Ten facts about cold homes

It’s snowing in Britain this week, earlier than usual. Snow hasn’t fallen this deep in November since the 60s.

Here are ten reasons to take cold homes seriously:

* Domestic fuel bills have gone up 125% is the last five years.

* British households now pay an annual average of £1,200 on their gas and electricity.

* In 2004 there were 1.2 million households in England living in fuel poverty (spending more than 10% of income on gas and electricity). Today there are 4 million.

* British Gas estimates that £1 in every £4 spent on heating is wasted through inadequate insulation.

* Loft insulation will save £145 a year, paying for itself in two years and lasting for 40.

* Children in insulated homes visit their doctors less often, and have better school attendance records.

* Mortality in the UK rises 18% in winter, but it only rises 10% in Norway, which is far colder.

* Cold contributed to 40,210 ‘excess winter deaths’ across the UK last winter.

* Insulating the homes of everyone living in fuel poverty would create 35,000 jobs.

* 27% of Britain’s carbon emissions come from household heating and hot water.

Thanks for that Badger some diffinate "Oh really..." ones there...

* Children in insulated homes visit their doctors less often, and have better school attendance records.


this one made me go reeeeally?

I'm not sure its the insulation. I suspect its to do with levels of poverty etc

but then my house is always freezing (scrooge alert) and I rarely have children off school

bronze wrote:


but then my house is always freezing (scrooge alert)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes the house 'temperate' rather than hot. Last weekend I was ill, and felt cold all weekend. DD1 told me that she knew I was poorly because the house was so hot she nearly had to take a layer of woolies off!

bronze wrote:
* Children in insulated homes visit their doctors less often, and have better school attendance records.


this one made me go reeeeally?

I'm not sure its the insulation. I suspect its to do with levels of poverty etc

but then my house is always freezing (scrooge alert) and I rarely have children off school

there is a great difference between well insulated and overheated. Good insulation means that the heat produced by your activities inside is not leaked out to the outside. I was in a passiv haus designed property built into an earth bank a couple of days ago, which was insulated to a very high degree and was a comfortable temperature even though there was no heating on (there was an open source heat pump from a spring but it was not switched on) and there was snow lying outside.

Properly thought out insulation and ventilation is akin to wearing several layers of clothing to regulate your temperature.

I'm not sure how they can pin it down to that though. It may be that less insulated homes occur in poorer areas where quality of nutrition is lower etc etc

The original bit from Badger sites the early 60s. I was very small but do remember my father actually allowing the radiator to be on in our bedroom because there was ice on the windows. In Britain heating bedrooms was very odd and the heating bills will have been a lot less.

I don't have central heating and my house isn't cold (well we don't think it is!). Fortunately our neighbours are keen on living in a tropical environment, so our walls feel like they've got radiators built in them!

I can't stand being too hot, I tend to keep the lounge warm and that's about it really. I put the heating on for a bit before kids come home, then half hour before bed. We all have hot water bottles and squillions of layers, and rarely get ill... I also have to have the window open a crack.... I can't stand to feel shut in or confined....

Reminds me of being little and gaping in awe at the ice crystals on the inside of the window of the farm house.... Dad said he'd been up all night making them.... I don't hink I have ever been more gobsmacked.. or gullible, come to think of it...

bronze wrote: It may be that less insulated homes occur in poorer areas where quality of nutrition is lower etc etc

I am not sure that correlation exists tbh. On the whole houses in poorer areas tend to be better insulated on the whole: it is the first measure that Housing Associations and social housing take on properties because it is cost efficient and cheap, and people on benefits or low income are entitled to free insulation. Even properties with solid walls have well insulated lofts.

Although what I find questionable is the sample set from which they took that statistic. To my certain knwoledge there does not exist any national database of house insulation and much less that it could be cross-referenced with medical records. Seems rather dubious to me.

I too remember ice on the inside of windows & the wonderful patterns they made.
Now due to health, mine & OH, we have to keep things warmer than I would like, but I have difficulty keeping warm even though I wear lots of layers, & OH is not very mobile so warmth is a neccesity.

We have insulation in the roof, but no one will do our large outside wall for some reason. We have several companies who have looked. We also have double glazing & lined curtains. So we do try.

Zoe wrote:The original bit from Badger sites the early 60s. I was very small but do remember my father actually allowing the radiator to be on in our bedroom because there was ice on the windows. In Britain heating bedrooms was very odd and the heating bills will have been a lot less.

I was brought up in a victorian house with no central heating - I can remember being allowed to have a little fan heater on in the room I shared with my sister, and we both huddled over it trying to get warm. It was at this point that my father would come up with his famous fact - he told us that in prisoner of war camps it was the prisoners who huddled nearest to the stove who were about to lose their nerve and wouldn't survive. I don't know where he got that from (he was a boy during the war, so had never experienced life as a POW) - I think we both ignored him and huddled a bit closer....