I believe that c/h in the UK is usually in the form of radiators and are just for heating, not for air-condition, although please correct me if I am incorrect. I have small wall mounted a/c units in each room, the lowest power one in my small kitchen, and the latest one [the other one died ] in my salon. Which means I can have each or any on whenever I want, and the temperature I want. Summer cold temperatures do not bother me as to the setting, but I wondered what a normal winter heating temperature would be. I did not have c/h in the UK. At the moment it is not that warm here during the evening and night so I have set my bedroom unit to 22°C about an hour before I go to bed, and then the same temperature for about a a couple of hours in my salon when I surface. Do not forget that I have no wall or ceiling insulation nor do I have any interior doors, just 3/4 net curtains. But 22°C for an hour in my bedroom heats and keeps it warm, and the same temperature in the morning in my salon for a couple of hours - does that sound reasonable? What would be a reasonable temperature in the UK for a bungalow with only small wall a/c units [hot and/or cold]? Total area 64 square metres.
I don't like too much heat, so like to keep the our dormer bungalow at 70°F, which I think is approx. 20° C, between 3.30pm and 10pm-ish. However, it is so cold at present, that I have the heating running at a degree or so lower than that for most of the daylight hours. I also use a halogen heater if we need a quick boost. The dogs come jostling for position when I tell them I'm putting the 'sunshine' on.
I need my a/c during the summer much more than any heat in the winter, as I only have no ceiling plasterboards and the tiled roof - plus having walls made from mostly brickblocks with a bit of concrete, there is no way of cooling in the summer without the a/c, but even then I only have the a/c on on my my bedroom all night and in the salon all day. Not on 24/7 but still only at 22°C - the small unit in my kitchen is only on if I am doing something in there, and like last diabolical summer the one in the back room goes on. And has to stay on. Same temperature. And yes, it can get bdooly cold at times in the winter. I just wondered if only using one unit at a time at 22°C sounds extravagant? Not that my electricity bills are high and I do tend to layer on clothes, plus I only am putting the heat on in my bedroom for a couple of hours before I go to bed although I do have the remove control under my pillow if I get too cold. During the day of course I can switch the one in the salon as and when I want. And I switched it off about 10am my time. What I cannot find is what the normal temperature for a house can be. I know that a new parent is not permitted to take a newborn from a amenity hospital, but what is the normal temperature for a normal house supposed to be?
I go by feel. If I'm cold, the fire goes on, if I'm warm, the windows and doors are opened. We have electric storage heaters so it's difficult to regulate heat (especially when you have to know the day before what the temperature is going to be), but, while ever I can afford it, I won't be cold at home . It's one indulgence I'm happy to accommodate
One of the large windows in my bedroom [I have two large, one behind my bed and one small one] the large one opposite my bed is rarely if ever closed but of course the trissim are closed. Well not exactly large windows but sort of long and narrow... And my bedroom has a ginormour opening to a not very strong en-suite. Basically just a double plasterboard side and ceiling cheapo but I got what I paid for, but if I say my toothpaste and shampoo have at times ended up rock solid? That is just in the winter - everything melts in the summer! It is not really that cold, not compared with Jack Frost on our bedroom windows, and then my children have to sleep in sleeping bags covered with duvets, and I only need the hashmal for a few days, either or evening, but I keep wondering if I am maybe being a bit selfish? I do not think twice about putting the a/c on in the heat of the summer, so why should I feel selfish for a couple of hours in just two rooms to feel warm in the winter?
Oh please don't feel selfish about keeping yourself warm. 22° sounds just fine to me, especially when you have limited mobility. I would use as much heat as I needed, as long as I could pay the bill. My OH keeps asking, what we are saving it for?
I keep realising I am using Ivrit - hashmal meaning electricity. And trissim being the windows shutters, but I hope you all understand what I mean. I just forget my English because after so many years it happens. I apologise. And to be honest, with no proper insulation, I know that what shows as 22°C is probably not that, but it is comfortable. And yes, you are right with my limited mobility and B"H I can pay my electricity bills, And I can, and do, add on layers of clothing if I feel cold. I worry about Tikva though she is so slim and such short coated but she will not wear a sweater so what can I do? I would like to put the heating on in the salon during the evening but I am not really that cold and would rather make sure that I have enough for the hashmal bill if I do need a but more heat. I just wondered if 22°C is too much to want.
Same here though they were in the house when we bought it, I don’t like them as once they are charged up there’s no chance of getting them to stop giving off heat if you feel the place is too warm, then by the evening when you need heat they've run out, but we have a multi- fuel burner, and a portable oil filled radiator, which helps. I remember the days i grew up in a house with no central heating, just an open fire, you sat as close to it as possible, got toasted on the front half of your body and still felt a chill draught on you’re back but it was lovely to have a bath in front of the fire,Oh, and my bedroom was like an icebox.
