Snugglesafes, room temp, and longer term solutions

Dont worry @Lorcan they have an inbuilt alarm call "I'M COLD I'M COLD I'M COLD" once the ambient room temp drops below 17 degrees! Our house is a peasant worker cottage 120 years old and the cold wind just whistles straight through the 1 brick thick uninsulated walls in weather like yesterday. A thick blanket or duvet over the cage is a good plan, even if its just part of the cage they can huddle in.
I also find, having spent 3 years now trying to optimise the central heating for a compromise between skinny pig comfort and enormous bills or big temperature fluctuations: heating on for 15 mins every 2 hours is much better than heating on for an hour every 3 or 4 hours :)
Tallulah isnt keen on snugglesafes, she will ignore one then stand 4 inches away while shrieking about the cold lol, bloody hippos! She will sometimes nest a bit or at least sit in a pile of Haybox expensive soft timothy hay. Never any other hay, it tickles, but she almost acts like a normal guinea pig sometimes in that soft timothy :)
 
This central heating system is ancient, the only way to have it on for less than an hour is to manually switch it off myself. Otherwise, the timer doesn't do less than an hour and it can only be set for twice a day. It's one of those old dual ones with the levers that move around the edge.

They'll both sit on the hay to eat it, even when they had the paper bag they'd sit on top of the hay in the bag, which is fine, but that was the Burgess feeding hay and it was very soft. On hay or next to hay but never in the hay, apparently!
 
ThatPurpleB said:
Oh wow. Can you even set the temperature? Or is it just either on or off? My mum's heating is 2 years older than me and it looks newer than that. Her house was built 1988.
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There's a switch on that contraption for Off, Water, and Water & Heating. The thermostat is on the opposite wall of the lounge.

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It's gas heating, but it's not a combi boiler, lol. The boiler is in the attic, it's the back boilers in the lounge that you hear when the system switches on.
 
I never even thought of a boiler in the attic. Wish I'd had mine fitted up there! I'd have gained a downstairs cupboard!
 
I don't know if it was there originally. There's a cupboard in the pigs room that has had something in there at some point, either the boiler or a hotpress. Since it's not a combi boiler I'm assuming there must be a storage tank somewhere or I'd have no hot water to the taps but if it exists it's probably in the attic too, I haven't been up. The only bits in the cellar are the meters (well, and the bags of piggy waste since they need to go somewhere and I'm missing a bin).
 
Apologies for the state of the living room but

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The area behind the fake fire, that's where the back boilers are. They're not accessible via the cellar so I assume the access is either behind the mirror or the fireplace itself but I've no interest in pulling them out just to find out.
 
My house was originally built without radiators or gas powered central heating so I have a weird cupboard that use to have something else in too. Our floor boards are squeaky where they've been cut to fit the radiators. There's no fireplace here. It was built 1968 so I have no idea how it use to be heated.

Is the fire fake or does it just not work? It looks identical to my mum's but hers might be deeper. (Another 1980s classic in my mum's house). The fire in the house we use to rent was condemned, it should have worked but was deemed unsafe so they took the spark out.
 
Well it's definitely not a real fireplace. I don't think it works in general but I'll be honest, I've never tried. They're usually electric powered and they eat power (and money) like it's going out of fashion. You can follow the vents from the right side of that block of wall (as you look at it, you can't see it in that photo) up through to the pigs room and on up into the attic. It's highly unlikely there was ever an oil boiler, I'm guessing it was something like Economy 7 with storage heaters early on.

Edit: I remember my neighbour asking if the central heating worked because apparently the last guy who lived here, it was condemned then. I thought she was exaggerating but actually I've had a few people say it was condemned now. They apparently had issues with the back boilers, and I'm wondering if they just cut the fire off because of it.
 
My mum's was gas and looked identical to that. Her's didn't have the chimney breast though just a small flu that somehow fitted inside the wall between hers and her attached neighbor. It uses so much gas! Only my dad puts it on when for some reason he decides he wants to be 1000oC.

My mum mentioned ours might have had a storage heater before the radiators were fitted. We've only lived here 3 years so have no idea!
 
I think there's probably a lot of ex-storage heater houses out there. Gas central heating wasn't a big thing until, I want to say the 90s? But oil fired heating required an oil tank outdoors and the two I remember having were massive. If there's nowhere for them to have gone it was most likely storage heater based heating. That said, in Northern Ireland we were slightly behind the rest of the UK on gas heating uptake I think, but I'm guessing before the 90s it wasn't widely adopted in England either.

I don't know the extent of what's behind the chimney breast. The flue is sort of separate again, like a separate small boxy bit right next to the bigger fireplace box.

