Things that used to be common place in people’s homes

[ABB125]

My maternal grandparents have live in their house for something like 40 years (I'm not sure exactly when they moved in, but it would have been the late 1970s/early 1980s). It's certainly rather... different!

• No central heating, though I'm not sure why - there are radiators fitted. From various conversations I've had, as well as some nosing about, I think they may have had a solid-fuel boiler at one point, but it must have broken and never been replaced. For years, the only heating was plug-in electric radiators (in selected rooms only), but a couple of years ago they installed a large wood burner that's been in the family in storage for years. Obviously it helps when you own your own woodland and (amongst other things) sell logs! Incidentally, I wonder why we have a wood burner at home as well...
• Old telephone with an old-fashioned-sounding ring (a bit like an old wind-up alarm clock). It also looks like a rotating-dial phone, just with a numberpad instead.
• Old thin worn carpets, lots of 1970s furniture etc
• Ancient "sound system", including amplifier, enormous (think 1m high, 40cm wide) wooded-framed stand-alone speakers (that would have cost a fortune when bought; currently they're serving as a surface to store paperwork on!) and record turntable. Looking rather incongruous next to the enormous something like 60-inch television that the Currys salesperson convince my grandad to buy!

 

[py_megapixel]

I've thought of something that wasn't so much common inside homes, but rather outside them. A lot of blocks of flats used to have LED seven-segment/dot matrix displays which showed one or more of the time, the date or the air temperature. They seem to have vanished in recent years. Think some office buildings and hotels had them too.

 

[SurreyCommuter]

Girlfriends - I haven't one in my home for almost a year now!

 

[najaB]

Girlfriends - I haven't one in my home for almost a year now!

Only a year? Lucky you.

 

[Trackman]

What about house oil heating? Something like central heating I think. When I was a kid my next door neighbour had a big tank in his back garden! I think he worked for the oil company. My dad's mate had oil heating too and it was it was a modern new build house.
Whilst we are at it, are storage heaters still going? (Economy 7 thing)

 

[yorksrob]

What about house oil heating? Something like central heating I think. When I was a kid my next door neighbour had a big tank in his back garden! I think he worked for the oil company. My dad's mate had oil heating too and it was it was a modern new build house.
Whilst we are at it, are storage heaters still going? (Economy 7 thing)

I think that's still quite common in rural areas off of the gas network.

Storage heaters - still loads of them.

 

[trebor79]

I've thought of something that wasn't so much common inside homes, but rather outside them. A lot of blocks of flats used to have LED seven-segment/dot matrix displays which showed one or more of the time, the date or the air temperature. They seem to have vanished in recent years. Think some office buildings and hotels had them too.

There's an office building in Horncastle which still has one of those (unless it's been removed in the past couple of years)

What about house oil heating? Something like central heating I think. When I was a kid my next door neighbour had a big tank in his back garden! I think he worked for the oil company. My dad's mate had oil heating too and it was it was a modern new build house.
Whilst we are at it, are storage heaters still going? (Economy 7 thing)

We have oil heating - it's quite common in the countryside. We used to have a 3,000l steel tank, but replaced it with a bunded 1,200l plastic job. I've regretted not buying a larger one ever since - it's fine for practical purposes as I order 1,000l at a time, but it means I can no longer take advantage of price crashes like we saw last year to buy an extra couple of thousand litres.
I spend less on oil now than I did on gas 15 years ago at a smaller and more modern house than this one!

 

[najaB]

I think that's still quite common in rural areas off of the gas network.

Yup. If you head up to the north of Scotland you'll see plenty of them.

 

[eMeS]

My maternal grandparents have live in their house for something like 40 years (I'm not sure exactly when they moved in, but it would have been the late 1970s/early 1980s). It's certainly rather... different!

• No central heating, though I'm not sure why - there are radiators fitted. From various conversations I've had, as well as some nosing about, I think they may have had a solid-fuel boiler at one point, but it must have broken and never been replaced. For years, the only heating was plug-in electric radiators (in selected rooms only), but a couple of years ago they installed a large wood burner that's been in the family in storage for years. Obviously it helps when you own your own woodland and (amongst other things) sell logs! Incidentally, I wonder why we have a wood burner at home as well...
• Old telephone with an old-fashioned-sounding ring (a bit like an old wind-up alarm clock). It also looks like a rotating-dial phone, just with a numberpad instead.
• Old thin worn carpets, lots of 1970s furniture etc
• Ancient "sound system", including amplifier, enormous (think 1m high, 40cm wide) wooded-framed stand-alone speakers (that would have cost a fortune when bought; currently they're serving as a surface to store paperwork on!) and record turntable. Looking rather incongruous next to the enormous something like 60-inch television that the Currys salesperson convince my grandad to buy!

