Wooly jumpers and blankets. Who needs their house at 22°C?
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…and sadly the insulate/insulate/insulate mantra is all very well, but only if you have a property that can be efficiently insulated. Presumably we will also in the future see depreciation of value of such houses and maybe even a push to demolish and rebuild many older properties simply as they cannot meet modern standards.
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To keep costs down, I have fined tuned all the thermostatic valves in all rooms to be different to match the room requirements. I.e. unused bedrooms off, Living room the warmest. It works mostly well, however Mrs Gadget often leaves the living room door open, which then heats up the Hall where the Heating stat is kept, and the heating goes off. I’ve tried explaining how stats work, till it hurts (i.e. she hurts me 
).
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This is absolutely true.
I think we previously felt it colder when I tried to maintain 22°C temp and it dropped lower.
We primarily rely on 2 log burners and electric heaters so when prices started rising I just decided to use them less rather than trying to attain some notional ambient temperature.
It’s made me realise that the log burners cause significant draughts as they pull air into the rooms. I have made some attempts to insulate between flooring and skirting which has helped but may in itself cause issues.
When I was a lad we had no central heating, my grandparents had an outside loo and no hot running water, but I suspect a comparitive luxury compared to many countries (at least at that time).
I was dismayed the other day to see something on the beeb with a young mum, clearly on the breadline, living in social housing saying she could no longer afford to run the central heating all the time - she asked why her children should have to wear jumpers/more clothes to keep warm as it would apparently adversely affect their childhood memories - many face tough choices but some are easier to solve with simple measures even if they’re not as ‘convenient’.
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At the risk of continuing the “four Yorkshireman” sketch…when my mate and I stopped at his Nan’s in Scarborough there was no indoor loo. In the middle of the night If it was cold you had to partially get dressed to go for a wazz.
Indeed as a kid there was often ice on the windows and I’ve got dressed for school without getting out of bed!
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Same here. My bedroom was unheated and it was usual to be able to see your breath on the air. We more or less lived in the kitchen, where the coal fired boiler was.
Even now we have the heating set at 19.5°C and if it gets a bit chilly in the evening we have plenty of blankets on hand. We could afford to have the heating blasting out but it just feels wrong. I’m amazed sometimes at how hot people have their houses - why would anyone expect to swan around the place in T shirt and shorts in the middle of winter?
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Yup, remember all that, glad they are now just memories. I recall also my window frame was falling out and there was a 1 cm gap around all the edges.
What we need is some inspiring people (or influencers) to make thermal clothes trendy - certainly helps to keep heating lower. Unfortunately I still have the memory of my Grandad in his one piece white(ish) thermals.
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Same problem here! Door closers are a possible solution.
I noticed that I’m giving the same speeches to my kids as my father did to me 30 yrs ago.
This because you turn into your parents as you get older 
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Yes, good idea, but may have to wait till the grand twins get older, as would be worried about little fingers getting crushed
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There were chamber pots in every bedroom at my grandmother’s house, and a wooden commode in the room we slept as kids!
There were also wash bowls on every bedroom dressing table and jugs of cold water.
No phone until at least mid 70’s after which I probably racked up silly charges ringing the ‘speaking clock’ to set my Timex watch correctly - little novelties that would bemuse today’s youngsters.
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I thought the speaking clock (123) was free, back then
It didn’t used to be free.
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Because otherwise I’d die of heat exhaustion. I am firmly under the impression that the one thing that might eventually finish our marriage is the dial on the thermostat.
I’m with the 19.5 figure and set the dial accordingly, only to come back home and find that I suspect someone’s installed a blast furnace within the fifteen minutes I was gone fetching some biscuits for the cat. Or, my wife has dialled up the heating to something approaching the melting point of carbon.
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Mrs AC has been topping up the log burner to keep it going while I’ve been working - we’ve now hit 24.1C !!!
Forget shorts, I’ll be wearing even less soon.
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When the speaking clock was first launched calls to the service cost one penny from home and “tuppence” from a phone box. Today a call costs 38.9p
Well well well. Just talking to my Mum, and we both always thought it was free back in the 70’s. As we were a poor one-parent family, I can’t believe we missed that - presumably no itemised billing in those days
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I have a vague recollection that ‘premium services’ like the speaking clock were listed in the residential phone directory along with their numbers - all prior to Busby.
That could change.
The menopause is not all bad news.
Well you could fit automatic door closers and have wedges for when you really need to keep them open.
Jumpers in winter is a good solution. 18C is ok for most of the day.
I have also moved to a variety of time periods with different temperatures which brings the boiler on at 16C in the day just to make it easier to move to the ‘at home’ temperature. This is in a 315m2 EPC D nearly C listed building, which is above the national average. There must be 20 million homes that are still poorly insulated.
I also have a variety of electronic valve heads to customise each room and Govee Wifi thermostats to monitor the zone thermostats which are not smart. The goal is to ensure the boiler does not cycle (inefficient operations where the return temperature goes above the condensing temperature). In future we need smarter heating engineers who model the building properly.
For a large listed building air source may need a hybrid solution for the very cold periods and possibly the hot water. The Scandinavian manufacturers seem to be ahead on the technology. Vertical ground source is prohibitively expensive at about £8k per hole with demanding access for the rig.
We really need a detailed review of how to meet the national domestic energy needs. Ultimately lifestyle aspirations and the environment are incompatible. Nuclear fusion may provide clean energy but will it be economic?
Phil
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And there I was, a trained physicist, thinking I was the only one who appeared incapable of explaining how a stat helps maintain a consistent, ‘pleasant’, temperature. Happy to read of a fellow sufferer!
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