In which I take a photo every day that I'm 50, and post it here on this blog, with a bit of related blurb.

Tuesday 2 December 2014

Day 353 - Warmer Winter?

shiny

Well, would you check out the swanky bathroom window on our house!

Not much to write home about, I know...although come to think of it, this blogging malarkey is in some ways the opposite of writing home - it's more like writing away!

But I digress...

The point is, those of you who are (probably painfully) familiar with our bathroom will no doubt recall (with horror) the utter skankfest that it was before.

But yesterday, only several years after four of our old, leaking, draughty, single pane, rusty metal framed windows were replaced by sparkly white plastic ones, they returned to replace the remaining seven!

I have to say they do look really nice inside the house (especially by comparison), although they have made a bit more of a mess outside...where there's still been no remedial work done...our car park is like a building site - very muddy...all the slabs in the garden are broken, including the main path, so we have to step carefully through the mud in order to get from car to house, or vice versa...now we have random scaffolding strapped to the house...who knows how long before they come back to retrieve that.

But anyway, I've lived here for nearly 10 years now, and it's always been a chilly house.   

When first I was here, we were fairly poor...we only have electricity (no gas or oil), and so the heating is via electric storage heaters.  These are notable for their very high running expenses, coupled with spectacular thermal inefficiency. 

Matched with no loft insulation, no cavity wall insulation, very poor fitting doors and cold, damp, not even remotely sealed windows, and it could get fairly bleak here in the winter. 

One winter in particular I was here on my own and couldn't afford the electricity, so went through the cold months with virtually no heating other than a cheap, 400W halogen heater...it wasn't roasting hot by any means, and you had to sit right next to it to feel any benefit, but at least it gave off a lovely warm glow!

We still use it now, before we have got the fire on of an evening.

Of course, I was here for a few years before I even realised I had an open fire - there was an electric bar heater stood in front of the fireplace, which I never used, and which I always assumed was attached to the wall...turned out it was just free-standing, right in front of a simple, yet functional fire place.

Over intervening years, lots has changed...

Apart from discovering fire, I insulated the loft too...  a few years ago some of the windows were replaced, and a couple of years ago, the cavity walls were (shoddily) insulated. 

Even with all that though, the house was still unpleasantly cold...the chilly draughts howling through the front door were matched only by the icy air falling down from the un-heated upstairs.

So I wasn't exactly over-burdened with optimism that the remaining windows would make much difference...there's still the extremely leaky front and back door to leech out all the warmth, after all. 

Then yesterday evening, the first with the new windows, it seemed a little warmer in the house...I dismissed that this represented an improvement, on the grounds that it seemed fairly mild outside, as it has been of late. 

However, this evening, it's very cold out!   I have excellent warm winter clothing, but walking the dog this evening, my face and fingers suffered from the bitter cold for the first time this year. 

Before taking The Boy Wonder down the lane, we put the oven on in readiness for our return...and were very pleasantly surprised to return to a warm kitchen...the oven had actually appreciably affected the temperature of the room!!

That's never happened before in all the years I've been here - the kitchen is always cold!

It was lovely though, and it's made me realise how much I miss living in a warm house.

Maybe we're in for a warmer winter than we've become used to...

What luxurious decadence!

:-)

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