Cold snap

It must be cold today as I spotted a few redwings feeding on the haws in the hawthorn out front, this not being a place that I have seen them before. Maybe the frost has disturbed their usual suppliers.

All of which turned me to cold in houses and what we do about it.

When I was small, when children retired to their bedrooms, they would huddle over fires not unlike the antique Belling turned up by Google above. Complete with similarly antique arrangements for connecting them to the electricity supply. Presumably accidents were not uncommon, although I do not recall my family ever having had one. Some time after that, North Sea gas was invented and we all got central heating. Electric fires were out, although we still own a rather smart Belling three bar fire, probably dating from the mid 1960's, which is used to help in our extension, where the radiators are not up to it, perhaps because they are on the end of the line.

Then yesterday, I discovered that in the world of Travelodge, electric fires are back in, and in my room in Cambridge, as far as I could make out, the only heating came from the fire snapped above.

Complete with a controller on top which can be used - once the (lady) plumber had shown me how - to control the temperature in the room. Which was fine and dandy and on the second night I even remembered to turn it down, with our custom at home being not to heat at night.

No heating grills to be seen in the corridors, which were pleasantly warm, but they did have doors which segregated them from the stair wells which were cold. And given that one needed a room key to open these doors, they also provided a spot of security.

Maybe the idea was that enough of the rooms would be heated by their occupants for that heat to leak out into the corridors?

Public areas on the ground floor - including the breakfast area - cool and rather draughty. I suppose the staff manning the reception desk wear thermals.

PS: Bing turns up the things in question without trouble. One of them can be yours for around £150. But it seems improbable to me that they are the main source of heating. There must be something else going on, even in a new building with top-of-the-range thermal insulation.

References

Reference 1: https://www.credaheating.co.uk/panel-heaters.