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Have you put the heating on in the UK yet?


Sangsom

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32 minutes ago, john1000 said:

 

Have vivid memories growing up when my mum used to light the coal fire and use a blanket to make it draw.

Hope you wasn't still in it 🤣🤣

One way to get you up for school

Edited by roomark
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Here in the soon-to-be-frozen north where temperatures are near to or just below freezing most nights, I run my furnace for one cycle in the morning and then another in the evening and that'll usually do it - when it gets below freezing 24 hrs or so a day I'll run it more. I usually don't fire up the big woodstove until it is -10C or colder because it will cook me out of the house if it's warmer...

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17 hours ago, bob lt said:

Came home on Saturday after 6 months in LOS. The boiler pilot light had gone out and it took me 3 hours to get the damned thing to fire up and stay on. Finally had hot water and tested the heating then turned the room stat down. Tee shirt and sweat pants still ok as I can't go out for another 9 days.

The first house I owned was in a huge estate of identical new starter homes in Faversham in Kent all with solid fuel central heating . If you got one of those really cold  but still nights they were notorious for simply going out just when you needed it the most. Then you had little choice but to empty the boiler, not easy and messy, and start again.

There was a story that got round the estate of one guy so pissed off with it going out yet again that he literally took the shirt off his back, soaked it in petrol, put it back in the boiler covering it with  a layer of wood chippings and then the smokeless coal you were supposed to use. He lit it and the whole lot blew out of the top of the boiler and covered the kitchen.

Mine never seemed to heat the house well and it was only just before we moved back to London that I discovered that when they put down the floorboards somebody had put a nail straight through one of the pipes and hot water had been running out under the house for over two winters.

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Went round a mates last Fri night..she msgd me when i was on way..."can you get me some fags please, and loo roll, and blue milk...i'll give you the money when you get here, still working at mo."

OK.

Then, "Hon can you stop at the garage and get some logs as well please? Think we need the fire on."

Logs, no, shut the f**k up 😆😆😆

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On 9/30/2020 at 2:58 PM, Lantern said:

Never had central heating, for the 29 years,  I was in the UK.

Used to wake up to ice on the inside of my bedroom windows from the condensation.

In the winter of '78-'79 I was living in a  trailer court in an old converted travel trailer that belonged to my brother, who was off at college - we had a cold snap with temperatures going to -45C and colder and I would wake in the morning to find my blankets frozen to the bedroom wall...

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27 minutes ago, maipenrai said:

In the winter of '78-'79 I was living in a  trailer court in an old converted travel trailer that belonged to my brother, who was off at college - we had a cold snap with temperatures going to -45C and colder and I would wake in the morning to find my blankets frozen to the bedroom wall...

That's proper hard core mate.

I seem to remember you telling me earlier this year that temps were similar to that back home.

Edited by boydeste
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On 9/30/2020 at 10:58 PM, Lantern said:

Never had central heating, for the 29 years,  I was in the UK.

Used to wake up to ice on the inside of my bedroom windows from the condensation.

Used to look forward to the hour use of the Calor gas heater to defrost the bedroom before bedtime as a kid. 

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On 10/1/2020 at 12:24 PM, john1000 said:

Not yet. Decorating at the moment  so active. But find late November can get that penetrating cold.

Have vivid memories growing up when my mum used to light the coal fire and use a blanket to make it draw.

Remember that well John, the poker would stand at the front of the coals and my old man would use a sheet from the Liverpool Echo

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6 hours ago, boydeste said:

That's proper hard core mate.

I seem to remember you telling me earlier this year that temps were similar to that back home.

Yes, we had a week or so of -40 temperatures when I was thankfully in Thailand - first time it's gotten that cold for a few years as our winters have generally been getting milder during that time frame and it was an unpleasant surprise for everybody at home. I do remember our winters being much colder when I was growing up, with severe cold like this often hanging around for weeks - but then our summers were a lot better too and I can only hope that this coming winter will be a mild one since it looks like I'll be stuck here for the duration...

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Had the 2 year old central heating boiler serviced a couple of weeks ago, as I do every year. Have to have it done as it’s part of the 10 year guarantee.
Ran the radiators for 10 minutes to bleed out any air, so we’re now set for when the temperatures drop. 
At the moment, with no heating on, it’s 19 degrees C  in the house right now, as most of the rooms face south and the walls are radiating the stored heat into the lounge. 

As a lad, I was 11 and remember 15 ft of snow outside, yet we still made it to school and huddled around the coke burners in the classrooms and the frozen bottles of school milk placed on the burners to melt it enough so we could drink it. School dinners were “filling” and grey, but kept us going for the day. 
 
