Heating !

Bluebelle have you spoken to Citizen's Advice or Age UK to see if you qualify under any of the various schemes for helping people like you get your house more energy efficient?

I'm not cold an so my heating hasn't been on as yet. It is a very well insulated house, which it wasn't when I bought it but over the years I've invested a great deal to improve the energy efficiency.

Actually I m fine it’s not a problem to me I ve lived 40 years in this house so I m well used to it I m fairly healthy and I m perfectly cosy with my fire
No I don’t qualify for extra benefits I m just over the savings and I could never heat this big house anyway so I m much better off heating the room I m mostly in, when I m at home it’s an efficient fire so I don’t find it a problem
I m as cosy as a bug in a rug in bed Get up have a hot shower I think I m absolutely fine 😂
My Nan lived to her late 80 s in this house 🤣

I can understand why you would be reluctant to part with your house Bluebelle, but do take care of yourself. Breathing in cold air isn’t good for us as we age, however I believe you go swimming in the freezing North Sea!

I do indeed go swimming in the North Sea GSM and I am not living in a freezing house so please don’t worry
I bet we were all brought up in houses just like mine 😂

Definitely no central heating when I was a child! Frost on the inside of the bedroom window, hot water bottle and wrapping up well!

Ditto GSM

Indeed I was brought up in house with ice on the inside of the bedroom windows in winter,, but now I have a very well insulated old victorian fishermans house which costs me £97 for gas and electricity and the central heating is on all day if it's cold.. like today. I think being a terrace helps.anddouble glazingbut particularly the insulation in the loft floor and the roof..

Bluebelle how about insulation and draft proofing. Help from a warm home scheme doesn't necessarily mean having to install central heating

FlexibleFriend

I'm not cold an so my heating hasn't been on as yet. It is a very well insulated house, which it wasn't when I bought it but over the years I've invested a great deal to improve the energy efficiency.

Would you mind telling us what you have done?
Or start another thread?

I am sure my house could do with at least some tweaks, if not more, to improve the energy efficiency of it.

Germanshepherdsmum

Definitely no central heating when I was a child! Frost on the inside of the bedroom window, hot water bottle and wrapping up well!

Growing up the warm room was the kitchen, the baby slept in the kitchen (he's still spoilt). The bedroom windows were frosty inside.

I remember ice on the inside of the bedroom window, freezing cold lino and getting dressed under the covers but I also know that my grandad, younger than I am now, had a coal fire burning in his bedroom all night.

4 bed detached and all rooms are heated via thermostats 24/7. I have 5 different zones and underfloor heating all downstairs with rads upstairs. My downstairs temperatures are set to 20 overnight, ufh takes a long time to get to temperature and I have times during the day when the living room is set to 21.

Minimum upstairs is 18 in the main bedroom but each room is also controlled by radiator valves so eg my sewing room is warmer if I want it to be so

Today I baked and also made bread and my total cost via smart meter is £5.20. My average monthly cost over 12 months is £90

New build and very well insulated

£90 is for both gas and electricity

I was also brought up in a freezing cold house, we used to dress up to go to bed and had extra covers via ex army blankets from the army and navy store. Houses had icicles hanging from the roofs and ice inside the windows and a tilly lamp inside the outside toilet to stop the pipes freezing

My heating 2 hours in morning, 5 hours evening. I pay £97 per month, and am in credit, at the moment, with Ovo. House, keeps fairly warm as it's a middle terrace.

AgeUk (and presumably other people) can comeand advise on keeping your house warmer and any grants available.

The fact that I lived in uncentrally heated houses as a child does not make me look back on them with nostalgia.

In 1962, just before the freezing winter, my father was posted to Germany and was allocatted a quarter with central heating, a huge coal-fired boiler in the cellar that only needed dealing with once a day. When the cold arrived - and it was far colder there than in the UK, we were all as warm as toast and when my father left the army 18 months later, my mother decreed that when we got back to the UK and they bought a house it had to have CH. And that is what they did, CH was not common in the UK then, but the day after they moved in to their new home, the contractors moved in as well to start installing the CH.

When we bought our first house, CH was still an optional extra - and we opted for it. If we have any doubts, we only need to visit our house in France in the winter. That has no CH, just a network of electric heaters and the first 3 or 4 days there it is like beinga child again. The house does have double glazing and oarts are very well insulated but the structure has to warm up, the walls and the contents before any of the heating reaches us and we go round with mounds of layers, multiple pairs of socks and keeping all the doors shut so that none of the heat from the well insulated bedroom or living room with its wood-burning stove goes anywhere else.

We have insulated the house, taken out the gas central heating and mow have a log burner. So far this winter we have used about £30 of wood and cut our monthly gas and electricity usage to about a third of last year's

It's quite cold (3, I believe) and our home, without any gas heat on, and apart from 2 fireplaces and free wood, is holding 19-20. Good enough. Seems we won't be having the heater parts repaired.

We live in a 5 bedroomed 400 year old house and although we've reprogrammed the boiler (and replaced it with a more efficient modern one) to reduce the on time we are still paying about £300 a month on average over the year. We use a wood stove on winter evenings in the sitting room. Imo this is all due to governments failing to develop nuclear power and now failing to help pay for house insulation. We were quoted £10,000 for that and £15,000 for a heat pump - no chance of affording that.

But it’s surely your choice to live in a big old house Grantanow. If you can’t afford to make it more energy efficient, why should the taxpayer do so? You could move to a property which is cheaper to heat and sell your house to someone who can afford improvements.

Germanshepherdsmum

But it’s surely your choice to live in a big old house Grantanow. If you can’t afford to make it more energy efficient, why should the taxpayer do so? You could move to a property which is cheaper to heat and sell your house to someone who can afford improvements.

We're not all lucky enough to live in modern, well-insulated houses, and for some of us, moving is simply not an option. We just have to make the best of what we have. I'm sitting here typing this with gloves on, several layers of clothing and a blanket round me.

The heating portion of my bill is £75 for gas, that runs 13 radiators , but I keep them on low and only warm the rooms I'm in. I close the blinds throughout at twilight and all the doors upstairs, this makes a huge difference to the comfort level downstairs.
That and a nice warm curly dog, but he actually costs far too much to run!

Have people put their winter fuel allowance from the government towards fuel costs?

I doubt it from what I read on GN.