Central Heating Poll

[andrewducker]

Apparently 93% of British homes have central heating. And yet I seem to know several people without. I'm wondering if this is a symptom of knowing poor student types...

[Poll #1464959]

Comments

[simont]

My last place didn't have central heating, though. It had night storage heaters in four rooms and gas heaters in two (and one room, for some reason, had both). It wasn't a scummy student flat or anything like that; it just happened to have ... idiosyncratic ... plumbing and gas arrangements.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I think it's a symptom of living in a city with old housing stock.

[andrewducker]

If it was 80% then I'd agree with you - but if old housing stock was the problem then we wouldn't be as high as 93%.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

OK, I'l expand a little. I think Edinburgh has a higher than average across the UK proportion of housing built before central heating and also a high proportion of that housing - especially the victorian tenements - have been used as student housing for a long time. These two factors combined result in tenement flats in Edinburgh being more likely to not have central heating than housing in most of the UK.

Though I would say that most people I know who live without central heating live in the countryside.

[andrewducker]

Aaah, that makes sense. I do know a lot of students in old buildings that aren't well maintained.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Electric storage heaters on "white meter" (cheap overnight power). IMO, the very best solution (except they are a bit bulky). With the immersion heater and washing machine on a timer I use 60%+ of my power on the cheap night rate (I was shocked to find this is WAY over the average for most people with this setup - what are they doing???)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I consider storage heaters to be central heating, so answered "yes" - what would you say?

[andrewducker]

They could be considered that way. Hadn't thought about it that much.

[simont]

I'd have said no, on the basis that the defining feature of central heating is that the heating is central: that is, heat is generated in one place and distributed around the house. If power is distributed around the house in some form other than heat, and converted to heat separately in many rooms, that's not central heating.

[andrewducker]

How much does your overnight power cost you? Gas comes in at 2.2-2.5p/kwh.

I always had the problem with storage heaters that you're powering them overnight and you don't know when you're going to need them, whereas with gas heating I can pop it on for an hour, get the flat heated up, and then turn it off again with no warning.

I use electricity largely for fridge/freezer/TV/computer. Can't run the washing machine at night as it would wake us up, sadly.

[ms-tek.livejournal.com]

My friend in Glasgow uses space heaters. There is NO CENTRAL HEATING (spoiled American that I am, I NOTICE it every time I take a bath as that I freeze my ass off when I get out.)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

5.33 per 'unit', dunno if that is still a kwh... but efficiency does matter.

My last quarter bill was £77 (no heating). Ones with heating are about £130. No double glazing but pretty good windows and loft insulation. One bedroom flat with generous sized rooms and a stairway and hallway.

Surprisingly, my sister reckons that electric immersion is actually more effective. I haven't been able to compare never having had gas. I heat one (well insulated) tank of water between 4 and 7 am and it does all hot water needs for the whole day (including full, large bath).

One of those heated towel radiator thingys (I put this in in the bathroom overhaul) in the bathroom runs for 2 hours every morning starting an hour before wakeup time.

Daytime use is lights/fridge/freezer/stereo/cooker.

Heater in living room is usually on low, late Sept- mid April and that does just fine. I need it earlier (and later) in the year than I'd like simply to ensure washing dries within 24 hours. It has a booster convector for an added blast if required. I usually don't put the bedroom on on until later in the year and then on bare minimum cos I hate a hot bedroom. It's only on at all cos I get a few spots of mold in the window bay otherwise.

Hmm, I just shut both kitchen and bedroom doors and set washer to finish just as I am getting up (which is always before cheap rate ends). It either does not wake me much (I'm a light sleeper, so I'll be aware it's on, but it's not altering my sleep level for that time of day) or I am already awake anyway.

A sizeable portion of cheaper terraced houses in Stoke have no central heating - gas fires or coal back boilers even....

[likeneontubing.livejournal.com]

A symptom of Edinburgh - old houses and bad landlords I think.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Of course, you know zillions of people, so 'several' could well be 21 households out of 300. :)

Based on the other comments, it sounds as though knowing lots of a) people in Edinburgh (and/or rural areas - our cottage has central heating but I think this was a pretty recent development) and b) students could skewer your results. I sincerely doubt that my business-type friends in Earls Court know even one person without central heating.

[redshira.livejournal.com]

My current place does (not British, though), but I have lived in plenty of places without it in England.

[kashandara.livejournal.com]

Then again I live in a bedsit so I only really need two heaters (since I don't believe the kitchen needs artificially warmed) and the wall mounted electric heaters are fine for those two rooms.

[andrewducker]

Are they not horribly expensive?

[kashandara.livejournal.com]

The bedroom one is one for 30 minutes in the morning and maybe an hour in the evening, with the bathroom one on even less than that since doing the bathroom run in freezing temperatures is about the only thing that wakes me up enough to get to work. If I were in the flat more often for anything other than sleeping I'd probably look at proper storage heating or something, but I'm very rarely there to be honest.

[dreema.livejournal.com]

that's similar to the arrangement i had in the old flat, although after burning through two of the three wall mounted heaters in my first winter i got hold of two delonghi oil filled rads and used those till i moved out.
The bathroom had a small storage heater running off the landlord's supply as that's where the water main came into the building and most of the time i didn't bother heating the kitchen (saw it at 2 degrees C one winter)

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Not British, so I didn't vote in the poll to avoid skewing the result.

Oddly for my part of the world, my apartment has baseboard heaters... but it was built back when the cost of electricity was low and predicted to plummet further as more nuclear plants came online. Sadly this rennaissance of "our friend the atom will give us electricity too cheap to meter" didn't pan out.

-- Steve doesn't pay much for electricity though; even in a bad winter month the total bill is under CAD$60.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

I have central heating, but I don't know how to switch it on - does this count?

Yes I've lived several times without heating. Like regular cold showers, it makes you TOUGHER.

Newcastle's housing stock was mostly terraces of the same age as Edinburgh's tenements (ie late Victorian) but I can't ever remember anyone not having central heating.

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

I have central heating but try not to put it on until October at the earliest. I've sort of managed it this year but only because I've been spending a couple of nights a week at my boyfriend's place and his heating is on now. I failed last year due to ill health. Asthma made worse by a respiratory infection does not respond well to the cold and Edinburgh can be bitter.

[yalovetz]

My answer is true both for my current (Australian) home and for the home in which I spent the bulk of my life in Britain.