Keeping warm

layers from top to bottom, the weather even now is so erratic. I have spent spring and summer building up the layers in my wardrobe and drawers, coatigan, cardigans, shacket, tunics, sweatshirts as well as the usual polo and crew necks. Leggings, warm tights, hand made woollen socks. Thin jumpers, flannel and wool skirts. Dresses that can be layered. etc

Similar for my bedding, I have worked on layers for my bed and now have them ready in my airing cupboard. It has cost a lot over time but I have reached the sublime state of being finished. Wool all season duvets, welsh wool blankets, linen bedding, flannel bedding tucked away in a corner just in case, very thin woollen blankets.The temperatures vary so much day by day and right now I am sleeping under a linen sheet and one thin cellular woollen blanket

MawtheMerrier
I agree entirely
People go on solar power ... have to pay lots for that ... then with the cost takes years back to reap the financial benefits ... if you know what I mean

Let’s not complain about heatwaves then!
Pity we can’t bottle them ??? and save them for the colder weather!

I do wear extra clothing ... but ... sorry if shouldn't put this on this thread ... just phoned up my energy company to fix my price as I am on a flexible tariff I pay £140 ... my decision to put it up ... if I go on a fixed tariff would go up to £259.91 !!! I do now know how more people are really feeling !!! My flexible tariff is being reviewed in October ... disgraceful !

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Am I correct in thinking that the recommended 'planet saving' temperature is 16 degrees? I managed 18 last winter with the help of layers.

Like many others on here my childhood was spent in a house where the only form of heating was a coal fire in the one living room.In the winter bedrooms were for sleeping in only,even then we had old coats heaped on the beds.
Now we have been spoilt with central heating in every room including the bedrooms so our children have got used to doing a lot of things in their rooms.
My late DH suffered from severe heart disease so we got the full heating allowance to pay for the house to be heated all day as cold made him very ill.When he died of course the allowance died with him, so I have had to get used to heating the house only when necessary.I have Emphysema which I have learned to cope with, when cold I just put on extra clothing.I have never heated the bedrooms evenings winter.
A lot of people watch the TV soaps etc and get used to the characters wearing summer clothes in winter, but forget that they are acting in a warm studio, so think it is normal.

I wear a cardie or jumper round my home ... also I wear my house coat / dressing gown aswell ... keep that on top of my clothes during the day may I add take it off when anyone comes ....I will add make sure not too long that you are liable to trip over it , also extra care if you have your fire on ... I also snuggle up with a blanket ...why not ? Have to keep warm & try to save on heating ... very occasionally I will have a hot water bottle ... may I add I do feel so sorry for those that can not heat their home, some eat or heat ... I am fortunate I can do both but try not to waste the heat ... I know someone to save on heating uses her bus pass & uses the buses to keep warm ... another idea I have just thought of ... may work may not ... if 2/3 /4 could have a few more ... cook one lunch/ dinner then share so not all using your your gas/ electric ... works if people are a few doors or so away ... as collect when whenever to eat at their own home at their leisure, or eat altogether on one home, just put in the microwave to heat up !!!

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EmilyHarburn My daughter has one of those robes you link to. She is a wild swimmer all year round and has this on the bank so that as soon as she gets out of the water she can put a warm layer over her swimsuit and then get into the car and have a hot drink.

Cashmere is lovely for light warmth. If you are a bit canny you can get affordable cashmere. If you ebay buy sometimes you can strike lucky, I've bought lovely scarves and jumpers cheaper than a new primark acrylic jumper. You have to be a bit dedicated though, but it's possible. I've bought random coloured cashmere socks on amazon, much cheaper than deciding you want blue ones. A good place to get warm cashmere stuff is turtle doves, they recycle old cashmere sweaters, they do wristwarmers and fingerless gloves and lok out for sales and offers, and go for random colours they can be a lot cheaper. They make a big difference, I got my first pair from a charity shop and loved them so much I got more. They do scarves, wraps, etc, bigger you go the dearer obviously. If you have an old jumper or cardi beyond repair or whatever, send to them and they will send you a pair, and use the rest for their scarves etc. The other bargain cashmere I had was in a bag left out in the rain just before Christmas one year outside a charity bin. I saw it was jumpers and thought that it would. Get chucked, it couldn't be put in the bin even if there was room and would probably spoil the dry stuff that was in there
I took the bag home and washed and dried the clothes, most. Of the stuff went to a charity shop after Christmas, it was nice stuff. But I kept a cashmere jumper.
Frozen pipes were a thing, if you were in a house with uninsulated Pipes it was a real possibility and they could. Do a lot of damage. Frozen pipes in the loft. Could bring a ceiling down, and at best ruin clothes, bedding, furniture. Lived in a room. In such a house from the 30s one winter. The wallpaper was brown stained and the landlord said a previous person had thrown a cup of tea at his wife
It wasn't, the pipes had frozen. It happened and soaked the bed, and the carpet, and anything in contact with the damp, the landlords brother gave me some money for the electric to help dry it out, and said it had happened before and he'd try and get landlord to lag the pipes so it would t happen again. False economy not to lag as you needed a plumber and to dry out where it was wet. Old lagging was strips of sacking stuff, now it is foamy stuff that is really easy to fit. If you have pipes in the loft and the loft is pretty well insulated, the loft will be cold and pipes need lagging.

