5p cut in tax on fuel.

[whole diary]

[Robin Summerhill]

I can remember when most people only heated the room in use.
I also remember when people wore warm clothes in the winter, and used thick wool blankets on beds, with brushed cotton sheets. Some people even wore pajamas. Or long underwear.

Can you remember from the same era how many people died of hypothermia?

And can you fremember the mould that built up in thode unheated rooms, and rhe resultant deaths from brochitis and pneumonia?

And can you remember how much plumbers earned after a cold snap repairing all those burst pipes?

Selective recollection is such a blessing...

[broadgage]

Yes, but, I still only heat the room in use to 20+ degrees, heating other rooms only very slightly to prevent plumbing freezing.
And I use thick wool blankets, warm nightwear, and warm clothing.

I spent on fuel last year.

Electricity-------------£200
Logs-------------------£160.
 
Paraffin----------------£25.

I keep large stocks of LPG^▸ (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) and of coal, and of candles, in case of emergencies but consumption of these is negligible.

[Red Squirrel]

I can remember when most people only heated the room in use.
I also remember when people wore warm clothes in the winter, and used thick wool blankets on beds, with brushed cotton sheets. Some people even wore pajamas. Or long underwear.

Can you remember from the same era how many people died of hypothermia?

And can you fremember the mould that built up in thode unheated rooms, and rhe resultant deaths from brochitis and pneumonia?

And can you remember how much plumbers earned after a cold snap repairing all those burst pipes?

Selective recollection is such a blessing...

Well...

My family has just spent the winter without central heating. No pipes burst, nothing went mouldy, and no-one died of bronchitis, hypothermia or indeed amnesia.

I won't bore you with the details of how this came about, but it was a temporary expedient.

What did we learn?

1. It is absolutely possible to be comfortable in a house that's a few degrees cooler. This may go some way to explaining how humans survived for the 300,000 years before central heating was invented.

2. Only heating the rooms you use can save a fortune. The heat that leaks out of them raises the temperature of the rest of the house just enough.

3. We found it was surprisingly good for family life. Our kids, who would normally skulk off to their rooms to do whatever teenagers do of an evening, actually joined us in the sitting room instead to keep warm. OK, they had their iPads and headphones, but they were present and they even spoke sometimes.

[broadgage]

I also experienced neither mould, nor hypothermia, nor bronchitis, and no frozen pipes.
Not even during two prolonged power cuts.

[Robin Summerhill]

I never lived in a house that had central heating until I was 35 years of age, but I did spend half a working lifetime working in the social housing industry so I have some experience of the problems, both social and structural, that come from unheated or poorly heated housing

Yes it is possible to live quite happily in an unheated house if you are young, fit and active or at least fit or active

The last known case of hypothermia that I personally came across was an old lady in Calne in 1986. In a bungalow that had Economy 7 heating that she couldn’t afford to run...

Not everybody is all right Jack.

[stuving]

I also experienced neither mould, nor hypothermia, nor bronchitis, and no frozen pipes.
Not even during two prolonged power cuts.

Yes it is possible to live quite happily in an unheated house if you are young, fit and active or at least fit or active

Well, it depends on who you are - people vary a lot. And that's not how I see it.

I didn't live in a house with central heating or cavity walls until I was 42. And up to then I suffered chronic rhinitis and catarrgh, which then stopped quite suddenly. It was never possible to prove why, but my best guess was an allergy/reaction to mould spores (which persists, to some extent). So I suspect that it's the cavity walls that matter as much as the heating. It might just be the temperature, though some on those buildings were reasonably warm.

There is a serious problem in putting modern efficient, comfortable, heating into old houses. Houses were once heated by open fires, which needed a lot of air flow - aka howling draughts. This did, however, remove any moisture from the surface of the (solid) walls and generally provide fresh air. So even where damp-proof courses were put in, they didn't need to work very well.

Since we switched to other heat sources (closed fires, electric, radiators, etc.) and minimal ventilation for efficiency, all those houses have suffered from structural damp. Treating this is always difficult, and some houses just don't respond to any treatment. They just weren't built to unventilated. And I'm sure that mould - even if invisible - is a common consequence.

But returning to that high ventilation model was never was option for me - I don't do cold. I grew up in a house heated by coal fires, though with the later version with underfloor draught to the fires so the room could be better sealed. But the bedrooms were not heated, and clothes of the period were somewhat lacking compared to today's skiing kit - and I did not enjoy the chilblains at all, despite plenty of opportunity to get used to them. When we had snow it was fun - for a few minutes, but that didn't survive my fingers, toes, ears etc. starting to hurt.

And that has only got worse in the last few years, with Reynaud's and arthritis. I tried turning down the heating last autumn, but my fingers started to hurt with the thermometer still showing 20^o, and I'm not yet prepared to wear gloves sitting at the keyboard.

So, in that limited sense, roll on global warming!

[TaplowGreen]

https://youtu.be/VAdlkunflRs

 

[Robin Summerhill]

We have strayed a long way from railways on this thread, let alone the 5p off fuel subject line, but just for clarification I will put my Surveyor’s hat back on once again and give an explanation of damp and condensation, which are two totally different things.

A damp roof course in a building should be above ground level but below ground floor level, and is there to stop moisture migrating up from the ground. If there is no damp proof course in a building or if it has been breached, rising damp will be the result. It will be apparent through damp or wet walls, usually at a fairly low level in the building.

