Thinking back to the summer heatwave in the UK when everyone was “Our houses aren’t built for the heat, they’re designed to keep warm in winter”, and now everyone is “Our houses aren’t built for this cold”. Maybe time to admit that the UK has just been building homes for 100 years that are shit at *everything* aside from extracting rent from the poor.
@Polypompholyx A severe issue of lack of insulation affects UK houses like nowhere to else I’ve ever seen https://albert.rierol.net/tell/20221008_insulation.html
@albertcardona @Polypompholyx Having lived in the US (-20°C in winter, 40°C in summer) , UK (-5° to 30°) and Germany (-15° to 35°), it never ceases to amaze me that the country with the smallest temperature range over the year struggles the most to accommodate even that small range.
@ChrisWilms23 @albertcardona @Polypompholyx The moderate climate meant that houses didn't have to be super insulated for winter or super cooling in summer – and so they never were built that way. Prolonged cold weather wasn't a problem, just keep the fires going, just crank up the storage heater. All fine and dandy until we had price gouging of utilities.
The best we managed for decades was harling the outside of brick or stone for better rain protection.
@talloplanic @ChrisWilms23 @Polypompholyx Somehow the provision of coal-burning fireplaces in every room speak to me of a time when this was rather critical to love through winter. Plus retired professors here speak of an age (the 1970s) when they had to rush the anatomy lab demonstrations early in the Autumn because otherwise the ponds would freeze and the fish out of reach. Hasn’t been a concern in decades. Winters were harsher but insulation lacking.
@ChrisWilms23 @albertcardona @Polypompholyx I've mentioned this before on the bird site, but UK housing stock was designed overwhelmingly for a country with a moderate climate, and cheap coal made heating affordable. Even 1970s houses are terrible. Add a purely capitalist ethic to design and build and you get insubstantial cardboard walls, and miserly floorplans that necessitate open planned spaces.