Open Fires, Paraffin Heaters & Heat Pumps

When I was a child there was only heating in one room - An open coal fire. We did have an electric bar fire, but in winter, in most rooms, there was frost & even snow on the inside of windows. Bedrooms & the bathroom were not rooms you wanted to spend any time in in winter. The front room was hardly ever used. I remember practicing the piano with freezing cold hands. The windows were single glazed, houses were not insulated, doors were draughty. Fitted carpets were unheard of, bare boards, lino & rugs on the floors.

When I was first married we lived in a council house with no heating whatsoever. We had paraffin heaters which were dangerous & smelly & inefficient electric fires. Still lino tiles, floorboards & rugs.

We moved to the first home of our own & had the luxury of a gas fire in the sitting room & radiators. Central heating for the first time in our lives. It was absolutlely life changing. Still not much in the way of insulation, no double glazing & draughty doors. We could afford fitted carpets, which gave the illusion of warmth.

Then a really modern detatched house. Gas central heating & double glazing, plus loft insulation. As we became more financially secure we were able to take advantage of the improvements in heating & insulation.  

The next house was an extended old brick & flint cottage in the country. A backward step & big renovation project. As draughty as anything, with poor double glazing, ill fitting doors, no insulation & an oil fired central heating system that just about took the edge off the cold. We modernised & extended & eventually had 3 wood burning stoves which were wonderful. You could even cook on one, which was just as well because we had serial power cuts, often for days on end. I loved it.

We moved to a converted 60's bungalow. Big on expensive fixtures & fittings, but long & very expensive to centrally heat. Cold marble floors to the ground floor & no underfloor heating. Lovely to look at, but hopeless in winter. A very expensive custom made wood front door which swelled in winter & shrank in summer. All the rooms had outside walls, some had three. It did have triple glazing though. A wood burner helped, but not enough. 

When I was widowed I moved to Oxford to an amazing architect designed house which was really efficient. Underfloor heating to the ground floor, radiators to the upper floors. A very efficient Gas heating system. Huge south facing windows, so solar gains throughout the year. It was comfortable year round & relatively cheap to run.

Now I'm in the largely untouched 1930's house I bought last year & have spent months & a lot of money renovating & building an extension to it. It is extremely well insulated, (single brick construction), has new double glazing & modern well fitting doors. It's as cosy as I could make it. But it has a new gas boiler & radiators becuse when I looked into ground source & air source heat pumps I realised;-

• I couldn't afford either
• I didn't have enough land for a ground source system unless I bored down very deep
• The air source system would be noisy & if you don't have passive house levels of insulation wouldn't be warm enough in winter.

Now we have an energy crisis & bills are increasing worryingly. Today 95% of UK homes are centrally heated. Everyone wants to be warm in winter. Some people really can't tolerate cold. The UK has some of the least energy-efficient homes in Europe, with 19 million houses and flats needing extra insulation. There isn't much government incentive to make householders & landlords undertake the work.

The cost of upgrading your heating, glazing & insulation is enormous & you will have to wait a long time to get payback in lower energy costs. I doubt I will live long enough to make my outlay worthwhile. But hopefully I will be warm.