Anyone else remember having mottled legs from sitting too close to the fire? I'm sure nobody under 60 would believe that we thought nothing of waking up to ice on the inside of our bedroom windows. Bedrooms did have fireplaces, but you had to be close to death before anyone would take the newspaper out of the chimney and actually light a fire.
Yes, but Father sat in front of the fire while we froze. We did have a Raeburn heater in the kitchen - not to cook on but for hot water, but Father would not let it be used in the summer because it made the kitchen too hot. So only hot baths were when Father said the boiler could have coal [or whatever it was] lit up. And then it was this one first, then the next one, and us twins being last. Well, that was logical. But then, but then, for some unknown reason it agreed to have an immersion heater fitted but but, it was only to be switched on when he said so! Oh.And only two sheets of those hard bog rolls [Bronco? Izo? permitted to be used at a time, and woe betides us if we were in the bog for more than two minutes HE SWITCHED THE LIGHTS OFF!
And the small gas fire in the back room where twin and I slept was never switched on. When I left my husband on Monday 1 December 1969 at 10 weeks pregnant with my son, my daughter still being in the Orthopaedic Hospital, I had flu. And was really so sick that my parents called out the doctor because it turned out that they thought I was going to die. And the doctor said "why is that woman in a bedroom that is so cold when she is so ill"? So Father said that the heater did not work, had never worked, had never ever been switched on, for so many years twin and I had slept in a freezing bedroom and that was the way it was in those days. I never want to be so cold again but I am frightened at not being able to pay bills.
Yes we always said we had the ABC’s on our legs when we overheated our skin. As a school girl I can remember waking up on a cold winter’s morning and finding lacy patterns of ice on the inside of my bedroom window and the old stone water bottles were by that time cold. I remember trying to convince myself I didn’t need to the outside loo when it was freezing cold, had to wait till the milk thawed before you could get a cuppa, oh and the dreaded Chilblains were part and parcel of growing up, memories of red, itchy, inflamed toes still linger
Rings on your legs from walking to school in wellies. Full cream milk which used to climb out of the bottle when it froze on the step. If you were lucky you could cut it off and eat it like ice cream. Yummy!
Surely we cannot all be that old? Well I know I am but I refuse to accept it. But if we are still here, are members of Breedia, and have dogs that we love [even though my little one apologises [like heck she does] for only being a cross-breed, and we do go off topic, even on an off topic section [MALKA you be a baaad baaad gurl] - I kind of like that we can do this. And I hope that @Azz is happy about this.
Electric heating is a pain, but we don't have mains gas in the village. We do boost the heating when we have to with a calor gas heater and it does the job nicely (we live in a small bungalow so putting the calor heater on in the hall tends to boost enough to keep the whole place warm). Ice on the inside of the bedroom windows was the norm during winter. It always seemed worse when the kids were babies and needed feeding during the night (brrrr). Bless 'em, they looked like the Mitchelin man when they were put to bet they wore so many layers. I swear their little arms were out to the side because they had so much padding on. The milk on the doorstep had usually expanded out of the bottle and was frozen by the time it was brought in on the coldest days. On the not so cold days, the birds had usually drilled a hole in the top with their beak to get the best of the cream. We really are lucky these days even though we complain about it
Before we retired to Stoke, we lived in stone bungalow in the Peak District, which we built ourselves. As the cost of bringing gas to our plot was extortionate, we chose what was then a 'state of the art' ducted warm air heating system designed by Norweb, who calculated that, with the insulation we were using, we would have a very low degree of heat loss. The system worked on a large night storage unit, and was a nightmare to run and necessitated a variety of supplementary heat sources until it finally became faulty and started to charge at night date in the evenings too.
With the Economy 7, the bedrooms are too hot during the early hours of the morning and cold at night. It really isn't a good system, but unless they ever pipe gas into the area (we are sandwiched between two villages that have it - go figure) then electric it is.
We do not have mains gas but have two LPG gas cylinders outside the kitchen - large or small ones [I have small] and there are two or three gas companies that come round each week, beeping to see if anyone wants a new one. I think that they can be fitted to use for gas fires but most people now have a/c the summers being so hot, keeping cool is more important. Of course it helps that wall a/c units can also be used for heat in the winter. In the new large apartment blocks in towns there is a large storage LPG tank somewhere so each apartment has its own gas supply, meter, and bill. And full a/c is built in, again each apartment getting their own electricity bill.. I actually prefer having the single a/c units as I can use and set them in each room as I want - works out a lot cheaper than full a/c - I think. The thing is that cookers here have gas hobs but electric ovens and grills, so electricity is used more than gas is. I must have been the last one to find a five burner gas hob cooker with a large gas oven and grill, and a smaller electric oven and grill. But that long went as there was no space for it in this kitchen! So I do not have a proper cooker any more. Back to the milk. Mother used to put out the empty bottles with a plastic egg cup on each of them - or less or more depending on how many pints she wanted. And the milkman would put the egg cups on the new bottles so the birds could not get to the top of the frozen milk and nick all the cream!