Penetrating damp is moisture that comes in through the walls. This is much more likely in buildings with solid walls but it can also happen with cavity walls, either through moisture jumping the cavity across dirty wall ties, or can sometimes occur when a building has had the cavity filled by using the insulation itself as the route. This should not happen unless the cavity wall insulation itself is faulty. It will manifest itself in a damp patch or patches on the internal wall

There is always moisture in the atmosphere, especially in temperate (ie wet) climates such as in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), and the warmer air is then the more moisture it can absorb. Condensation is the result of warm air meeting a cold surface where the moisture in the air will condense into water. This is the reason why moisture will be found on cold days, for example, on windows. Moisture will also condense more easily with poor air circulation, so it is more often seen behind furniture or in relatively unused rooms where the air is not regularly disturbed. Given time, either damp or condensation will result in mould growth

Condensation is not caused by a structural fault in the building; it is caused by the inability of the air in a building to hold the moisture in it. The cure for condensation is either to improve the ventilation or reduce the amount of moisture in the air. Improving ventilation is easy, by opening windows and possibly doors, but people are often reluctant to do this because of draughts, especially in cold weather, and also because it wastes expensive fuel. Reducing the moisture content is more difficult and will depend on where the moisture is coming from and how easy it is to reduce. It is not easy t all in kitchens and bathroom where there tends to be a lot of hot or boiling water around at certain times of day.

The easiest way to absolutely guarantee oneself a major condensation problem is to have an unvented heating appliance, such as a portable gas heater, in a draughtproofed room.

[broadgage]

Condensation can also be reduced by use of an electric dehumidifier, these extract water from the room air into a container that must be emptied. Less commonly the water is piped to a drain.

Increasingly expensive electricity is consumed by the machine, but warmth is also produced, unlike opening a window.

Another option is mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, or MVHR, an electric fan extracts warm damp air from a kitchen or bathroom and uses a heat exchanger to warm incoming fresh air. Very effective and use little electricity.

Unflued heaters that burn paraffin or bottled gas can be most useful for emergencies or breakdowns, but regular use should be avoided for the reason given of the amount of moisture produced.
Such heaters USED TO BE a cheap option favoured by the poor, but these days are nearly as expensive as electricity. Handy for breakdowns though.
I have a portable LPG^▸ (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) heater for emergencies, never been used other than for brief testing.
I also have a Tilley infra red radiator, used regularly in the bathroom in severe weather, and sometimes elsewhere.

[TonyK]

Right.

As a youth, I lived on the moors 1000' above Oldham on the border with the West Riding of Yorkshire. The house (a shop actually, with living room, kitchen behind and bedrooms above) was a couple of hundred years old, built of stone, and heated by a single coal fire. There was a small paraffin heater in the outside toilet to stop the pipes freezing, and a bucket of water inside the back door for when it didn't work, plus a hammer for when the bucket froze. I was once lowered from the bedroom window to clear the snow from the front door when it drifted the wrong sort of way.

Strangely, it was on a warmish sunny day in April that I caught pneumonia...

[JayMac]

Right.

As a youth, I lived on the moors 1000' above Oldham on the border with the West Riding of Yorkshire. The house (a shop actually, with living room, kitchen behind and bedrooms above) was a couple of hundred years old, built of stone, and heated by a single coal fire. There was a small paraffin heater in the outside toilet to stop the pipes freezing, and a bucket of water inside the back door for when it didn't work, plus a hammer for when the bucket froze. I was once lowered from the bedroom window to clear the snow from the front door when it drifted the wrong sort of way.

Strangely, it was on a warmish sunny day in April that I caught pneumonia...

Right.

I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah".

[Robin Summerhill]

Right.

As a youth, I lived on the moors 1000' above Oldham on the border with the West Riding of Yorkshire. The house (a shop actually, with living room, kitchen behind and bedrooms above) was a couple of hundred years old, built of stone, and heated by a single coal fire. There was a small paraffin heater in the outside toilet to stop the pipes freezing, and a bucket of water inside the back door for when it didn't work, plus a hammer for when the bucket froze. I was once lowered from the bedroom window to clear the snow from the front door when it drifted the wrong sort of way.

Strangely, it was on a warmish sunny day in April that I caught pneumonia...

Right.

I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah".

Luxury...

[Western Pathfinder]

And you try telling the young people of today that and they won't believe you!....

[broadgage]

I have not been believed by the youth of today when I told them that I remembered,

Working horses in suburban London.
Houses without electricity.
Outside toilets.
Oil lamps as a daily form of illumination.

And I did explain that none of the above were COMMON in the 1960s, but that all were still existing.

And a lot dont really believe more recent history such as as 56k dial up internet, or a world without cellphones, or blankets on beds rather than duvets, or beer at 25 pence a pint.

[paul7575]

I have not been believed by the youth of today when I told them that I remembered,

Working horses in suburban London.
Houses without electricity.
Outside toilets.
Oil lamps as a daily form of illumination.

And I did explain that none of the above were COMMON in the 1960s, but that all were still existing.

And a lot dont really believe more recent history such as as 56k dial up internet, or a world without cellphones, or blankets on beds rather than duvets, or beer at 25 pence a pint.

My Saturday job in 1971 was on an old fashioned forecourt on the A1 north of Newcastle, where we filled the car as requested, checked the oil, cleaned the windscreen etc.   Checking tyre pressures was worth a good tip.

I distinctly remember petrol being about (newly decimal) 32p a gallon, because drivers would sometimes pay with a pound note and ask me to keep the change.  Only the drivers of the very biggest cars might ask for £5 of petrol…