Preparing for Winter V

[Deleted User]

Harvested more courgettes than we need this morning so as I now have both the sugar and the vinegar to do it I might make the first batch of chutney of the year this afternoon.  I shall have to scrounge the kitchen for a couple of wrinkly apples and I have some sprouting onions in the rack and a couple of tomatoes I can spare on the windowsill but it will be chutney and we'll use it in the winter.

maryb

I loved my electric blanket but the controller failed this year.  On taking it off the bed I saw a scorch mark on the mattress which rather freaked me out!!  HWBs all the way from here on

Greenglockenspiel

I’ve bought OH a hot water bottle for his birthday this week - I  originally ordered him a garden chair back in May, but it still hasn’t arrived and the weather has moved on! He is always cold so hopefully he will like it.
We bought our house in
November and I hadn’t even considered a boiler service so thanks nannygladys for bringing that to my attention, I shall be trying to book one of those in. Does anyone know if it tends to work out more MSE to pay for a one off service or pay for annual boiler cover? Our (combi) boiler is supposedly fairly new...

jamanda

Many years ago I felt my feet were too warm.  As I utched up further and further up the bed, I eventually realised the bottom of the bed was on fire.  The electric blanket went out of the window and there hasn't been one in the house since.  

missychrissy

Oh how I loved my electric blanket. You have all put me off putting it back on the bed this autumn. I had an electric blanket as a child. I was told to switch it off before I got in the bed but on really cold nights I sometimes left it on all night. I was a child before CH was common and well remember ice on the inside of the windows in the mornings. I’m not very keen on hot water bottles. They only warm one spot. I will have to rethink my bed warming activities.

greenbee

missychrissy said:

Oh how I loved my electric blanket. You have all put me off putting it back on the bed this autumn. I had an electric blanket as a child. I was told to switch it off before I got in the bed but on really cold nights I sometimes left it on all night. I was a child before CH was common and well remember ice on the inside of the windows in the mornings. I’m not very keen on hot water bottles. They only warm one spot. I will have to rethink my bed warming activities.

You can have more than one hot water bottle. I've been known to have five... 

I also layer blankets, duvets and bed covers. And keep forgetting that mostly the house is no longer as freezing cold as it was when I moved in with concrete floors, disintegrating windows, hardly any loft insulation  and broken heating... so sometimes wake up too hot in winter!

Laura_Elsewhere

@missychrissy - that's why I love the stone pigs - because they are properly hot for hour after hour, they really heat up the entire bed. 
In our flat, my normal winter routine is to open the windows, front and back, really wide, for 3 minutes if it's foul weather, 10-15 if it's better weather, with the bed-clothes pulled right back and the pillows propped along the end of the bed, on end, for everything to air properly. When we moved in, the flat had bad mould, but most of it now is gone, only tiny bits here and there. 
After it's aired, I close the windows tight, and then re-fill both the stone pigs, and put one in the bed, in the middle of it, and make the bed up over it. That then spends all day being like a little heater, on 'low', right through from maybe 9:15am til bedtime. At bedtime, we re-fill it, and put it about a foot up from the bed-end, between us, sort of 'vertically', ie lying head-to-foot, not side-to-side. We've never yet kicked it out and it is lovely and cosy. In all but the bitterest weather, we have the window on the latch overnight. 
In the mornings when I do the pig for the bedroom, I often do the other one and pop it through on my chair in the sitting-room jsut to take any chill off the air there. If I'm not through there that day I don't bother. 

So we boil a kettle three or four times a day and have heat all through day and night  

Laura_Elsewhere

Reading the comments re electric blankets, it seems to me that maybe they're like tumble-dryers and washing-machines? If you read the instructions, it tells you not to leave them 'on' when you're not around (I'm including sound asleep as being no around!), but we've all become so used to them being no problem that we've stopped regarding them as any risk.

My friend's 20-something daughter was carried out of their home by firemen, having been found unconscious on the stairs when she tried to go and investigate the smoky smell - their tumble-dryer had totally torched the little built-on room it was in, and the kitchen and diner in the main house that the dryer-room opened onto, and the smoke damage meant nearly everything they owned had to be thrown away and replaced. Their insurance paid for professional cleaning only for a very few items they could really make a case for, but everything else they could only have replaced or else pay for cleaning itself. It isn't just that things smell of smoke, but that it is covered in a  foul - and carcinogenic! - greasy horrible stuff... 
They were in a rented house three villages away for nine months until everything was repaired, re-built and re-painted, which meant the children had to change schools and everything. 

I'm now incredibly wary of tumble-dryers, having been as laid-back as anyone before... it seems maybe electric blankets are the same? ie totally safe when used properly and when you keep an eye on them, but if you leave them on, or are not in the room, etc., then they can be dangerous? 

-taff

You can hear a horror story about just about every electrical appliance and to not use something for fear it may go !!!!!! means you'll be using nothing eventually. I think just check your leads, plugs, plug sockets etc, in effect, do a PAT test [ albeit a homegrown version] with everything electrical once a year and hope for the best. And get rid anything that looks a bit dodgy or get it repaired.I've had my current electric blanket for seven years, the one before that for 16 years, so again, all depends on the make and the use.

Primrose

We have a relative who,s a former firefighter.  Having seen a lifetime of accidents with ageing electric blankets he will now not have one in his house.  Neither will he have any of these plug in air fresheners.  What's good enough for him is good enough for me!