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.

I don’t think OP realises that some people lived in extreme poverty, this included having no heating. Maybe do some research OP and find out the reality of how some people used to live. You’ll find it quite eye opening.

The price of electricity per kWh is 3.5 times the price of gas per unit and the standing charge more than double. It’s not just about a one off charge to buy a source of heat, it’s the cost of use. No point spending £40 (even if you have £40) if you have no spare money to use the radiator.

BS. Many millions of people around the world do exactly that.

Where are posters recommending this

My last rental had no heating and no useable fireplace as it was too damaged to use. It had been unusable for at least thirty years.

I'm not sure if 1940s prefabs had open fires though?

They did! Or a solid fuel stove which was mirrored in the adjoining kitchen!

Exactly

There is the facility to heat and the means to heat.
You can have ten fireplaces in your house but if you can't afford coal or wood you have no heating.

That’s interesting. I hope the lady, who owned the house I bought also had the same experience. The house was absolute squalor. As in run down Victorian slum squalor.

I lived in a flat 20 years ago with no gas supply so just had storage heaters, they were amazing! It was difficult to judge how much heating you'd need in advance, but they produced a lot of heat. It was a 2 bedroom flat and there was a heater in each room and one in the hallway. I learned very quickly that they were not all needed. The living room and hallway ones on lowest setting with all the doors open was more than enough to heat the while flat. And it was extremely economical. Not having central heating does not always result in a terrible dystopian nightmare!

I think this thread has run away with itself a bit. I think the OP's intentions were good if perhaps not clearly expressed as they could've been. The point is really that in general, there has never been a time when houses were routinely run without any source of heat without this having ill effects. The minority of posters here who grew up without any heat source have actually attested to that - many mention chilblains, mould, damp, more frequent illness, feeling miserable. The OP is trying to bust the myth that it's okay to live totally without heat as a cost saving measure. I think we are all roughly on the same page. But we've become bogged down in discussing different heating sources and whether they could or couldn't have existed in different types of houses.

I get what you mean op and what the aim was. But you will always have people arguing little points.
There was always somd heat option. I mean like dven the poorest in my THE poor area of Eastern Slovakia my family is from had some heat (because it goes well below 0!)... Quite surprised to hear how much of rich country as uk apparently had nothing....

Ok that is your experience, but it is very much the exception rather than the norm. 99.9% of houses would have had fire places until replaced by gas fires/electric heating/gas central heating. Even if there was none of that, most people would have gone out and bought a stand alone electric heater or two.

We didn't have heating. There was a fireplace in the main room but the chimneys were blocked or something so we had no heat.

There are plenty of houses now that don't have usable heating so may as well be classed as having none. This week in my local paper there was an awful story about a guy with either LD or MH issues (I know they are not the same and I don't want to offend anyone but he had some sort of social or communication diffilties) and hasn't had hot water or heating for 4 years as his boiler broke.

You're assuming people had the funds to do so @Doris86 and unfortunately it WAS quite normal that families lived hand to mouth.

No central heating when I was a child and certainly not heating sources in every room. The lounge had a coal fire, and the bathroom had an electric heater above the door. We had a single, portable, 2 bat heater which we used occasionally 'to take the chill off' but as we lived with my grandparents, their needs for it were greater.

For people with chronic health issues and/or sensory issues it isn't as simple as 'put another jumper on'.
When oil and gas providers are making billions in profit it is obscene that consumers are seeing price rises of this nature.

That's quite a blinkered view @BosaNova "the rich UK" is not the majority.

I think the OP is making a valid point that most people had access to heating of some sort but it appears for many reasons that people didn't use it.

Most people when I grew up had a source of heating but it was not central heating. Whether people could afford to use it or not is a different matter. I lived in a house as a student with electric underfloor heating. After the first bill, we never turned it on again as it was too expensive to run.

I grew up with a range in the kitchen and an open fire in a sitting room that was only lit on Sundays and at Christmas. It was freezing cold in bedrooms and ice did form in the inside of windows - we used hot water bottles to keep warm both in bed and in the sitting room when the fire wasn't lit. I don't want to return to feeling that cold.

Easy enough to go and buy me, plug it in and away you go.

@Doris86 "most people would have gone out and bought a stand alone heater or two". Your assuming that people had the money and ability to do this. That's a big assumption.

Sometimes it’s not as easy as just sticking the heating on for an hour though. I’m in an electric only property with night storage heaters so you either pay a fortune to charge them (and they barely heat a room, but that’s a separate issue) or you leave them off. You can’t just click them on and off. Plug in electric radiators also use a huge amount of electric so aren’t a viable alternative. My house is currently so cold I can see my own breath!

Equally, I don’t find energy suppliers particularly helpful. My neighbour who works full time cannot afford to run her heating system, is not entitled to any support and her energy company told her to fit a prepayment meter so she can better plan her budget. If she can’t afford to pay her usage by direct debit then she’s not going to be able to afford to put credit on a prepayment meter.

Of course in an ideal world people would be able to stick the heating on for an hour or get support from energy companies but in reality a huge number of families cannot afford this and there’s just not the support available for people who are working full time and are struggling and aren’t entitled to benefits/support schemes.

yep

As a student in the 90s lived 8n house with no ch but had gas fires in the rooms, incredible condensation and damp.

house as child had open fires and gas fires and portable gas heaters. Remember the ch getting fitted in the 70s.

@KweenieBeanz I've read all of your posts and can see your reasoning that you dobt want people to unwittingly turn off their heating and think it will be ok because "that's what we all grew up with" I really don't think anyone is under the impression that no heating at all will be ok. No one will do it out of choice. Sone might do it out of necessity.

Implying others are lying about their own experiences, and relying in such a unpleasant way isn't really necessary. It reads like you're trying to cause an argument any way you can.

True The country may be rich (although I have my doubts right now) but many people here lived and still do live in poverty and can't afford to buy heaters or to run them if they did buy them.

We should all be able to have heating but the reality is that isn't happening. There are people in this country bloody freezing right now.

Shelter, water, food, heat .. these should all be basic human rights worldwide. There's enough wealth in the world to make that happen yet it never will.

It's nkt blinkered view. Uk always was considered rich country. Not that all people were. One can be surprised that country like that had apparently so commonly people with no heating.