I've learned that the farther south you live (to a point), the colder you are in winter. If I go out on a windy -25 days, it's cold. I throw on the right clothing, and it's okay. I'd prefer less cold, but my clothes are insulated, and so is my house.
Last night it was 13, windy and foggy. I closed the fishroom windows, except for a slow fan in one window. It was 23 degrees in there, higher than the 19-22 I want. When I went out this morning, the room was at 22. The heat was off and the lights were off - the only heat source is the air pump, and that is very little in a 9m by 4m room. But I have high grade wall insulation, no unsealed entry points, 2 tight doors and a metre of insulation over the ceiling. I think that's the direction UK members may need if ocean current change from climate change makes your winters more like ours.
I read fish friends in the balmy Carolinas freezing in winter, and I figure it's the construction differences doing that.
When I think back to growing up on the wrong side of the tracks here, houses were less well built and less insulated, and you often rented a flat with no central heating. You'd have one gas or oil heater in the hallway, and would wear warmer clothes indoors. Fishkeepers liked to concentrate their tanks in one warm room, and often had shrink wrapped window frames and insulation around the door of the room.
There were policies brought in in the 90s that made it affordable, indeed profitable, for landlords to add electric baseboard heating and insulation to old flats. That cut down on fires, and made a lot of those old freezing places fairly decent to live in. But you still have a radically different indoor clothes all winter.
I have never felt cold and damp like I did in England in the winter. The same for Ireland. Insulation rules, and the investment pays off if you can make it.
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