At home, we only had one coal fire with a back boiler to heat a water tank. So no fire, no hot water! Everyone seemed to congregate in the kitchen and chatted, while mum cooked tea, as the gas stove warmed the room. 

So bath night (once a week) meant dad and mum took first turn together, then the last of the hot water from the tank was for our 3 older sisters, then me and my brother used the warm water that the sisters left in the bath.☹️

Ice on the inside of the windows was nothing unusual, hot water bottles kept our toes warm, our little hands shoved down our jammies kept our little balls from freezing,  Horlicks and hot milk fed our bodies as a night time drink and big, heavy overcoats were our duvets.

No hanging around in the mornings freezing our balls off, just wash our faces in ice cold water, then straight out of our jammies and into school uniforms double quick. Toast made on the coal fire for breakfast, (if it was still burning from the night before) then off to school. Paraffin fire to heat the house during the day, the smell stinking out the house, dad trimming the wick in an attempt to reduce the smoke and smell. Coal fire lit no earlier than 5 pm and spuds cooked in the ashtray under the fire for tea.  7 feckin huge spuds crammed in at once, but the taste was out of this world, especially when they were cut open and filled with butter and cheese. 

Now, heat comes at the flick of a switch, jacket spuds are cooked in our steam ovens and aren’t a patch on those spuds of my youth and duvets don’t have sleeves and are rated in togs, not by weight. 

I never seem to shiver now inside our home, as I did in my childhood home.

No need for hot water bottles (I do miss them😟) as sleeping with the wife, I have my own personal radiator in bed to cuddle up too. 🤣

Lifes good in 2020, but I’d still go back to my time in those cold winters, up to our asses in snow and one coal fire. 👍

Edited by KhunDon
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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/3/2020 at 1:21 AM, KhunDon said:

Had the 2 year old central heating boiler serviced a couple of weeks ago, as I do every year. Have to have it done as it’s part of the 10 year guarantee.
Ran the radiators for 10 minutes to bleed out any air, so we’re now set for when the temperatures drop. 
At the moment, with no heating on, it’s 19 degrees C  in the house right now, as most of the rooms face south and the walls are radiating the stored heat into the lounge. 

As a lad, I was 11 and remember 15 ft of snow outside, yet we still made it to school and huddled around the coke burners in the classrooms and the frozen bottles of school milk placed on the burners to melt it enough so we could drink it. School dinners were “filling” and grey, but kept us going for the day. 
 
At home, we only had one coal fire with a back boiler to heat a water tank. So no fire, no hot water! Everyone seemed to congregate in the kitchen and chatted, while mum cooked tea, as the gas stove warmed the room. 

So bath night (once a week) meant dad and mum took first turn together, then the last of the hot water from the tank was for our 3 older sisters, then me and my brother used the warm water that the sisters left in the bath.☹️

Ice on the inside of the windows was nothing unusual, hot water bottles kept our toes warm, our little hands shoved down our jammies kept our little balls from freezing,  Horlicks and hot milk fed our bodies as a night time drink and big, heavy overcoats were our duvets.

No hanging around in the mornings freezing our balls off, just wash our faces in ice cold water, then straight out of our jammies and into school uniforms double quick. Toast made on the coal fire for breakfast, (if it was still burning from the night before) then off to school. Paraffin fire to heat the house during the day, the smell stinking out the house, dad trimming the wick in an attempt to reduce the smoke and smell. Coal fire lit no earlier than 5 pm and spuds cooked in the ashtray under the fire for tea.  7 feckin huge spuds crammed in at once, but the taste was out of this world, especially when they were cut open and filled with butter and cheese. 

Now, heat comes at the flick of a switch, jacket spuds are cooked in our steam ovens and aren’t a patch on those spuds of my youth and duvets don’t have sleeves and are rated in togs, not by weight. 

I never seem to shiver now inside our home, as I did in my childhood home.

No need for hot water bottles (I do miss them😟) as sleeping with the wife, I have my own personal radiator in bed to cuddle up too. 🤣

Lifes good in 2020, but I’d still go back to my time in those cold winters, up to our asses in snow and one coal fire. 👍

I remember the coal men coming round every two weeks filling up the cellar. Made for lovely fires but Extinction Rebellion and Young gReta would not be too happy these days.

Mind you Scargill and Corbyn want to re-open coal mines and young people follow these hypocritical  old lefties ???

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 I fired up my thermostatically-controlled woodstove on the 16th when the temperature went down to below -!0C and ran it for a week until warmer weather returned; now I am back on oil heat for now but it's supposed to get cooler again on Friday night so I will probably start it again - it'll go for over 12 hours on one load of wood at -10 or so, easy to live with.

Here's the stove besides my old forced-air oil furnace - I also have a high-tech oil stove that I am running right now so actually have  three sources of heat:

rsz_1img_0272.jpg

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