Is your heating ON or OFF?

housebug

My apologies for my bad language. Its as much for myself as for my friend.

Anywho, back to sanity. I've rung her back and suggested she get right onto her supplier. Tell them she simply can't afford her current scheme and ask for options. They switched suppliers in the Summer, but there's no reason they can't switch again. I think. Is there a penalty for switching again now? I've said she should ring round the other companies, explain her situation and see who can offer her a better deal.

I think the problem is she feels that one supplier is like the other now. There's very little available for cost savings. They can't bring in more money than they do now. They have a small one bed flat, newish build, but its near B'ham city centre (they can't afford to run a car so to get to work meant paying more in rent/CT to live within bus distance). Their combined incomes just about covers everything.

Unity

housebug wrote: »

My apologies for my bad language. Its as much for myself as for my friend.

Anywho, back to sanity. I've rung her back and suggested she get right onto her supplier. Tell them she simply can't afford her current scheme and ask for options. They switched suppliers in the Summer, but there's no reason they can't switch again. I think. Is there a penalty for switching again now? I've said she should ring round the other companies, explain her situation and see who can offer her a better deal.

I think the problem is she feels that one supplier is like the other now. There's very little available for cost savings. They can't bring in more money than they do now. They have a small one bed flat, newish build, but its near B'ham city centre (they can't afford to run a car so to get to work meant paying more in rent/CT to live within bus distance). Their combined incomes just about covers everything.

Rather than ringing round - especially if they use 0870/0845 numbers it might be best to look here first: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/you-switch-gas-electricity You've probably already seen this, but it's surprising how often people go straight to the Forum and I'm often one of them!:o

I really feel for your friend and hope that she finds a solution.

fedupfreda

noonesperfect wrote: »

We've caved in as well, but only had the heating on for a couple of short bursts.
Like another poster we use the boiler to heat the water all year round (30 mins to an hour a day) but it's at least 25 years old now and so we don't have a separate thermostat (other than the radiator ones)

Two of the radiator stats have broken off when they were switched on high and two of the radiators don't work at all! But that's nothing new :rolleyes: .

We'll hold out as long (hopefully oil prices will fall a bit more fingers crossed) as we can before the timer is set to bring the heating as well as the water on.....but it may not be long if we get dips in temperature like Friday night/Saturday morning - my car was white over and all the house windows had condensation yesterday morning (including the upvc ones!!).

Yes, we have succumbed as well, and we are also suffering from condensation on double glazed windows, anyone got any ideas? I know the more up to date ones have trickle vents at the top but ours are at least 15 years old (before we moved in) and dont have any vents. I spent the first few minutes of this morning wiping the inside of the windows dry, funny how I can remember my mum doing that when I was a kid, just hope we don't get ice on the inside of the windows as well :eek:

I was hoping to keep the heat off until 1st November but mother nature has other ideas - at the moment only on for 1 hour before waking up time and 1 hour before kids bed time (us adults can cope). Don't know how long this will last - looked out of the window this morning and there was frost on the shed roof - looks like the old saying about 'many hips and haws, many frosts and snows' is going to be true, 'cos it was a bumper year for blackberries round my way :eek:

skintmumof3

with all of us not turning our heating on and shivering away.....
does this mean our bodies are burning more calories in the effort to keep warm????
i have this image of all us mse`rs unwrapping and merging from our fleeces in the spring to all have metamorphed into gorgeous skinny girls/boys.......lol

Pink.

Hi skintmum,

Interesting view. I've added your post to the have you turned your heating on thread where you should get replies from the experts.

Pink

mardatha

metamorphed into gorgeous skinny girls
************

my god. if only ....:)
Goin back to housebug --does your friend HAVE to pay by DD? I wonder what they woudl do if we all cancelled and put the money by in a teapot and paid the bill with cash ? Its much more convienent for me and then you cna check each bill to the last penny to make sure they dont owe you money ...

sb44

p00 wrote: »

Does anyone know where I can get an adult fleecy 'babygow' for me and my sister so we dont have to put the heating on yet please

xxpoo

People may laugh when you say that but they are brilliant.

I had one of those 10 years ago when I was pregnant and it was brilliant.

It had a fleecy lining but no feet in the bottom which is good as you didn't wear the feet out and could just wear slippers with it.

I'm not sure who made them as I go mine from one of those end of line catalogue shops.

Caterina

Still no CH, but woodstove went on last night, my DH's doing. I told him that if we are putting the stove on every night in October, by December we will have run out of wood, so perhaps he will think twice about adding another chunk of wood when the embers are perfectly ok to warm up the house!

Last night it was 16 degrees (C) in my bedroom, but when I went in with my cup of hot tea it became 17, then DH came in and it went up to 18, the perfect temperature for a bedroom! Last winter the lowest temperature we had in the bedroom was 13 degrees, which even on my frugal standards is excessively cold!

I am about to start crochet a new square blanket (thank you Kittie for reminding me), the last one took me two years in front of the TV in the evenings and I gave it to my DD as a gift last Christmas, which she loved! My DS has his favourite Spiderman blanket and my DD brings her quilt down. So we are sorted for winter covers (my DH is the stoic type and does not use blankets LOL).

Keep up the good work, and if you have to put CH on, don't feel guilty, we all need to do what's right for us!

Caterina

A_fiend_for_life

skintmumof3 wrote: »

with all of us not turning our heating on and shivering away.....
does this mean our bodies are burning more calories in the effort to keep warm????
i have this image of all us mse`rs unwrapping and merging from our fleeces in the spring to all have metamorphed into gorgeous skinny girls/boys.......lol

Sounds good. I am already wearing thermal tracksuit bottoms underneath my jeans and am still jiggling my legs. I have reduced my energy consumption to the bare minimum.

Don't people who eat oily fish feel the cold less. The omega three allows the cell membranes to be more fluid and therefore more active at lower temperatures. So less saturated fats and cholesterol and more cheap sardines and other oily fish I think.

There was a story of an Icelandic fisherman who went overboard and swam back to the mainland. Took him a day and a half or more and he survived because of his size, he kept moving but also because of his high fish diet. It was published in readers digest (quite) a few years ago.

Might take a good few weeks of eating the stuff though but were lacking in Omega 3 anyway as a population.

sb44

Well, after reading all of this thread I was intending to leave ours off until November but last night I changed my mind.

I didn't put the heating on but I told my husband that if need be it was going on.

We haven't had an increase in our bills for 3 years as we took out a fixed 5 year deal with British Gas in 2005.

They were more expensive than everyone else at the time as normal I suppose but my husband decided to bite the bullet and go for it. At least he would know roughly what the bills were going to be like.

OMG, what a good move that was!

We are going to be in for one hell of a shock in 2010 when it will rocket but I have decided to make the most of it if needed now.