Dehumidifiers are great too as they can take the chill off a house, if you ever dry clothing inside using a dehumidifier can cut down on the amount of heat needed, and it is much cheaper. A relative who lives in a stone house on the top of a cold hill in the North finds that using one means much less heat needed, even if you don't have clothes drying, as you breathe out damp all day, back in the day with no central heating and single glazing jack frost came in the night and froze this moisture into pretty patterns on the window.

For anyone who loves a hot water bottle, Costco are currently selling long length ones with lovely soft fluffy covers. Bought one yesterday.

We love our air fryer, bought on a whim from the middle of Lidl, just £29.99. Great for battered fish, scampi, chips, quick dinner cooked in 10-15 minutes, the time it takes even a fan oven to heat up.

Hi MOnica, Thank you for the info. re Air fryers. Interestingly I regularly do potatoes that way, but using the oven. I've considered an air fryer in order to save on electricity. I'll do some research.

My best friend sent me a Tower air fryer, it's fantastic, very quick and only one little pan to 'wipe' clean. The very old electric oven the seller left takes about ten minutes to heat up, I've eaten a lot of biscuits by the time it's reached the right temperature!

Jan I just went into Currys and bought the cheapest, on the basis that if it was a waste of space I woldn't have wasted much money.

I bought a small one, which works well for two. I dice potatoes, spray them with oil and they are cooked in 15 minutes. If you want to be posh, they are known as pomme parmentier. I also heated two slices of quiche, cooked fishcakes and heated other things.

I am still exporing what else I can do with it. It cost me £20 in the sales.

Which air fryer do you recommend, please MOnica?

Ah, the joys of a new house. Yes, heat pumps work best with underfloor heating. This is the problem. 99+% of housing is not new and under floor heating requires the whole of the ground floor to be dug up. If you have a newish house (like our brand new extension, there is a only a few inches of concrete before you reach the underfloor insulation, how you retrofit under floor heating in those circumstances I am not sure.

A good replacement for an electric oven for most warming processes is an air fryer. Yesterday I reheated some slices of quiche from frozen, They are ideal for things you want to reheat but go soggy in a microwave like bread rolls.

I'll probably still wear a t-shirt as I've felt as though I carry my own personal radiator ever since going through menopause.

However, this winter I will leave my heating on just enough to stop any pipes from freezing and I now have inherited a cupboard full of fleece blankets from my dear old mum. I'm also trying not to use the electric oven unless I'm batch cooking for an entire week.

I think you’ve said you have a very old house, so I can imagine the chill winds that come down a massive old fireplace!

I was chatting to a local couple who’ve built a new house recently. It has an air source heat pump (too expensive to drill through granite for ground source!) and a wood burner. Downstairs is underfloor heating and they said they dithered about putting radiators upstairs, in the end deciding not to and hope for the best. It’s turned out that they really don’t need upstairs heating because with the tip-top insulation and heating downstairs, the whole house is comfortably warm.

They thought they’d need the stove as back up but it’s really now just a decorative item. The air source units are supposed to work down to minus 15. This area had temps of minus 17 last winter and daytime temps of minus 11 but the two units kept working away merrily even though they were covered in ice!

I guess the thing with this new technology is that we’re learning all the time. ?

We were lucky, we have a great big open fireplace (so you can imagine the drafts and, yes, the rain!) so fitting a stove was simple and having the chimney closed down to just the flu made a lot of difference.

We had two woodburners, two open fires and an aga downstairs at the station. There were two open fireplaces upstairs, two were blocked off. We had been put off by scaffolding costs to have the unused chimneys capped but I wish we'd found the money, when it was a downwind the draft was freezing and when it rained it used to plink plonk onto the grate, especially bad in my bedroom.

We have an open fire, only used occasionally, but block the chimney when it's not in use, to prevent heat loss.

We looked into installing a stove but the tsunami of work that would ensue made it out of the question. The antique fireplace is a centimetre too low for the safety regulations. That would mean ripping it out (and I’d hate to do that because it’s unusual and I love it) and also the hearth. We’d then have to make good the walls and replace the fireplace, hearth and the nearly-new carpet.

Financially, it didn’t make sense and would mean a lot of waste so it couldn’t be justified.

One of the many reasons we replaced our open fire with a stove was the heatloss up the chimney. With a stove the chimney is blanked off entirely, except where the flue from stove to chimney goes through.