I'm in the grandparent age group, and live in a detached house which is plumbed for water based central heating from a very centrally sited cast-iron gas boiler - i.e. it's not sited on an external wall, but in a cupboard under the centrally sited stairs, with piped external ventilation to it.
After 30+ years of totally reliable service the boiler failed, and by then government edict stopped me getting a straight replacement. The only permitted boiler now, would be a modern gas fired condensing boiler sited on an external wall. This would require a massive change of pipework and loss of cupboard space in the kitchen; in a house full of my furniture and junk, so I moved away from gas to using electric convectors - both oil filled, and plain for quicker response. The house isn't as warm as it used to be, but I've not had to put up with the hassle of having trademen in the house.

 

[yorksrob]

Yup. If you head up to the north of Scotland you'll see plenty of them.

Yes, also in the more Northerly parts of Yorkshire as well.

 

[Whistler40145]

Coal fires, woodchip wallpaper,

 

[Mag_seven]

Tea Strainers, whistling kettles, pie dishes with that funnel thing you put in the middle that goes below the pastry into the meat.

 

[ABB125]

What about house oil heating? Something like central heating I think. When I was a kid my next door neighbour had a big tank in his back garden! I think he worked for the oil company. My dad's mate had oil heating too and it was it was a modern new build house.
Whilst we are at it, are storage heaters still going? (Economy 7 thing)

We have oil heating, as others have said it's very common in rural areas/outside of towns and cities, along with LPG tanks.

I'm in the grandparent age group, and live in a detached house which is plumbed for water based central heating from a very centrally sited cast-iron gas boiler - i.e. it's not sited on an external wall, but in a cupboard under the centrally sited stairs, with piped external ventilation to it.
After 30+ years of totally reliable service the boiler failed, and by then government edict stopped me getting a straight replacement. The only permitted boiler now, would be a modern gas fired condensing boiler sited on an external wall. This would require a massive change of pipework and loss of cupboard space in the kitchen; in a house full of my furniture and junk, so I moved away from gas to using electric convectors - both oil filled, and plain for quicker response. The house isn't as warm as it used to be, but I've not had to put up with the hassle of having trademen in the house.

Interesting. I seem to hear quite a lot of criticism of the fact that generally only combi boilers can be bought nowadays!

 

[dgl]

My Dad, who lives in North Dorset has oil and bemoans now having a smallish tank as it's not much bigger than the minimum amount you can order so you have to wait until it's getting quite low before ordering more.
I also know my auntie and uncle had quite a large oil boiler at the rectory despite being in Crewkerne, something where there is mains gas.

Also floor standing gas boilers, I know my auntie and uncle had one at the place they rented out before moving into after the rectory, still there a couple of years ago before they both passed, it was a Potterton Kingfisher 2 and was mostly mechanical in operation with none of the smarts of a modern boiler, had a pilot light which no boiler has anymore and a balanced flue, which ended in a ~30cm² outlet/flue outside not the small round flues of modern boilers.

As for non-combi boilers they are very much still available if not that common, my Gran had hers replaced a few years ago (which turned out not to be necessary). She had been quoted ~£3000 to have it replaced with a combi-boiler but we convinced her that it would be more sense to stick with what she had, partially because not only could she still use her aging solar hot water system but she had the backup of the immersion if the boiler failed. Her boiler lives in the airing cupboard with the tank and ancillaries with an extra boatload of pipes and tanks in the loft.

 

[trebor79]

I think that's still quite common in rural areas off of the gas network.

Yup. If you head up to the north of Scotland you'll see plenty of them.

All over the country. Here in Norfolk we're 3 miles from a town. A high pressure gas main actually passes through the village but there is no gas to any of the properties in the village!
It's actually cheaper than gas, I was pleasantly surprised. And the induction hob we have is better than cooking with gas (I'd previously refused to countenance anything other than a gas hob)

We have oil heating, as others have said it's very common in rural areas/outside of towns and cities, along with LPG tanks.

I've never understood why people go for LPG. It costs an absolute fortune and you're usually tied into a single supplier.

Interesting. I seem to hear quite a lot of criticism of the fact that generally only combi boilers can be bought nowadays!

There are specific circumstances where you are allowed to fit a non-condensing model, but very few and far between.

 

[najaB]

As for non-combi boilers they are very much still available if not that common

I thought as much. While the default position for new installations will be a wall-mounted combi boiler, I'm not aware of a total prohibition on system boilers nor ones located other than an exterior wall. I'd be happy if someone can let me know if I'm wrong though.

