Is your heating ON or OFF?

Silaqui

I haven't switched the heating on yet this year and have been fine, still in my teeshirts here so far apart from the odd chilly night when I stick a jumper on. I had set myself a target of no earlier than the 1st November but was hoping to last longer as I still have the jumper and blanket stages to go through yet!
HOWEVER I am very annoyed today as I went to the football this afternoon and came home to find the boyfriend sitting watching telly in a teeshirt with the heating on, fleece blanket that I bought him (cuz he feels the cold more than me) under his feet on the table!
I promptly turned it off and am now sitting here sweating. Men!

Unity

mardatha wrote: »

Its a howling gale outside and very cold, forecast is for a north wind next week and that will rbing snow. WHOOOPEEEE ITS WINTER!! Hot water bottles out and get knitting at the fire !!

Jackieb wrote:

I think we must live close to each other. It's wild here - the trees are really bending. :eek: I'm sitting here wrapped in a fleece blanket. It must be cold because my hubby has told me to put on the gas fire - and he's been really tight lately!

Well hello from a little further south:wave: - North East England, where it has been extremely windy, but not that cold - yet:rolleyes:. No doubt if you've got it now, we'll be getting it next since it normally works that way.

Take care and keep warm - I'm even using the laptop on my knee - so drawing a little extra heat from that .

poppy10_2

I've had the heating on all summer. I like it nice and toasty.

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

Still no heating here and we're both fine about it.I'm finding lots of benefits to it too apart from the obvious saving money.
I'm getting up and ready instead of lolling about for a couple of hours in my dressing gown and then I'm keeping on the go for the rest of the day.All my housework gets done and I've realy started to enjoy cooking again.We get lots of nice things to eat and it keeps me warm and busy.Come the evening and out come the throws and then the hot water bottles for bed.By the time I crawl into bed I sleep like a baby because I've never stopped all day.
I'm going to keep going as long as possible as I actually feel better without it and it's not that cold yet.

foreversomeday

Thanks scarymclary, reformed and caterina.

Our central heating is a bit weird because it wasn't put in with the house, our landlord installed it himself (he is an electrician but it has been fully tested by a qualified gas inspector person) and we just have an on-demand boiler for hot water and that provides the heating too. So we don't have an immersion heater at all, and I don't think there is a thermostat apart from a dial on the boiler itself which doesn't have any temperatures on it, just a line which goes from hot to cold.

As for the sling, I do use one I don't drive and thought it would be much easier to use for public transport etc, and then when I researched it like the idea of using it around the house too. I am using my (Home made! :money:) stretchy wrap to get things done but he likes to push his head out when he is awake which means I have to hold onto it as although his head control is good he's still little and it is a bit floppy. So not quite hands free unless he is asleep! I haven't worked out how to breastfeed in the wrap yet either but am just taking it slowly. Before LO arrived I was trying to set up a sling group in the local area via slingmeet.co.uk so will try and get back to that as there were a couple of more experienced mums interested, there don't seem to be many babywearing parents around here though.

Will definitely get some more of those tops too as I have got one but it always seems to be in the wash at the moment :rotfl:.

sparrer

Counting the days, another one passed without having to turn the ch on . Luckily the HA insulated my loft last winter with, I think, 11" of insulation and I have the stairs in the lounge so all the heat is rising into the bedrooms. Just as well my computer room (grand name for 3rd bed/glory room :rolleyes: ) is upstairs as it's quite cosy in here. I did get a bit chilly while I was watching the X-Factor but with two cats, a dog and a big mug of tea it soon warmed up . Lots of contigency plans to go yet, I haven't got the micro-hottie out, nor the throw for the sofa, and have only just resorted to wearing a wooly pully in the last day or two. I'm beginning to think I just don't feel the cold as much as some

JoolzS

PasturesNew wrote: »

As I understand it there has never been an upper limit.

For a lower limit, by law an office must reach 60degrees (15.5 degrees) within one hour of the office opening. But I was never sure what would happen next. Having a law implies that you can just go home if it isn't, but that's not the real world is it

I've been in many offices where it hasn't been the minimum temperature within an hour, even all day on really cold days, but if you walk out you don't get paid and might be sacked at some future point if you're seen as a troublemaker.

I've been in this position once in my life, about 20 odd years ago when I was 19 or so. The heating at my work had completely failed due to a burst pipe in the attic of the building and the temperature was somewhere around 50 degrees. I phoned up some government department (really have no memory of which one) to find out the minimum heating requirement; discovered it was 60 degrees and I was somehow able to persuade every single person in the office, including my boss and his boss, to walk out which pretty much shut the company down! We all went to the local pub and discovered they also had a burst pipe and no heating :rotfl:. We did however all stay there until they brought in some space heaters at the office and got the working space back up to a bearable level.

