How to live without heating - save £000s

MovingForwards

I don't have a thermometer to check the temperature in my flat. It's over 110 years old and an end building. It's definitely not been updated with insulation etc.

There's laminate in the lounge as I ripped out the carpet that was on top of it. Trickle vents are open year round, windows are opened during winter days too. 

LessImpecunious

EssexHebridean said:

LessImpecunious said:

@HertsLad - your house does seem to be unusually cold (cf. @peter3hg's minimum of 19C inside somewhere north of you and @EssexHebridean's similar temperature with an outdoor minimum of 11C). Guessing the insulation in these houses may be much better than yours, but your 13C inside seems very low for this time of year and current outside temperatures.

It would be relatively unlikely that the insulation in our flat is better than just about anywhere else sadly - I wish! Experimental 1950's solid concrete panel build, no cavity walls. Old carpets with relatively little thickness of underlay between us and the concrete floors below, and the concrete ceilings mean that in the winter when the heating IS on the people upstairs benefit from it an annoying amount! At the moment we also have bare original Marley tiles on the hallway floor while we wait for the new flooring (which will have some insulation) to be installed. We do have good (although not top-rated) windows and doors, but due to previous damp  issues we also leave trickle vents open in all bar the coldest weather to allow airflow.  I'm also a chilly mortal (I have chronic anaemia which tends to make regulation of body temperature somewhat interesting!) so once it dips below 18 degrees I really start feeling it. (Hence already needing a thick hoody indoors at the temperatures we have). 

That makes HertsLads low temperatures even more puzzling, with an average of 5-9C inside (I think that's correct - can't find the post now!) in the winter in Hertfordshire (we're presuming) seeming unusually low even with poor insulation... Our house (with no heating on) is currently 16.6C downstairs, compared with current greenhouse temp of 16.2C - a wet dull day, but mild for this area at this time of year. Upstairs is 17.6C - there are Velux windows on one side of the house (plus good loft insulation, though we suspect not very much in the sloping ceilings where the Veluxes were first fitted and roof re-done c. 35 years ago, before our time!) - and I suspect there's an element of solar heating (upstairs and in the greenhouse) even on such a dull day. Though we often joke that it's warmer outside than in that's really only the case on warm/hot sunny days - and it seems unlikely that inside temperatures would drop much below outside temperatures in normal circumstances, even in an unheated house... e.g., in March this year we had 5 days without any central heating (woodburner only in two rooms) while Calor replaced a pipe, and with outdoor (greenhouse) temperatures ranging from -2 C overnight min to 11.3C daytime max our house (in its coldest spot) remained above 12C for nearly all of that time, only dropping to a min of 10.5C overnight on the last day, due to the arrival of a northwest wind which always cools down this part of the house. But maybe our house is warmer than I've always thought, or Hertfordshire colder!

givememoney

On another forum, someone said, if you are over 65 (we are) despite layering up to keep warm, if the air temperature is lower than 17° it can cause heart attacks etc. I'd like to hear a medics opinion on this.

jvjack

@hertslad said  'It used to have secondary glazing but I ripped it all out.' 
What was the reason.
Maybe secondary glazing means something different to what i'm thinking.

@givememoney . Like to hear medics opinion too. 
In my reading of how temperature in the home affects us is that air temperature is one thing,
but you have to add or take away the radiant leaving the body to the surfaces in the room.  So when all the furniture and walls are cold it negates the air tempeature.
I used the word negates because i dont know the right word.
But anyone could be more comfortable in a room that has walls etc that are 22 degrees in a room at 17 degees 

HertsLad

givememoney said:

On another forum, someone said, if you are over 65 (we are) despite layering up to keep warm, if the air temperature is lower than 17° it can cause heart attacks etc. I'd like to hear a medics opinion on this.

Yes, that fits with official advice from the Government, NHS and others. I may be taking a risk but I don't buy it. The way I see it, the air temperature is typically between 5-9C most of the time but the temperature under my skin must be close to body temperature (high thirties) or I would feel cold, which I don't. Perhaps I will measure my skin temperature this winter. Maybe its lower because nobody feels cold with an air temperature of 25C, even wearing no clothes. So, what I am left with is breathing in cold air. But joggers, arctic explorers, mountaineers and anyone going for a walk in winter does that, too, so I doubt if it's dangerous and, so far, I don't have any health concerns, despite being over 65. I may have asked my GP some years ago but, if I did, he wasn't very interested so it can't have rang alarm bells.

Alnat1

I still fail to see how the temperature inside your house can be "typically between 5-9C"

If the outside temperature is 10C, how can it possibly be colder inside?

chris_n

I've said this before, maybe not on this thread though. I left my house unoccupied for many winters because I work in the Alps in winter. The house is in North East England and it was extremely rare for the temp to fall below 11 degrees (that was the temp the insurance company requested). 

Curiosity2017

But your skin on most of your body must never (or very little) be exposed to fresh air? And also therefore kept in a damp environment. Is that good for skin in the long tern? I can't imagine it is.

HertsLad

Alnat1 said:

I still fail to see how the temperature inside your house can be "typically between 5-9C"

If the outside temperature is 10C, how can it possibly be colder inside?

The interior temperature in my kitchen has now fallen to 12C as at 9th October. When I opened this thread in February, it happened to be 11C. It only falls to around 5-9C in winter. And on rare occasions, falls as low as 2C.

I think it comes back to can't pay or won't pay. I hoped my findings may benefit people who can't pay, primarily. I fear there are now millions of them but I could be wrong. I am in the category of 'won't pay' but I accept there are probably relatively few people who share my interest in going to such extremes.

EssexHebridean

Temperature in our front room this morning before curtains were opened was still just over 19° C - which is fine. As the sun is now out the curtains are open to allow free solar heating to do it’s thing - it’ll easily add another couple of degrees to that temperature through the day, when I got home yesterday evening after a nice sunny day it was just under 21° so plenty warm enough. This is in Essex - the coldest morning temps outside I’ve seen at this stage this autumn have been 8 - 10°. 

Unfortunately I’m not sure we have many medically qualified people posting here to give their view on the possible harm of living in temperatures that are below those generally recommended. However it does seem to be fairly commonly given advice, which is one of the reasons why early on in this thread many of us kicked back against the casual assertions that it was “suitable for everyone” to live this way.  

Ultimately there are indeed millions in the country who are terrified of putting their heating on this winter because of the cost - however we can blame scaremongering for that to a large extent - I would be willing to bet that if audits were done on those people it would be found that in fact only a tiny fraction of those millions really “can’t afford” to use heating at all - particularly once some advice on using energy more efficiently was given. Certainly we’ve already seen from here examples where people think using the heating will cost them a lot more than it actually does.