Adult Children who live at home the heating goes on when your parents say so.

[oktheber]

Just a bit of a rant really with some young colleagues I work with in their 20's who live with their parents. Yes I know it has been snowing, yes I know you're freezing cold but at the end of the day if you're parents will only have the heating on for a couple of hours in the evening then that's absolutely their right to choose to that. Just because you pay them rent, which is not at market value I should say, does not mean you can put the heating on the days you WFH and your parents are right to be furious for you do that.

AIBU?

What's it got to do with you? When live-at-home 20-somethings want your opinion, I reckon they'll ask for it.

Suppose it depends on parents financial situation.

You're lucky that you can afford to in that case.

I'd say yes because they asked the bill payer! :)

If I was having to be careful about paying for heating, I'd ask the children for extra money. That's the fairest thing to do.

I just like people to be comfortable in my home, rather than miserable.
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It is VERY VERY COLD at the moment in the UK and cost of energy is ruinous. Difficult situation. I think almost anyone working at home, adult child or not, especially in a draughty or badly insulated home, needs to wrap up warm in this weather and try to manage with a lower room temperature than they might prefer. But leaving the heating off all day won't work if it's minus 3 outside. Compromise is essential and an offer to pay towards the extra heating is appropriate.

Absurd. Heating should be on. They are paying rent. Alternatively, they should have some heating device in their room to keep them warm. It's 0 degrees outside the heating can't even raise the temp by 2 degrees in 2 hours. Probably that house is like 12-14 degrees. That's not livable condition.

We had Economy 7 electric heating in our rental flat that didn't really work properly, so it was a choice between no heating and putting on the expensive to run during the day panel heaters, which we didn't want to do as the prices of electric shot up. Our kitchen generally ran at 8c, you could see your breath in there in the morning. I'd be in multiple layers and have a hot shower every day at 4pm just to warm up.

Really handy if you're someone like me who frequently forgets to put the butter or milk away, though 😁

I can't work out if this post is more patronising, infantalising, meddling or just stupid. It's 1C in London at the moment, of course people should have their heating on in order to work. It's bad enough that rents are so out of control that gen z is being forced to live at home for longer than older generations did, now they should be freezing while living there too?

Can you have some kind of system for charging them when they do that?

Surely it is a matter for them and their parents.

YABU yes - they pay rent they shouldn't have to freeze.

Yabu. It's cold during the day if wfh. Saying that should pay rent and money towards heating

Really depends.

If the homeowner is struggling to find the cash to pay for the heating then maybe the kids can cough up some more rent to help out.

But in some cases it's probably just a matter of people being miserly and wanting to save pennies at the expense of being miserable.

Everyone has a different opinion on heating though, and one of the reasons I am glad to be out of rentals is because some people seemed to think heating a house while leaving all the windows open because otherwise it gets "stuffy" is a sensible thing to do.

If the AC don’t like the heating arrangements at Mum and Dad’s, they move out, get their own accommodation and have the heating on whenever they choose.

Ha, DS complained about not having control over the heating, I said him WFH meant that the bills had shot up, and that he and his employers were benefitting financially from him being at home, but I was losing out.
He then offered to pay me more money and we agreed on an extra £100 pm and he could then put the heating on when he wanted to.
TBH I'm not even sure that £100 per month covered having the heating on for an extra 8 hours a day, and the extra electricity for a multiplicity of computers and screens, but we agreed it and he kept paying it over the summer.
He's moved out now, I'll be interested to see the difference in useage.

A lot of early 20s/graduates have no idea how much it costs though - at uni bills are often included in the rent. My friend rents to students and they crank it up high all day long. My brother was the same - it was all 'free' to him.

I had a housemate who moved into our HMO which was rent excluding bills. We'd get the bills in and split it 4 ways. Housemate was used to rent inc bills. She'd put the heating on whenever she was in. If you switched it off, she'd put it straight back on, wandering around in shorts and a sleeveless top and exclaiming she was 'chilly'.

The final straw was when I came home one day and noticed her bedroom windows were wide open. Oh great, she's finally realised it's like a sauna in the house. No, the heating was still on full blast! When I knocked and asked her why the heating was on but the windows open, she said she'd got stuffy and wanted some fresh air. Turn the fucking heating off first!

Needless to say, she never actually paid a heating bill and when it came in after the first quarter, she avoided us, argued about paying 1/4 when really it should have been more anyway, and eventually one day just disappeared leaving us splitting it 3 ways.

Keeping your house freezing cold has become a bit of a cult on here. As I recall, this particular race to the bottom began last winter. It seems to have taken over from the "I never answer the door" one.

Last year I read a post from someone boasting that it was 8C in their house. I quickly checked met office weather and found that the lowest temperature in uk was 12C.

YABU. You can’t expect people to live and work in a fridge 🙄 My son pays a minimal amount of rent but he’s free to turn the heating on/up as and when. It’s awful being cold 🥶

If it is a reasonable temperature (minimum 18 IMO, house type depending, large older houses feel colder) then I would agree with you. People aren't used to wearing jumpers inside. Maybe think about getting a little oil radiator for the bedroom at night though, if a hot water bottle isn't cutting it.

Wfh here. 12 degrees in my house. I’m sure I started hallucinating at one point…. Googled and it said 12 is Baltic, and dangerous to work in. So on my heating went.

I never could understand why Bob Cratchit didn't just look for another job!

@HermoinePotter not everyone has the option to go into the office. My workplace make lots of noises about encouraging us all back into the office as much as possible, but they have drastically reduced desks. So if you want to work in the office on a very cold day, you have to go in early, not possible for many mothers dropping off kids on the way.

Because that would have been the end of the novel!