After reading the entire thread, it seems to me that mr whiskeyomega appears to have given up on life to some degree and is now ready to climb into a coffin and wait. There is no reason at all why they couldn't budget for a bank loan of a few thousand pounds to have CH installed, then when that's paid off, get another loan for a DPC - within a few years the place could be like a palace, but he sounds like he's depressed and it all seems too much for him and he wants to hide away from it rather than confront it, hence the 'package' of the OAP unit. I think some, if not all of his depression comes from his percieved inability to earn a wage, but there's plenty of opportunities if he looks around, but he sounds like he's assigned himself to the scrapheap, making it all impossible, which has a knock-on effect of stopping him spending any money (no heat, house falling to rack & ruin etc) - if they've got no mortgage and £1600 a month coming in between 2 of them, they should be living like royalty, and I doubt if they'd need a loan to do anything - there must be quite a few grand lying around doing nothing already