now, but temperatures are set to drop soon. I often notice a ten degree difference between temperatures in London and the south, and Scotland and Northern England.

That a very accusatory response . The poster said she had no heating then she had no heating, no matter how unusual you find it . Guess what? For many years we had no heating either.Scraping the ice off the windows was something we enjoyed doing, we could scrape pictures using our nails. Congratulations on your fireplaces , that must have been nice for you.

TBF, a number of posters have actually said, ‘we had no heating, just a coal fire/gas fire/2 bar electric fire in the living room.’ That constitutes heating. Having absolutely no heating would be unusual - extreme poverty or neglect.

In the 1960s the all electric home was modern; it was the future. Coal fires were a lot of work and not much point in light them in the morning if you were going out to work. Nuclear power was going to make electric heating cheap. Then North Sea gas was discovered and nuclear power fell out of favour. So gas central heating became really economical to run. Coal fires and stoves are quite niche and coal and logs are expensive unless you have a source of free wood.

It may be that they had fireplaces in their homes but did not have the funds to buy coal, wood etc to light them? I'm old but not old enough to remember, but my father used to tell me about families chasing his coal wagon (he was a coalman), picking up any coal that had fallen onto the street when he was making his deliveries. Its the same as those with portable electric heaters now but who can't afford to turn them on?

That sounds insincere and passive aggressive and mocking. Yes, people might have had fireplaces, but I know people who used to break up the furniture to use for firewood, people who had a gas heater but no money to feed the metre.

There is a massive massive difference between inadequate heating and no heating.

No heating at all means that in parts of the uk for a detached house all parts of the house would be below 10c all the time, and may well be well below 0c much of the time in an average winter. This is generally not survivable for humans. We can go out into colder weather than this and even sleep in unheated rooms but we do need to be warmed up at some parts of the day.

Ok this thread there are some posters who clearly had horrific childhoods in extreme poverty and they are lucky to have lived out of childhood. But for most people saying they had NO HEATING they actually mean the family only had means to heat one room for some of the time to above 10c some of the time. that heating can be a single gas or coal fire or electric heater in one room. Is it fun - no. Do you feel warm all or most of the time - no.

But that ability to bring one room over 10c (and ideally to 16-18c) for some part of the day is what allows humans to Survive. People back in the day did not routinely manage to live 24/7 at sub 10c (or even sub 0c) temperatures.

(terraced house or flats are different as the thermal energy from the surrounding buildings may be enough to keep the house just warm enough - though I would suggest that they do have heating of some form - radiated from the surrounding flats)

So to the OPs original point - anyone who advises that people do not use their heating of whatever type this winter because that’s what they did as kids are I suspect misremembering their childhoods as having no heating rather than inadequate heating.

inadequate is miserable and not what we should be aiming for and will likely lead to poor health and is a disgrace to our country. It is better than no heating which will generally lead to death if temps are at their usual winter avaerages

I didn't have any heating to speak of in my first house when I was low paid. This was in 2007-2020 a small 3 floor back to back mid terrace. There was one gas fire that didn't originally work. Yes I got ice inside and you could see your breath in clouds on a bad day. I survived it with all the usual; layers, blankets, hat/gloves, put a hairdryer on for a few min or the gas hob. The low points were taking a bowl of hot water and flannel to wash in my bedroom when the basement bathroom was too cold to stand. So while it CAN be done no one should have to live like that in this day and age, in a developed country, it was truly depressing. When my salary increased I got a couple of electric radiators and felt like I was living in a palace 😂 these days I'm grateful to have central heating I can afford (for now) but it shouldn't be considered a luxury or 'nice to have'

No of course we should not expect people to suffer the cold this winter.
What I, and many other posters growing up mid century are saying, is that we survived low temperatures even if it was not pleasant, it was normal.

It is not a competition. Just relaying how things were.

In my post I said we had one fire in the dining room. There was another fireplace in the sitting room, but I only remember it lit at Christmas.
The reason? not poverty, but it was a lot of work for my poor DM filling the coal scuttle from the outside "coal hole" bringing it in, raking out the fireplace and getting a fire going before everyone else woke up.
We didn't have paraffin heaters or electric heaters in my home in the 60s. The only other source of heat was the hot water bottles we had in our beds, carefully filled from the whistling kettle, and any heat coming from the oven. Porridge every morning! Hot water was heated by the fire, so not constant hot water. DM also did not keep the fire going whilst we were at school and DF at work. She was always in her twinset and pearls and stiff tweed skirts, and wore a vest, girdle, longline bra and full petticoat underneath - plus very thick stockings! (these items fascinated me). It was a big old 4 bed plus box room detached so got very cold when the wind attacked from all sides!
So - we had heat. Not a lot, and not constant.