It is a very old system. How it still works I have no idea. The fact it works after being condemned is a flippin' miracle, lol.
 
When we moved in the boiler here was old. It was HUGE. We were told by family to leave it unless it's broke. "If it's worked for 40 years, it'll work for 40 years more".

But then we had to relight the pilot light with a match a few weeks later..... booked for a new one fitted right away!
 
The guy who owns this house (let via a letting agent to the housing association who let to me, lol) is adamant about not replacing things. Took enough of a fight getting the pipe unblocked and then another 3 weeks to get it replaced, on both occasions because a plumber insisted it was necessary. The downstairs windows need replaced, not just because of the single glazing, but they're so drafty the temp upstairs and downstairs is markedly different. There's always a cold draft coming through the front door too. The kitchen cupboards on the ground (not the wall ones) need replacing because they're rotting in places, at least in part because the water hits there first if there's a problem with the drains. And...so on.

Don't get me wrong I love this place, but it wouldn't kill the guy to fix it up properly. If he took the time and spent the money he could almost certainly get it back and then some via a rent increase and it wouldn't be too much of an ask. But penny wise, pound foolish.
 
We're lucky we had the ability to buy. I hated living in rental for that reason.

We had water pouring through the house for months before it got fixed. And then the constant wet caused mould. It wasn't the landlord really, it was the letting agent never told him anything or sorted a repair even though landlord had agreed payment. The letting agent use to lie to avoid fixing stuff, no idea why as it was the landlord who paid. We were left without electric for days when a power cut set off the burglar alarm so we had to leave the electric off or the alarm went.

I'm a capable person with DIY and felt lots of stuff I could fix myself but had to wait for them.
 
I'm surprised that a boiler that age is passing the Landlord's Gas Safety Certificate tests. You have got a copy haven't you? It's illegal for the place to be let without one. My Mum's house had an oil boiler with a hot water tank in the airing cupboard and a feeder tank in the loft, before we could sell the house we had to take it out as the mortgage company for the buyer's wouldn't give them a mortgage with that system in it. The buyers were going to put a new system in anyway so they didn't mind us removing it, luckily they were moving in in summer so didn't need the heating and there was an electric shower.
 
Yeah, last inspection was in August. if you see the green sheet tucked behind the mirror? That's it. the letting agent and the house owner are as bad as each other, but since the letting agent is currently getting my gas and electric bills in their name, well, right now that's their problem lol. I don't mind doing occasional fixes but replacing a door and windows? That's not my job. There was a cat flap on the door once, it broke, and now I have two panels off wood, one either side of the door, blocking it. There's clearly been locks and chains added and removed from the door over the years and it shows. And never mind the single glazing or keeping the current door with the scratch marks all over it, but the rendering's cracked and the windows/doors/external pipes could all use a brand new coat of paint. I wouldn't hold my breath on it getting done, though.
 
Lorcan said:
Yeah, last inspection was in August. if you see the green sheet tucked behind the mirror? That's it. the letting agent and the house owner are as bad as each other, but since the letting agent is currently getting my gas and electric bills in their name, well, right now that's their problem lol. I don't mind doing occasional fixes but replacing a door and windows? That's not my job. There was a cat flap on the door once, it broke, and now I have two panels off wood, one either side of the door, blocking it. There's clearly been locks and chains added and removed from the door over the years and it shows. And never mind the single glazing or keeping the current door with the scratch marks all over it, but the rendering's cracked and the windows/doors/external pipes could all use a brand new coat of paint. I wouldn't hold my breath on it getting done, though.
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We never did DIY or decorating in any of our rentals for 2 reasons. 1- if it went wrong I wasn't being liable for it. 2- I wasn't about to add value to someone else's house at my own expense.

They seemed shocked when we moved out after 6 years and told them it needed work before other people moved in. I cleaned the carpets before we moved out as it is part of some rental agreements and it was us that made them mucky but they were confused that we didn't redecorate.
 
ThatPurpleB said:
They seemed shocked when we moved out after 6 years and told them it needed work before other people moved in. I cleaned the carpets before we moved out as it is part of some rental agreements and it was us that made them mucky but they were confused that we didn't redecorate.
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I'm a Landlord and I would never ask expect my tenants to redecorate. However, if they wanted to redecorate, as long as it was a colour we both agreed on then that would be OK. I have sent a decorator in before, with their permission to tart the place up a bit.
 
The only stipulation I have on redecoration is that, when I move out, it has to be the same as when I move in. So if I redecorate, I just have to make sure it's all magnolia walls again lol. I'd rather get rid of all the textured wallpaper but meh, I'm never gonna do it.

