Comfort, discomfort and winter cold

The arc of history had provided us with continually improving quality of life, but it is the banishment of cold and damp that I remember as the biggest step improvement when growing up.

Winters in London in the 1960s were not that cold (with the exception of the winter of 1962-63, see below), but the housing stock was inadequate for the climate.

Our 1930s end-terrace home in Hanwell (on the right of the photo above) was typical in construction - built of two layers of London brick (9" x 4.5" x 3") with an air cavity between them. Single glazing. Up in the loft - no insulation. Colder winters, when they came, were uncomfortable. Heating the house with electricity was expensive, with three-bar electric heaters (such as this Belling, below) were the usual way of heating rooms. We had several of these. The corridors and staircase were cold. The bar heater was dangerous too. Once, a foam-rubber sofa cushion got too close, touching the wire guard. It soon filled the house with the stench of burnt rubber; the cushion with a blackened hole on the side revealing the foam within a reminder of how close we'd been to having a serious house fire.

Every British home once had one
From Electric Radiators Direct's History of Electric Heating

Having a bath was a thoroughly unpleasant experience; getting out of the hot water into a chilly room in which the only source of warmth was a paraffin heater (electric bar heaters were a definite safety risk in bathrooms!), shivering in towels. The small immersion heater was good for about six inches (15cm) of hot water; pour in any more and it would soon go cold.

Bedding was from the pre-duvet era - a bedsheet, a blanket or two, an eiderdown, a candlewick bedspread. Making the bed in the mornings was hard work, having to pull the bed away from the wall, tucking in the sheet and blanket and covering it neatly with the bedspread. And in winter, I'd regularly sleep with a woollen  'night jumper' (nocny sweterek) over my pyjama shirt, plus a hot-water bottle, which in our house was somehow called a maciek. The three-bar open electric fires were never left on at night after we'd gone to bed - too risky!

The cold was damp cold. Nothing like the glorious frosts that would often visit Warsaw - clear winter's days with blue skies and bright sunshine and minus 10C outside. In London in January it could often be plus 3C and rain, thick cloud cover, windy and damp. The uniform for boys at Oaklands Primary School included short flannel trousers, right up to the final year (fourth year juniors). So for three years in infants and three years in juniors, I'd be wearing shorts to school even in midwinter with snow on the ground - no exceptions, ever. Clothing for winter was inadequate. I can recall the sensation of my school scarf (striped green and white) wrapped around my neck and face, and breathing fog in through it. Damp wool. Damp gaberdine school raincoat. Wet shoes drying in the corridor at home.

In the late 1960s, my father installed a storage heater in the corridor. This drew cheap electricity at the night-time rate and heated a large block inside, which would continue to radiate heat all morning after it was switched off. A small improvement, mainly in heating bills.

All this changed when we moved from Hanwell to West Ealing, to a detached house with all the modern conveniences of the 1930s when it was built, including gas-fired central heating. My father would go on to replace it with a more modern system in 1975, but from 1970-'71, winters ceased to be physically uncomfortable. The bathroom was warm, there was plenty of hot water, and my father installed secondary glazing and loft insulation. By the time I was 13, winter was no longer associated with physical discomfort at home. Cosiness reigned. Warm radiators, hot baths in a warm bathroom. Duvets eventually replaced blankets and bedspreads, clothing and footwear became better designed for cold-weather comfort.

When I moved into my own house in November 1982, I had to go through the discomfort once again. The 1930s mid-terrace house was not at all well built; the wind from the west would howl in through the window bays and actually lift the carpet from my bedroom floor. My father was an immense help to me, installing gas-fired central heating, insulation in the loft and filling the cavity walls with foam. The following winters would not be so uncomfortable. 

Being cold and unable to warm yourself up is an unpleasant feeling; not something I'd wish on anyone. Decent housing must be well insulated - here in Poland houses are built from thick air-bricks forming a solid thermal barrier, and stuck onto the outside of the house is  typically some 200mm (eight inches) of expanded polystyrene foam. When well heated inside, even a night at -20C (and there have been many) holds no terrors inside such a house. In big Polish towns, blocks of flats are heated by district heating systems, which pipes hot water from power stations (which in the UK goes out into the atmosphere via huge cooling towers). The disadvantage of this is a lack of control - the sezon grzewczy (heating season) is determined arbitrarily by the administrator; to cool an overheated flat, simply open the windows.

Not so on my działka, however; a kilowatt-hour of energy generated by gas is four to six times cheaper than one generated by electricity (unless you have solar panels). Year-round living in rural parts is still uncomfortable in winter.

It's nice to be warm as toast all winter long - but at what cost? Gas is much cheaper than electricity, yet gas comes from Russia, we're all at Putin's mercy. And the CO₂ emissions. Time to put on an extra sweater and turn down the thermostat a notch...  At 19.5C the house is warm enough. At 18C, it's too cold for comfort - even in thermal vest, flannel shirt and woollen cardigan.

We should aim to remove sources of discomfort from our lives - live in comfort, but don't aim to live in luxury.

This time last year:
Frustration as completion of Chynów station draws near

This time three years ago:
London in verticals

This time four years ago:
Roadblock and railfreight

This time five years ago:
Sunny morning, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens

This time six years ago:
Brentham Garden Suburb

This time seven years ago:
Ahead of the opening of the second line of the Warsaw Metro 

This time eight years ago:
Keep an eye on Ukraine...

This time nine years ago:
Płock by day, Płock by night 

This time ten years ago:
Warning ahead of railway timetable change

This time 13 years ago:
Some thoughts on recycling