Preparedness for when

thriftwizard

Ours is 1901-sh; we do have cavity wall insulation but we also have original ill-fitting sash windows. We know that if we choose to double-glaze we'll have to do it properly, with real wood sashes rather than off-the-peg UPVC; the planners take a very great amount of interest in this street and have threatened us with a grade 2 listing before, as well as tree protection orders. We have floorboards & rugs in places, laminate where the original floorboards were replaced with cheap pine which has shrunk, quarry tiles, slate tiles, large gold-ish tiles, cork tiles upstairs - and no carpet anywhere!

Needless to say, Mr. Draught is quite at home here... so we have lots of proper woolly jumpers, woolly blankets, crochet blankets, wool duvets, feather duvets, thick lined curtains, window blinds and feather cushions. For two pins I'd install shutters too. We have CH, but not in every room, and I wouldn't want it; I've been known to stomp downstairs in the middle of the night and TURN IT OFF when some poor shivering offspring, probably wearing a t-shirt & shorts, has stuck it back on outside its allotted hours! When the little stove is going, the heating usually doesn't come on at all, although the thermostat is in a different room. It's usually set to 17/18℃ and that's fine; any warmer and my poor face starts to crack up.

All this sounds incredibly selfish, but we're quite an active household; OH is an unreconstructed Viking who lives in shorts most of the year & spends all daylight hours outside, and the youngsters usually only want the heating on to dry the washing they've forgotten to hang out and want to wear tonight! I actually think being too warm is quite bad for people; maybe not for the elderly, or those accustomed to warmer climes, but for many of us, it saps energy & dries out your nose & throat, allowing germs to thrive. The heat from the stove is somehow quite different...

Rant over! And remember - I live at the warm end...

GreyQueen

charlies-aunt wrote: »

Hot on the heels of 'bedroom tax' . . . . the Grubberment have quietly shoo'ed in changes to Housing Benefit for Social Housing tenants making it damned near impossible for singletons on benefits/low wages to take a property.


At the moment, a single person renting a one bedroom tax isn't affected by the bedroom tax and if they are entitled to HB to cover the full rent.


For a single person taking a tenancy after March 2016 - there will be a big drop in April 2018 as HB will change to Local Housing Allowance for one room.


I work in Social Housing and currently the rent for our one bedroom flats is approx. £68.00 per week, the LHA is currently £53.00 per week - not difficult to see hard times and more homelessness ahead

I'd like to ask a bit more, if I may. Is this for singletons of all ages or just the under-35s as per the LHA single room rate ? And how does this pan out with UC going nationwide, effectively subsuming LHA and HB into the total UC payment?

Haven't heard anything about this but we're preoccupied with the rollout of universal credit here (general consensus thus far is a disaster). This area is slowly going over to UC and the rent arrears will be climbing accordingly. Arrears officers are developing ulcers - where UC has been rolled out earlier, arrears have gone up 11-fold.

Basic rents on small one-beds like mine are in the high sixties but the towers (and some non-tower schemes) are on communal heat which is added onto the rent as a fixed charge, so you can't reduce it by reducing your heat and if you get behind, it's as rent arrears not a utility debt. A housing officer told met that they're already encountering some youngsters who've won flats and are having to decline them because the communal heat brings them into unaffordability. And I've just had my mother ranting on the phone about the tories and their proposed limitations of social tenancies to five years only.

The barstewards won't rest until they've pauperised millions.:(

fuddle

I can vouch that the warm end is very warm. Down at the warm end we slept for 2 years with the summer duvet on, bedroom window ajar and rads turned off in the bedroom.

2 weeks here and the winter duvet is on while I frantically try to fit shower caps to the extractor fans (which just blow off!)

What I have worked out through living in different houses is that a comfortable temperature one, just isn't in another. 18 degrees in our previous house was constant through the day with no heat at night. In this house it's 20 degrees constant just to be comfy, any less and it's chilly. Thermostat is set to 17 overnight, coming on to take the chill of - temps. I now live in a nearly new build and happy to report that I still have snow on my roof so I think the insulation is ok.

