Eco audit: to heat or not to heat

I’ll confess this now.  I’m writing in bed.  It’s possibly my favourite place to write.  And, when you get the luxury of the house to yourself, you get to do what you want a little more.

But another reason for writing in bed is because it’s cold.  It’s still February.  Snow is coming and going.  And when you are the only one in the house, it can seem easier to be in bed, where it stays warm, than writing somewhere else when it doesn’t.

Trying to write when your hands are cold is miserable.  Pretty much doesn’t work, when you mostly type to write.  So this is my solution.  (Plus, if your bed is comfy, and you have pillows to prop you up, you are already in the most comfortable place in the house.)

What does all this have to do with the environment? Plenty.  We’ve all seen heating prices go up – and up – in the last few years.  Plus we are seeing more signs of the impact when heat runs out – remember parts of Russia last year, when there were issues with gas supply?

In my teens, I had a few different models when it came to the heat/not heat dilemma.  One school friend’s family lived pretty frugally, partly so they could then travel to interesting places when the holidays came round.  (This was back when flights were expensive, and it would cost a lot to take a family of four abroad.)

One of the impacts of the frugality was that there wasn’t much heating on.  I got used to ‘puffa heaters‘ when I came round, and cups of tea, and generally we were OK.

Another model would be my great aunt, who is (finally) having heating ‘redone’ in some way. The pattern is this: you spend much of your time in one room.  You use electric blankets to get beds warm quickly – or hot water bottles.  This does make sense when you still live in a big house – and also when you have grown up with cooler indoor temperatures as a norm.

My father took a different tack.  He didn’t go for subtropical heating, but he believed in a good quality of day to day living – which also meant not being cold.  This meant that we didn’t go anywhere fancy on holiday, for much of my childhood, but year round, we could stay warm, and eat well.

When I first went to Poland, my mother packed me off with thermals – because, after all, it was colder there.  (It was – for six weeks.  Down to minus 16 C in central Warsaw one day.  I was wearing hiking boots and thick socks, but I remember my feet hurt, they were so cold.)

Except.  It wasn’t cold indoors.  Even though I went after the end of Soviet times, one of the legacies of that period is a certain overarching response when it comes to heat.  Winter – heat on.  Wear thermals? You’ll swelter.  Drying washing indoors? No problem.

Yes, you put on all your layers to go from building to building – and took them off again when you got there.  It became a bit of a ritual, but in a country with reverence for good quality wool coats, and an appreciation of coat and hat stands, this works fine.

My second time in Poland saw a similar approach regarding heat – except that I lived above a church building, as did the man in charge of the heating decisions.

So whereas in the past, heat would go on on a set day of the year, and then off on a (later) set date, he would also be at the mercy of those living on site – who would beseech him if a cold snap came on after the ‘off’ date.

Heating is what you are used to.  Potentially, what you can afford.  It’s also the decisions you choose to make about how you live, at times.  But, increasingly, as fuel prices go up, there is the spectre of fuel poverty: where costs mean a decision between being warm – or having enough money to feed yourself.

I’m grateful that I’m not in that position.  But I’ve had a few little reminders of what it does to change the amount of time the heating is on.  We had a point of changing to showers for all the family, rather than also heating water for a regular bath for the youngest, and suddenly saw quite a drop in our fuel bills.

Which has brought me to where I am now.  Writing in bed.  I am happy to make the decision to have the heating on, if it’s cold and if there’s two or more of us at home.  But it has to get pretty nippy before I put the heating on just for me.

Right now, as I write, I am hoping our own heating solution is taking shape.  (I am in fact writing this in advance, for logistical reasons – hope it’ll make sense in the reading.)  After quite a while in our home, we are getting some work done – which includes a new boiler.  Hopefully there’ll be the opportunity to level out the heat more regularly in the house.

I knew about cavity wall insulation in my teens; loft insulation too.  But I would not have expected the government grants that have come in to offer both, free.

We’ve taken both – no loss to us (and in fact a rediscovery of a hat stand from the crawl space in the attic).  But the plan just now is for more (and better) insulation into the attic, which should mean that we can get better use out of the room all year round.

Somewhere, in the recesses of our conversations as a couple, is the notion of self-build: where you can put the insulation in at the start.  Well.  Where you do a good job with solar panels, ground source heating and other clever tricks, that make a house much cheaper to heat when you need to.

That is the dream.  And I hope it will become the reality more.  But for now, this is where we live.  This is what we can do to make the heating better.  (I am reminded of the father character in Moonstruck, explaining why copper piping is the one to choose: “It costs money. It costs money because…it saves money.”.)

I still suspect I’ll keep to writing in bed, though.  There are some things that also warm the heart – whatever the weather.