But for most people saying they had NO HEATING they actually mean the family only had means to heat one room for some of the time to above 10c some of the time. that heating can be a single gas or coal fire or electric heater in one room. Is it fun - no. Do you feel warm all or most of the time - no.

I currently live like this, just using a gas or electric heater in whatever room I am in. Where I live gets very cold, sometimes even in summer. My bedroom is sometimes 0 to -2° overnight, often 3-4 °, and the house in general can be 7° during the day during the colder winter days. It is quite survivable, and ok!

for a detached house all parts of the house would be below 10c all the time, and may well be well below 0c much of the time in an average winter. This is generally not survivable for humans.

I seem to be surviving! Obviously you don't lie around in thin cotton clothes.

If you go back far enough in England we had very thick walls of wattle and daub and also in places like France they had downstairs for cows and then all the animal heat would rise up to warm the floor above where the humans slept.

Yes, the reading comprehension on this thread is terribly low.
"we didn't have heat. We had a fire."
"my bedrooms didn't have heat, the fire was downstairs"

THAT'S OP's point. It was miserable, but any source of heat kept people from dying. Today if you turn off the central heat, there is no other source. People will die.

But instead we get people banging on about no heat, just fire. That is still a source of heat. Minimal, but it's enough to survive. OP is saying we are worse off now and if people could stop trying to win the no-heat Olympics they might understand that.

@MadelineUsher

is the area of the room you are in with the gas or electric heater pointed at you of you actually always 7c or under? Because you are at severe risk of hypothermia if it is even with adequate clothing if you are never able to warm yourself above this.

it dosent really matter in a way how low the air temp in some unoccupied room or part of room gets as along as there is means to keep the area around the humans living there above 10c at a minimum (16-18 better) (room temp can be even lower at night as it’s the temp under all the bedclothes that matters)

@daisy46 yes, this exactly

I am very proud my non english native brain even got it😁
Little wins

If cold temperatures weren't survivable no-one would ever be able to go outside.

I've been out skiing all day in -10. I've climbed up a mountain and slept in a tent at -30 with no heating. I went and walked round the forest this morning for an hour and it was 10 degrees C. Did I die ? No. Because I had a fair amount of technical gear that kept me warm. People use sleeping bags and tents in Antartica and up Everest where it gets down to -60 at night with no external heat and they survive fine. So I'm pretty sure they could use similar gear in a house in the UK if they wanted to. So the idea that all people have to have heating to survive is clearly nonsense by demonstration.

That said, there is a limit to what you can withstand if you aren't properly geared up and also if you are very young/old/not fit and healthy. There is also a limit to what you can stand depending on how you are dressed. I'm pretty sure that if you dumped me naked in a field at 0 degrees C I would be lucky to survive the night but in a decent sleeping bag I would be fine.

Back when I was growing up we didn't have central heating. It was the fire on in the lounge and electric blankets and extra top blankets on the beds at night and frozen ice on the inside of the windows in the morning. I suspect that it was like this for a lot of people back then. Heating the entire house to higher temperatures wasn't common back then like it is now. I don't recall being particularly cold or ill as a child. If having no CH was life threatening then large percentages of the population would have never made it.

Is going back to those older times where only one room is heated progress or pleasant ? Well I think not. Is it survivable ? Well clearly it is, because people did it in the past and people clearly survive much worse temperatures than we are subjected to in the UK on a daily basis. is it cheaper ? Well yes it's a lot cheaper just to keep one room warm.

For me there is a lot of scope between heating a house so that every room is at 20 degrees C all the time and having zero heating at all.

If cold temperatures weren't survivable no-one would ever be able to go outside.

That's biggest tangent ever on here😂 The point is people are not in that temperature 24/7! That's how you survive that😂

Also Everest and such climbers use heat pads.

@GasPanic How many sick, disabled or elderly people do you meet up the mountains? How many very small children who are unable to regulate their own temperature?

The ONS collects the statistics on excess deaths each winter which are caused by getting cold and breathing cold air. Figures from pre covid years are also available so you can compare.
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/2020to2021provisionaland2019to2020final

Yes they are. They are out for weeks. The point is not tangential. The point is human beings can survive very low temperatures for long and extended periods if they are properly equipped.

I know, because I have done it.

Whether it is reasonable to live your entire winter that way is another question.

No one is in that temperatures 24/7😂