No heating/ hot water, OS ways to cope

oldschool

Halogen heaters are great, cheap to buy and cheap to run. You should be able to get them for around £10, they are safe, go off if moved or knocked and do not burn things. they also give off a warming glow.

oldschool

I would think very carefully before using anything naked flame i.e candles or gas burners. Go to bed and have a cuddle!

madmoneysavingmum

Slankets are good for keeping warm, and if you are able to borrow/pick up on freecycle/buy an electric oil filled radiator you can move this from room to room as needed. (In a really cold snap you may want it upstairs at night.) With a timeplug, you can have this come on a few minutes before you get up/get in from work, to take the chill off. We bought one last year for £25, which may be worth it if your situation is going to go on for long. Not great for hot water though. A blanket under you in bed is (apparently) worth 2 on top of you, and if it is really cold sleeping in a hat/headscarf really helps.

I am a little wary of halgoen heaters personally, my SIL's children dropped a cushion on hers, and within a couple of minutes it was on fire. No one hurt, but for me a radiator is safer.

Hope this is sorted out soon.
MMSM

TheBex

Our boiler was condemned in October, so I feel your pain. My top tip is to get your clothes for the morning under your duvet with you so they're warm when you put them on - I've been washing at night so I can get into my arbitrary four layers before I get out of bed, and the house is warmer in the evenings because people have been moving about.

TheBex

Oh, and I ditched my scarf for my grandmother's woolen shawl. Also being a girl I can make extra layers for over the top of my warmest clothes by borrowing from the boys - their clothes are much bigger!

jjbargaingal

Just a couple of others - moving is the best way to keep warm:
Sport, housework, diy.
Top tips - Ironing and hoovering warm me up and scrubbing or digging are good too.
Hope you can get it fixed soon though.I hate being cold and do suffer in winter with numb hands and feet !!

maisie_debs

When our boiler packed in last year I used to warm up the bed with my hair dryer (be careful not to block the air intake!) it got warm very quickly and you can easily give a quick blast if the temp drops a little, you could also do the same under blankets while snuggling on the sofa.

Hope you get your boiler sorted very soon xx

John_Pierpoint

You can buy relatively cheap "snuggle" type blankets with built in electric blanket type heating.
It is also possible to buy other electrically heated clothes; gloves are useful.

Our children will probably be able to look back from a world of 9+ billion people, with strict carbon rationing, and marvel at the world of their grandparents where some people wandered about in a "T" shirt in January.

Personally I would not want to live in a a house without a chimney.

Abigail123

There are a couple of other things that I don't think have been mentioned.

If you happened to need a new bed or mattress, a pocket sprung one with memory foam top retains lots of heat (I don't like the full memory foam ones like 'tempura' as they aren't very comfortable). A duck down quilt is very warm - we had to go back to conventional quilts as ours was too hot even with the heating off!.

Rather than a hot water bottle, buy a 'SnuggleSafe'. They are microwavable pet heatpads. Although they may seem costly, I used one to keep my feet warm in bed during the very cold weather and when I checked it 18 hours later, it was still warm (they lose heat more quickly if uncovered but should still last for many hours).

When our boiler died in the winter a few years ago we just boiled kettles for a shallow bath and topped up with cold water. We now have an electric shower - lesson learned. Luckily we have a gas fire in the lounge which helped but I can identify with the run to the bathroom and staying in one room. It also sort of depends on what you are used to - our house is single glazed and quite chilly anyway so we are used to wearing extra clothing where necessary. We literally melt in friend's houses - the average 21 degrees feels way too hot.