I think I may have been the person to get everyone wound up about the lack of heating becauseI had to get two buses to work so I was already pretty close to freezing by the time I arrived. This meant getting to a cold office was not the best thing for my mood.

There were no sanctions for anyone who left the office that day and I would do exactly the same thing again in the future.

As Pasturesnew says, I don't believe there has ever been an upper limit. This would make certain workspaces unworkable at all times of year - machine shops, mines, kitchens, etc can sometimes all be at over 100 degrees no matter what time of year it is.

Julie

JoolzS

I have to say that this thread smacks of "one-up-man-ship" to me. I really don't understand why anyone chooses to actually be cold. I do understand that some people are on limited budgets and have to restrict when they put their heating on (and I wish something could be done about that), but I really don't understand why anyone chooses for themselves or their family to be cold.

For those of you who feel warm at temperatures that others feel cold - please be aware that it doesn't matter how many layers the other person puts on - they will probably still feel a bit chilly and uncomfortable. I lost track of the number of posts where the poster claimed that they were comfortable enough but their DH, DS, DD, or any other relative felt cold - if you can afford it put the heating on. Some "old style" things aren't worth reliving - and being cold is definitely not one of them.

I live in what was a very cold, very draughty flat. Before we got central heating I remember making a point of coming home from work at lunchtime every day during the winter to re-lay the fire so that when I got in from work (driving my unheated car) I only had to light it and it would take about half an hour for one room of the flat to get warm. That was just miserable.

I've also noticed a lot of posts stating the "correct" indoor temperature. A lot of central heating thermostats aren't particularly well calibrated. Mine never, ever kicks in below about 19 degrees (on the stat). The comfortable temperature (on the stat) is 24 degrees. I'm not stupid and I realise that 24 degrees isn't the real temperature - it's just the stat. Reading this thread I'm worried that some people will be really, really cold because they can't keep their stat below some arbitrary level. Growing up my mum wouldn't let me ever let the stat go above 20 degrees. If I followed that ruling I would practically never have any heating on even though the real temperature is probably a lot lower.

Oh, and for those of you who think that keeping your house temperature very low is saving the environment for your grandchildren - please note that your children will always make sure they are never, ever cold once they get their own place - they will use up the carbon you aren't using.

I do completely agree that no-one should be walking around in shorts and t-shirts in October to April, but I also don't see the point of wearing four layers either. I tend to have cold feet so I will wear two layers of socks, but if my feet are still cold then the heating goes on. If my face gets hot then it goes off. My DH occasionally changes this.

One other thing, if anyone gets this far, I have discovered that if I actually GET warm then I can STAY warm. I did try cutting the heating down by a couple of degrees a few years ago and I was never, ever warm. Now I push the heating up by a couple of degrees for an hour or so and then I often find I can turn it off for a few hours because I simply am warm.

Julie

[Deleted User]

ooo Julie, you are a bit of a cynic. There is no one upmanship as far as I am concerned. My body acclimatised, like it did in the os old days when I was young and we, 7 children, grew up in a house with one coal fire. I am 60 now and we are a bunch of the healthiest `oldies` you could meet.

It isn`t just about saving pennies or the environment, although neither can be dismissed. It is about a way of life that directs our money to where we want it to be used and in my case it certainly is not into heating my home beyond what is necessary, to maintain health at my age now

So yes, I turned the heating on last night because it became uncomfortable but it was 15.5 degrees. I am comfortable at 18 degrees. It is about knowing our own limits after all, be it financial, environmental etc.

Icewytch

I haven`t got central heating, but grew up in the seventies without it in the highlands of Scotland, back then I didn`t mind the frost on the inside of the windows or the cold of the lino floor on bare feet! (not to mention the outside loo, nope, not kidding ) but the older I get, the more I realise, I`d about kill for central heating in winter! :cool:
I have a solid fuel stove, an old range they long ago stopped making called a Doric, and an open fire in the bedroom I can`t afford to use. Here on island they built chimneys you could send a squad of Victorian children up! No dampers to control the heat from a fire being sucked up the lum! So one bag of coal every two days, well, a wee bit expensive.
I use smokeless coal plus any driftwood I can find and chop for the stove, so only one room in the house is heated.
I wear lots of clothes...:o
but I guess it`s an improvement on yesteryear here...when the islanders had to burn dried cow dung.:eek:
Although with the rising cost of coal...sixteen pounds for 25kg...I may have to go round the barns here with a shovel soon...