Winter on its way

Today Gertie (our car) gave a refined little beep as we started her – indicating it was under 3 degrees.  In fact someone told me later that at her house near Dundee she had been scraping ice off the car that morning.

You can very clearly see in our house that we have single glazed windows with poor insulation.

As you can see, water has condensed on the window overnight.  When I was a child in 1970s, long before double glazing was common – this water would freeze into wonderful patterns on the inside of the glass and we would say “Jack Frost has been”.  This would also be the time of year when hungry blue tits would peck away at the tops of the milk bottles left on the door steps to get at the “cream of the milk”.  I bet young people today would find this all very alien.

Anyway, this explains why our heating bills are so huge but in fact practically speaking there is little we can do about it.  We were quoted £5000 to restore the window in the picture with its existing glazing and sashes – to put in heritage double glazing would be even more.  We could insulate the loft better than it is (well just about anything would be better than it is), but with the rest of the house leaking heat like a sieve I do not suppose it would make much difference.  And being completely brutal and pragmatic – we are getting on in years so replacing all the windows (or so) at a cost of £150K is never going to pay itself back in reduced heating bills in our lifetimes.  And we don’t have anyone to leave our money to anyway.

So turn the heating up a notch and enjoy it while we can.