The bit I will be doing is the garden. That old wreck of a shed needs pulling out but the garden has a lot of potential.
 
Betsy said:
I'm a Landlord and I would never ask expect my tenants to redecorate. However, if they wanted to redecorate, as long as it was a colour we both agreed on then that would be OK. I have sent a decorator in before, with their permission to tart the place up a bit.
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I think it was a cost cutting exercise. Hoping we would do it so they didn't have to. Plus they had people wanting to move in so they lost rent while it was empty being repainted.
 
Lorcan said:
The only stipulation I have on redecoration is that, when I move out, it has to be the same as when I move in. So if I redecorate, I just have to make sure it's all magnolia walls again lol. I'd rather get rid of all the textured wallpaper but meh, I'm never gonna do it.

The bit I will be doing is the garden. That old wreck of a shed needs pulling out but the garden has a lot of potential.
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Ooo you'll have to put up garden pictures when you've done a bit. Love gardens!
 
ThatPurpleB said:
Ooo you'll have to put up garden pictures when you've done a bit. Love gardens!
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I'm hoping to get rid of all the dead stuff, put some grass seed down, maybe get some wildflowers in. There's cats and foxes around so the grass won't be for the guinea pigs to eat unless it's cut and washed but it'd be nice to have the option. Getting a replacement for the shed is a bigger problem. What's there needs to go because it's missing 1 1/2 walls and a roof but that does mean probably buying another one. Be nice to get a proper washing line in there too, one of those carousel ones.

It'd be nice if they got the wooden overhang at the front door fixed so I could stand on my doorstep for a smoke and not get soaked through but that's a repair in the same category as the windows, rendering and door - nice, but it won't happen.
 
Lorcan said:
I think there's probably a lot of ex-storage heater houses out there. Gas central heating wasn't a big thing until, I want to say the 90s? But oil fired heating required an oil tank outdoors and the two I remember having were massive. If there's nowhere for them to have gone it was most likely storage heater based heating. That said, in Northern Ireland we were slightly behind the rest of the UK on gas heating uptake I think, but I'm guessing before the 90s it wasn't widely adopted in England either.

I don't know the extent of what's behind the chimney breast. The flue is sort of separate again, like a separate small boxy bit right next to the bigger fireplace box.

It is a very old system. How it still works I have no idea. The fact it works after being condemned is a flippin' miracle, lol.
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I think gas central heating started being adopted quite rapidly in the late 70s, once North Sea gas came on stream. I remember it being fitted in my parents house in about 1975. They had a floor standing boiler with pilot light in the kitchen, it was there until about 2002. At that point it developed a fault and the engineer condemned it due to the presence of a pilot light etc and my mum had to get a small wall hanging boiler instead. I don't think you would be able to have a boiler in the attic, or a 'back boiler' now either for the same H&S reasons. When the oil boiler in our first house had to be replaced in 2007, that had the expansion tank in the attic removed too.
 
I think these houses date from the sixties. Maybe the fifties, but not really any later. Being an 80s child (lol) I'm not certain of my memory on this - was economy-7 type heating used alongside coal fires? The cellar looks like it was designed to hold coal, or fuel like it, at some stage and the chimneys suggest there were fireplaces at some point, but then it'd be the wrong place for a flue that travelled straight upwards. It's all a bit odd, heh.

The last oil fired boiler I remember was in my parents garage and honestly it terrified me. Very noisy, angry sounding, it was like a monster statue - couldn't move, but could scream.
 
Qualcast&Flymo said:
I think gas central heating started being adopted quite rapidly in the late 70s, once North Sea gas came on stream. I remember it being fitted in my parents house in about 1975. They had a floor standing boiler with pilot light in the kitchen, it was there until about 2002. At that point it developed a fault and the engineer condemned it due to the presence of a pilot light etc and my mum had to get a small wall hanging boiler instead. I don't think you would be able to have a boiler in the attic, or a 'back boiler' now either for the same H&S reasons. When the oil boiler in our first house had to be replaced in 2007, that had the expansion tank in the attic removed too.
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That would make sense. Our boiler was definitely older than my mum's which was fitted when their house was built in 1988. Ours was the size of a washing machine and sat on the floor. Our house was built 1968 without gas central heating but had it retrofitted. Makes sense it would be fitted late 70s to early 80s.
 
Lol I should've looked it up sooner. That gas fire is the back boiler! Still, all it does these days is run the central heating.

ETA - the issues with the central heating would be lessened if the windows and door were fixed. Yes, it's old, but the constant cold drafts downstairs are the bigger culprits. Those don't exist upstairs, which is why the temperature variance is so obnoxious.
 
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