How Cold Is It?

I’ve mentioned before how cold this cottage is. There is forced air heat in the kitchen and sitting room, but none in the front living room, the bathroom, or the bedrooms. I suppose I can’t really count the bathroom, as it does have a heated towel rail, which I leave on all the time but without hanging any towels on it, because if I hung towels on it, the air in the bathroom wouldn’t warm up. The house isn’t insulated, because the guy who installs insulation got sick last fall. So even tho I set the thermostats in the kitchen and sitting room to 25°C, those rooms only heat to 17°C unless I supplement the forced air with something else. In the sitting room it’s a small electric heater (what we would call a space heater), and in the kitchen, if I want it to be warmer than 17°C, I turn on the oven and open the oven door.

I have a oil space heater in my bedroom, which I turn on a couple of hours before going to bed, but I don’t sleep with it on all night (all the Brits I’ve talked to agree with me on that one). So I wake up to a very cold room.

I’m used to it now and have gotten into a routine. I keep the ‘lounge around the house at breakfast-time sweats’ under the covers beside me in the bed, so they’re not frigid when I put them on first thing in the morning. Then I get out of bed and turn the heater on in the bedroom to low, so when I come back to get properly dressed for the day the room will be comfortable. Then I turn that heater off.

I come out and turn on the forced air thermostat in the kitchen (I don’t heat the kitchen at night), and the one in the sitting room, if it has inexplicably gone off (it doesn’t go off every night, or even the same night each week – it just does its own thing). I turn on the little heater in the sitting room and go and make my tea. I drink tea, read the news, and wait for the house to warm up.

I spend my day in either the kitchen or sitting room (if I go out I turn off the space heater, of course), and in the late afternoon I will suddenly notice I am very cold, and realise the sitting room thermostat has shut off. Yes, my landlord has suggested (quite sensibly) that I go online and learn how to work the timer, but whatever, I just get up and press the on/off button and things are fine again. Every day.

In the evening I turn the bedroom oil heater up to full, so when I go to bed my room will be nice and toasty.

I bought a thermometer to see just how cold the house is:

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