no heating

Jim Stewart ... snipped-for-privacy@ntlworld.com wrote

I didn't. We had electric bar radiators in rooms like the kitchen and bedrooms and a slow combustion stove in the living room. I managed to get the living room up to 110F one sunny day in winter burning sawmill offcuts.

Don't forget frost figures on the bedroom window of a morning.

yip

When we first moved here in 1956, icicles dangled from the curved area of ceiling in the upstairs rooms, the windows iced over inside and the only heating that worked were an old fashioned 2 bar heater down in the sitting room and two supposedly operational gas fires in the chimneys in each bedroom. Both of these were totally useless as most of the heat went up the chimney. They were boarded over some time later and replaced by two paraffin heaters for the hall and landing, but then of course the condensation grew worse and we still got icicles. Unfortunately these houses do not have cavity walls and there is little room between the tiles and the curved ceiling, but we have insulated the loft, had double glazing and blocked up the chimneys and installed Economy 7 heaters now and its pretty livable. I fancy the time is not far away though when the whole lot will be bulldozed in favour of more insulated homes or flats. I hope its after I'm dead. Brian

kooncil hoose ?

Both can certainly be arranged.

Judging by the quality of build of new flats around my way I'm not convinced that the standard of insulation is that good.

Jack Frost visited us as well as Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. And you could warm an old penny in your hand and make peep holes in the frost on the windows.

A simple pleasure denied the young of today by warm housing.

Bit tricky doing that now in a modern house with no chimnney. And how much is coal now, or logs for that matter ?.

I do feel sorry for folks living in poorly insulated properties and have only storage radiators, and even worse are those same properties that have been bought as an investment and the storage rads ripped out and replaced with 'modern' panel rads running in peak rate power only.

Some really dubious decisions have been made by some of the people shown on Homes Under the Hammer.

That's the sort of property where internal insulation if effective. Two layers of 30mm Quinntherm. The first fixed to the wall, floor to ceiling with 30mm battens proud on top, using frame anchors through batten and insulation, and then the space between the battens infilled with more 30mm Quinntherm (Celotex doesn't come in 30mm) and plaster- board over the top.

If you've been there since the 1950's, why didn't you do something like this while you still could ?.

Andrew

I didn't. I was born in 1970.

lucky you

Well you are just a big softie then

totly

I hope you never meet him down a dark alley, that's all I can say.

Bill

But we did not have central heating.

That came later.

Really - have you seen 1970s clothes fashions?

good point well made...