How to live without heating - save £000s

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Lidl has some offers on thermals starting on 5th Jan. Only £4.49 for their base layer top or leggings.

silverwhistle

£4.49 if you have the Lidl Plus card, otherwise £4.99. :-)

14* in my bedroom tonight. Not very high tog duvet, but it's not in bed that I feel the cold, it's sat around doing nothing, reading and the like. As I'm an older female I have more circulation issues with hands and feet, so watching the football tomorrow it'll definitely be gloves and hat! Then on Sunday I'll be playing. On both occasions I'll have the fire on in the lounge afterwards; some of the low temeperatures here wouldn't be good for my health or condensation and the radiant heat of the fire will warm my aching muscles and bones.

MarzipanCrumble

I layer clothes and wear a hat - all indoors.  (I admit - the hat is a 'comfort blanket thing' - I have always dressed a bit strangely).  I also take a leaf out of earlier times - I feel draughts  - so I wrap and belt a shawl round my upper frame.  This works well, tbh.

When sitting watching tv, I do raise my feet legs off ground (footstool) and have a single feather/down duvet covering me.  I am dawn chorus riser, not a night owl so that helps, I think.  Heating is off by 19.00 and on again by 5.30.  If I go out which I do most weekdays and back around 14.30 or 16.30 for most then heating is off from 9 until I return - Hive helps massively with this.

Yes, not a pretty sight, but I am warm and CH thermostat = 15 degrees (in hall).  Rather be warm than a fashion icon.  Yes, I have double glazing, and cavity wall insulation and a fitted insulated front door.  I have a cat - doors to certain rooms cannot be closed.  But I have a 4 bed house and my heating bill is less than £1.2k.  

EssexHebridean

I suspect if there could be an argument that mental impairment is causing someone to live in a way which is actively harmful for their health, then yes, there absolutely could be steps taken to tackle those risks.  I seem to recall the gentleman (Edmund Trebus) who became famous following the “Life of Grime” programmes was an example of someone who was compulsorily re-homed eventually for his own well-being. 

HertsLad

About an inch of snow settled on my horizontal solar panels last night so I went outside early this morning and used a broom to remove it. I guess the temperature is a tad above freezing outdoors because there are some signs of a gradual thaw. I was outside for about 20 minutes, wearing mittens. I didn't feel the slightest bit cold and remained what I describe as toasty warm. I was wearing exactly the same garments as I put on this morning at 4am to withstand a temperature inside my house which is now 4C.

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I bought the Lidl top and bottom base layers this morning and impressed with the warmth they provide. Looks like they were selling pretty fast.

jvjack

hertslad said 'My question is what powers does any authority have to intervene to prevent what they would regard as 'living dangerously'? Does anyone know?
I might need to think about arguments to force them to back off, if I come to their attention as I get older.'

Problem is that the social services wont know about what you are doing if no one reports with concerns.. Probably only us on the forum know that your temperature in your house is 4 degrees. Plenty here have benefited for the clothes advice, It is worrying though to think of someone sat in 4 degrees.  Sureley best to air on the side caution and not do it.

wrf12345

It was crazy warm on the north (!!) side of my house this morning (13C) so I opened all my north facing windows despite the drizzle to warm up the house which had settled on 8 degrees overnight - Torbay but we have crazy humidity so lots of potential for mould, terrible for corrosion as well with sea air. Back down towards zero for the rest of the week, dreadful constant rain that does not inspire.

On councils, I think they have enough to be getting on with rather than snooping into people's lives but you have idiots screaming about local democracy but the further away the centres of power are the safer mere individuals are.

EssexHebridean

jvjack said:

hertslad said 'My question is what powers does any authority have to intervene to prevent what they would regard as 'living dangerously'? Does anyone know?
I might need to think about arguments to force them to back off, if I come to their attention as I get older.'

Problem is that the social services wont know about what you are doing if no one reports with concerns.. Probably only us on the forum know that your temperature in your house is 4 degrees. Plenty here have benefited for the clothes advice, It is worrying though to think of someone sat in 4 degrees.  Sureley best to air on the side caution and not do it.

The most likely issue would arise off the back of for example a hospital stay which required a social services visit prior to release back to home - as there is no way someone would be released back to a property which quite clearly wasn’t being heated.  That would then lead to further investigations, and that would very likely then lead to questions being asked about whether an individual living in such conditions was a danger to themselves. 

HertsLad

EssexHebridean said:

jvjack said:

hertslad said 'My question is what powers does any authority have to intervene to prevent what they would regard as 'living dangerously'? Does anyone know?
I might need to think about arguments to force them to back off, if I come to their attention as I get older.'

Problem is that the social services wont know about what you are doing if no one reports with concerns.. Probably only us on the forum know that your temperature in your house is 4 degrees. Plenty here have benefited for the clothes advice, It is worrying though to think of someone sat in 4 degrees.  Sureley best to air on the side caution and not do it.

The most likely issue would arise off the back of for example a hospital stay which required a social services visit prior to release back to home - as there is no way someone would be released back to a property which quite clearly wasn’t being heated.  That would then lead to further investigations, and that would very likely then lead to questions being asked about whether an individual living in such conditions was a danger to themselves. 

Your are absolutely correct. So, provided I avoid being taken into hospital, I can probably get away with 'living dangerously'. Given interest in this thread may wain, I did wonder about posting youtube videos on the same topic. The potential audience could be much larger, especially given the situation where I feel this forum appears to have been turned into a backwater by the current owners. New people seem less likely to find the forum than 15 years ago. Anyway, one issue is that youtube viewers seem to expect presenters to show their faces. It would give far more of the game away, not that I am doing anything illegal. 

The temperature in my house is now 2C, the lowest it ever seemed to go until it hit 1C a couple of years ago when I posted photos of what I was wearing at that temperature. I have always modified what I wear through experiments. I have now substituted my cotton shirt for a further base layer - the £14.99 Decathlon top kindly flagged up here, I am quite sure it provides much more warmth than cotton. Then, yesterday, I bought £14.99 Decathlon bottoms, also. On a whim this morning, I put those on over my normal two base layers. Plus 'down' filled trousers and Lidl ski trousers.

I put 'down' in quotes because I now realise it's another Chinese rip off. They are not filled with down but with polyester wadding. That said, the wadding is substantial and they have helped keep me warm for years'. So for anyone who has a problem buying natural down, perhaps think again. Definitely worth about £15,

In summary, I am wearing less visible clothes, layers, jackets now than two years ago. It's less bulky but I didn't notice the bulk then, and I certainly don't now.