Remember I said a few days ago that I hadn't seen communities work together since childhood? We've all been out with our neighbours today, shovelling snow off our drives, paths and jointly doing the road. All of us in our 30s and 40s. It's still there, hanging on.

Doveling

This is really interesting

http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zcwj2hv?intc_type=singletheme&intc_location=news&intc_campaign=iwonder&intc_linkname=guide_weather_con

Hope the link works

Karmacat

It does, thanks Doveling, very interesting. I have a few memories of the freeze of 1963, but the picture that I find most striking is the very last one, of Boscastle in 2004. The flood waters are up to the chimney stacks! It was funnelled in from a wide area, of course, but still ... thats quite a photo.

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

The barstewards won't rest until they've pauperised millions.:(

I suspect that as they are so out of touch they will not stop until there is a revolution and they are dangling from lamp posts. The survivors will be asking why did no one see this coming?

The French revolution dealt with its entitled elites with the guillotine, I suspect that the modern equivalent will be the drone, and bunker busters. So even if they are holed up in some remote bunker the next revolution will clear society of our "elites" even more efficiently.

Frugalsod

Doveling wrote: »

This is really interesting

http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zcwj2hv?intc_type=singletheme&intc_location=news&intc_campaign=iwonder&intc_linkname=guide_weather_con

Hope the link works

My family have photos of the 1963 Winter. Our village was snowed in for days and normally we barely get any snow being so close to the sea.

Mojoworking

Regarding heating we had a wood burner fitted last October so had a bit of time with it. Had it on the odd time over the "summer" as it was a bit of a wash out to be fair. As it's got colder we've had a little electric fire for half hour in the morning then when we are home a proper fire. Not had the central heating on so far this year. Then this morning it was baltic and we put the central heating on. Then quite quickly turned it off as it was sickly. Really funny as it's been a battle to keep it off as OH wants to be in shorts and T shirt and I've been saying jumper etc and for him to say that is a massive mind set shift. Read someone that our houses are 4 degrees warmer than in the seventies.

Upsidedown_Bear

GreyQueen wrote: »

I'd like to ask a bit more, if I may. Is this for singletons of all ages or just the under-35s as per the LHA single room rate ? And how does this pan out with UC going nationwide, effectively subsuming LHA and HB into the total UC payment?

I know you weren't asking me but I've found this:

"cap the amount of rent that Housing Benefit will cover in the social sector to the relevant Local Housing Allowance, which is the rate paid to private renters on Housing Benefit. This will include the Shared Accommodation Rate for single claimants under 35 who do not have dependent children. This reform will mean that Housing Benefit will no longer fully subsidise families to live in social houses that many working families cannot afford, and will better align the rules in the private and social rented sectors. It will also ensure that Housing Benefit costs are better controlled and will help prevent social landlords from
charging inflated rent for their properties. This will apply to tenancies signed after 1 April 2016, with Housing Benefit entitlement changing from 1 April 2018 onwards"

It would appear to "just" be under 35's.

Page 42 of this

GreyQueen wrote: »

The barstewards won't rest until they've pauperised millions.:(

They seem to be making a good start :mad: I can't put into words how angry they are making me with what they are doing to the people of this country.

thriftwizard

Read someone that our houses are 4 degrees warmer than in the seventies.

That doesn't surprise me at all, but it's not just the houses. Having been a teenager in the 70s, I was describing to my girls today how we used to go skating on the local lake, which was fairly often frozen a good 4-6" thick - that never happens now. This was in the south of England, not that far north of where I am now, though a fair bit further east. And I'd trot off to school - 2 miles each way - in my 6" heels (3" of which was platform sole) with thin tights, short skirt, tie, blouse & blazer, and never feel the cold! To be fair, I did have flat shoes when I left the house, but they came off at the end of the road & the platforms went on. Ice and all.

I sometimes wonder whether our liking for very warm houses could be a contributory factor in the "obesity epidemic"? As a very rough generalisation, the people I know who keep their houses relatively cool seem to have few major problems with their weight. But most of the people I know who have real weight problems also have houses that feel like hothouses, and many of them suffer multiple allergies too. Entirely circumstantial, I know, but I can't help wondering.