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.

@Soontobe60 - we used a gas hob for cooking. It had a calour gas bottle next to it.

Somebody mentioned Chilblains - I have got low level chilblains already. I get them every year at the start of winter from just wearing socks on cold floors in our old, cold house . Wear slippers with good soles and thick socks and don’t sit down with your feet in one place on a cold floor. Chilblains are very unpleasant.

She clearly was @maplesaucewithbacon go back and read the first page.

I think they mean you could use electric or oil filled radiators.

I’m really not sure what the OP’s point is. They seem to be arguing with themselves 🤷‍♀️

Yep. I haven’t had my heating on once this winter as we have a log burner. It heats the house much better and quicker. So not having central heating but other alternatives is a weak argument.

Having the ability to heat your house is not the same as actually having heating in your house.

Some houses have heating, some don’t.

I once lived in a house where the engineer blew the entire electronics of the boiler and refused to come back and sort it.

so no heating with a huge 3 storey house and minus 5 outside. We borrowed and brought electric heaters and plugged them in - but it was worrying with a toddler etc

they had to be left off while we were out - they weren’t efficient - yes they heated up one room fast but off it dropped and you had to keep turning them on and off.

despite a heater in most rooms, there wasn’t one in the bathrooms and I remember a glass of water froze.

I slept with my daughter and dog in a bed with hot water bottles.

The electrician who blew my electrics never returned apart from the not turn up in court to refund my original payment (just a maintenance check) and I was awarded a bit by the court for heating costs.

at the moment is it mild - I’ve woken up at 8 am and it is always 11 outside with a high of 17. That’s fine for us.

I have put the heating on once or twice for an hour to make it go from 15 to 18 - takes about an hour and then it goes off.

but it is not minus 5 outside.

my experience even with multiple heaters was this:
plug in / central heating cost money lots of money at the moment
some people don’t have the money or the heating
it is truly crap to live in a situation where the temperature outside is minus

our bodies at 36 /37

children in particular find it hard to moderate their temperatures

I had one brief period 2 weeks back 12 years ago with no heating but electrics - yes we were lucky we had electric heaters and we had hot water bottles and a modern insulated house - but with it minus 5 outside it was dire

the cost is real

some people can’t afford rent never mind heating

Homes with electricity don’t come with electric or oil filled radiators automatically installed. We couldn’t have used those things as we didn’t own them.

We had a large Victorian house the only heat we got was from a calor gas fire in front room which was two rooms knocked into one( front and parlour) We had ice on inside of windows in dining room and kitchen bathroom etc. oh god the emmersion heater had to be switched on if you wanted to wash. My dad would say put more clothes on blankets, I remember wearing a coat indoors.

AS seems to indicate they might be agreeing with themselves as well.
Still, handy to have extra socks around for the cold.

I remember an elderly lady living in a two-up, two-down house in central London that she'd been born in. There was no bathroom, her tin bath was hung on her kitchen wall and she had an outside loo.
Today the house would be worth over a million pounds, but neither she nor her parents ever had the money to modernise.

lived in a house with no heating from 2010-2015. That’s no radiators, no plug in heat sources, no open fires.

You can a plug in radiator for about £40, could you not afford it?

I think OP is getting a bit hot and bothered, but that's good because it'll avoid having to put the heating on

I don't know why it's so hard to believe some people have no heating.

A house can be without a fireplace and central heating. The house therefore has no heating.
If the people living there cannot afford to buy or run plug in heaters they have no heating.

My mum has no heating.
Her radiators run off the back boiler.

Which is unusable and needs replacing. So she can't have a fire and therefore the radiators don't get hot. She can't afford to have a heating system installed and I can't afford to help her.

I bought her some plug in radiators a couple of years ago but she can't afford to use them this year.

She has no heating or hot water except when she boils a kettle to have a wash.

For the council to have updated to put a back boiler on a fire, you must have had a fireplace/chimney to start with otherwise it wouldn't have been possible.

FFS it really is getting tedious now!

No, when the council put the coal fire in they had to lay the foundations for it, including the installation of the coal fire, we were living in our parents bedroom for a few months.

We couldn’t have central heating as gas pipes were pretty non existent in our area at the time.

Even then we only used the fire during below freezing conditions as coal was unaffordable for most families.

I've read the whole thread.

I believe you, op wont!

We had electrical brackets to keep us warm at night.

So you had an electric point in your bedroom that you could have plugged a heater. Affording to is another matter.

I think some people need to remember that poverty and inequality are not new things in Britain. Men always ran out on women and kids too.

The whole point about modern inequality levels is that they are taking us back to the poverty experienced in Victorian times, before the social improvements that gradually began to give us the welfare state of the 50s and 60s.

I don’t know what this current arrogance is about denying other people’s lived realities. I’m seeing it a lot lately and it is pretty disgusting. Britain is a land of diversity.

I'm 43 I don't think I'm old? But I was poor.

I grew up like that because we had no CENTRAL heating but we had a fire downstairs and, occasionally, an electric fire in the bedroom for half an hour. The OP is making the point that when people (you) say no heating they mean no CENTRAL heating with radiators in every room and not no source of heat at all anywhere.

That's what I understood to be the point.
My sister has just bought a new house & the fireplaces have been bricked up, she wants to open it up so she has the option & not just have to rely on CH.

Surely the OP is arguing against herself in this thread.

It's usual now to have central heating in houses. It wasn't usual in the 60s and 70s to have central heating, although many (but by no means all) homes had a source of warmth in one room.

However, what the OP is missing by busily disagreeing with posters who are saying they didn't have any heating is the point that many people back then also couldn't afford to buy coal, oil or gas. It wasn't ok back then, and it isn't ok now. I don't see people who grew up cold telling people to just get on with it, as the OP is claiming.

Yes me too

YANBU.
Even cavemen had fires. It’s kind of basic. It’s like saying ‘we grew up with no water…’ Very very very few people can manage without any kind of heat source.