Is your heating ON or OFF?

Mrs_Thrify

Le_Foot wrote: »

My 90 year old Mum lives with us, so I have to have mine on , more for her than for us. She's just gone to bed, so I've been and turned it off again, but I know I will have to put it on for an hour before she gets up at 8.00 in the morning.

Aw.. has she got a hot water bottle, I have just filled mine.

mardatha

We had minus 4 this morning and the kitchen is a no-go zone without a cardi !

Little_Mama

OH sneaked ours on today when he got back from work after a very chilly bike ride home! It soon went off when I returned home. Thermostat was on 16c and house is comfortable. Hopefully an hour or two as & when needed will do for the meantime.

LM

jimmyay

Still off here !

Though we had our first frost in London last night, the parks were all white this morning . And the flat was only 18 degrees.

Fortunately at work all day so didnt matter, bit cool this evening though i had a couple of jumpers on, and i think i may cave in, in the next few days if it stays cold, though milder weather is forecast for Thursday.

Still , half way through autumn without heating, pretty good going....

witchwoopiggy

on here cant leave it off hubby is an ill man and bedroom is below 14 cant let him sleep in that , just wish HA would fix this place up so it would be warm, doesent help when you can see daylight round frountdoor and window and wall dont meet as frount of place is subsiding i feel like im heating outside what a waist of money, im getting so down with it all.

Fire_Fox

witchwoopiggy wrote: »

on here cant leave it off hubby is an ill man and bedroom is below 14 cant let him sleep in that , just wish HA would fix this place up so it would be warm, doesent help when you can see daylight round frountdoor and window and wall dont meet as frount of place is subsiding i feel like im heating outside what a waist of money, im getting so down with it all.

Your husband wouldn't notice the low temperature if he had an electric blanket with an overnight setting.

NualaBuala

I caved in and put mine on tonight. The indoor temps have been low - around 11/12C - sometimes I'm ok with that but if I'm sitting down trying to work it's just too cold! It's been on since 6.30pm and it's taken till now to reach 14.5C but it finally feels like the room is warm. Still need to wear the layers though.

Most of you are so good and seem to just have it on for an hour or so but I think mine will end up on a lot as it's such a cold house (thin concrete walls). I'll do my best though - it's not going to be fun putting my figures into imeasure next week!

Confuzzled

i've found out some very interesting things about my new flat over the last week or so that i'm actually quite pleased with

1st thing, i've been putting the living room and hall storage heaters on every other night and the hot water is only on on the nights the heaters are and i've still had hot water by sundown on the 2nd day so i'm very very pleased with that.

mind you the hot water heater must be unbelievably well insulated, when you open the cupboard it actually looks like a huge speaker, it's got a rectangular case around it, very odd but hell it works so i'm not complaining!

i've also noticed that we're quite fine doing the every other day thing even with just the two heaters, it gets cold in the bedrooms so i've been leaving the doors open for an hour before bed and heat up a rice sock to snuggle up too and that's fine, can't sleep in a hot room and my feet always find their way out from under the duvet eventually anyway

the slipper boots i got us are a wonderful investement even better than wooley socks so that should help us keep up the alternating days for heat thing even longer i think

all this and we've had hard frosts for the last 3 nights, i'm really chuffed with how well insulated this place is (well after i stuffed the warped wooden window frames with newspaper ) i'm not sure how much i'm getting from downstairs but whatever is happening we're still not using much electricity for heat (both heaters are on low) even though it's been very very cold at night here and a bit nippy during the day

i'm sooooooooo glad i moved to this place, i have already paid my first months bill here, even with 2 computers (heavy usage) the telly, wii, dvd player AND storage heat on at least 6 times that month and i was heating the hot water most days then it was still only 37 quid... considering at the old place i was paying 30 quid a month for just electric (and this was in the summer when i wasn't using the lights as much) AND i still had to pay over 55quid a month in the summer for a boiler i couldn't properly control just to get hot water at all, well i'm very pleased indeed!

here's hoping everyone can stay comfortable this year without too much bother

A_fiend_for_life

witchwoopiggy wrote: »

on here cant leave it off hubby is an ill man and bedroom is below 14 cant let him sleep in that , just wish HA would fix this place up so it would be warm, doesent help when you can see daylight round frountdoor and window and wall dont meet as frount of place is subsiding i feel like im heating outside what a waist of money, im getting so down with it all.

Is there anything on the house buying or renting board on these issues?

If this was me first thing I would do is make an itemized list of all the problems and the impact they are having on the health of everyone in the household. I would expect a date and time for repairs scheduled for within the next day or two. I would also record the indoor temperature with the heating off in an unoccupied room and compare it with the outdoor temperature and the temperature I can achieve with reasonable fuel use.

I believe everyone can get a free energy survey from the Energy Saving Trust. This should produce a very unfavourable report but might take time. I'm not sure how this works with HA accommodation.

If the HA gave any indication of dragging their heels I would make it quite clear that I will approach the council's housing department and all elected representatives on the issue from local councillors to MEPs and opposition members.

Their names are available on here:

http://www.writetothem.com/

(It sounds like the district councillor is the one to write to but the threat of writing to all of them has got to have some weight.)

Regarding the subsidance if the house was unrepairable I would make it quite clear I expect to be rehoused in a suitable house. If the house is not repairable in a suitable time frame I'd expect to be rehoused and the property condemned until it had been brought up to scratch.

At the risk of sounding presumptive if this was impacting on me paying priority bills I would consider emphasizing that but consider what other people say first.

Is there a complaint's procedure or watchdog / ombudsman for housing associations?

flubberyzing

Storage heaters are still off. I just have a heater that sits by my computer desk which I put on first thing, until I go to work, then turn it off. I turn it on again when I get home from work at about 5, until 8-ish when I go upstairs for a bath etc.
I have an electric blanket that I leave on a low setting all night. It really makes a difference!