 

[trebor79]

As for non-combi boilers they are very much still available if not that common, my Gran had hers replaced a few years ago (which turned out not to be necessary). She had been quoted ~£3000 to have it replaced with a combi-boiler but we convinced her that it would be more sense to stick with what she had, partially because not only could she still use her aging solar hot water system but she had the backup of the immersion if the boiler failed. Her boiler lives in the airing cupboard with the tank and ancillaries with an extra boatload of pipes and tanks in the loft.

I detest combi boilers and refused to have one fitted when we replaced our boiler a few years ago. Dreadful things. Developers fit them to new houses because it's cheaper than putting in a proper hot water system.

 

[najaB]

I've never understood why people go for LPG. It costs an absolute fortune and you're usually tied into a single supplier.

I guess because you can also cook with it.

Developers fit them to new houses because it's cheaper than putting in a proper hot water system.

They're also more energy efficient unless you regularly draw down most of the hot water in the cylinder.

 

[swt_passenger]

The chap who does my gas service reckons he’d have no problems replacing my boiler like for like, it would be referred to as a “system boiler” as opposed to a “combi”. If a house is already plumbed for a zoned circulation, eg “S plan” with stored hot water in a tank, I reckon there’d be quite a few issues changing it to a combi design...

 

[dgl]

Don't know about the regs on where one could be fitted but I do know that floor standing ones are quite rare, although both Worchester and Ideal do them i.e. https://www.wolseley.co.uk/product/...star-30cdi-floor-standing-natural-gas-boiler/

 

[trebor79]

I guess because you can also cook with it.

Induction hob is the answer there. Better than cooking with gas and miles cheaper over anything other than short term than LPG.

[combi boilers]
They're also more energy efficient.

Mmmm. I'm never convinced by that. Either you waste a lot of water and heat waiting for the water jacket to heat up and hot water to come out of the tap, or you have a model that fires intermittently to keep the water jacket to temperature. A well lagged cylinder with a short run of pipework to the boiler is likely to be equally as efficient.
Plus the achievable flow rate through a combi is usually pathetic, and you get nasty temperature swings if the flow of pressure varies.

 

[najaB]

Mmmm. I'm never convinced by that. Either you waste a lot of water and heat waiting for the water jacket to heat up and hot water to come out of the tap, or you have a model that fires intermittently to keep the water jacket to temperature. A well lagged cylinder with a short run of pipework to the boiler is likely to be equally as efficient.

Simple physics - it's going to take more energy to heat 150L of water and keep it at temperature so that you can use 5L than it will to heat the 5L of water that you actually use. And the improvements to lagging on the hot water cylinder can equally be applied to insulating the insides of a combi boiler to keep it up to temperature.

Plus the achievable flow rate through a combi is usually pathetic, and you get nasty temperature swings if the flow of pressure varies.

Which is why you don't hook a combi up to a shower. If you regularly use large volumes of hot water, then a system boiler is the way to go.

 

[dgl]

Never had any problems with our current condensing combi boiler which is a Gloworm model from ~2007, it's the original boiler to the property as the landlord couldn't get gas originally despite being right next to a high pressure gas pipeline, the fuse box and outlets for the electric heating are still there. Works fine with the shower despite our lowish water pressure.
Our current setup is a bit strange where we have a medium pressure gas supply, one of the idiosyncrasies is that you have a little lever on the regulator which I assume is to purge the system and what has happened is that when they do the safety check it causes the regulator to lockup and the boiler can't get any gas, resulting in an error code. We thought there was a real problem when it happened the first time until a bit of web searching solved it.

As I understand it the whole idea of the combi boiler is that you only ever heat up the amount of water you need rather than heating up a massive tank of water even if on that day you only use it for washing up and a bit of hand washing. Add an electric shower and having a tank makes even less sense. Combine a tank with a solar system then it starts to make sense, my grans system was installed in the 80's and still appears to work, although the sum total of it's user feedback are two lights on the control box, and one of them is power!

 

[trainophile]

Drives me mad when they poo-poo old style airing cupboard/hot water tank arrangements on Homes Under the Hammer, disdainfully saying "well that can go, replace it with a combi boiler and make more space". I wouldn't be without my airing cupboard, both for towel etc. storage and for drying things that can't be tumble dried when the weather is too bad to hang stuff outside on the line. Actually I have to manage without one in my little flat, which only has a just about adequate combi boiler, and have to make do with damp laundry draped over all the radiators and hanging from the towel rails, door hooks and shower screen on hangers. Airing cupboards should be a basic essential in all homes!

 

[dgl]

See both us and now my Gran have A+++ Heat pump tumble dryers that seem to handle all clothes we have put in them without coming to harm, saves the issue of having washing hanging around drying and is a boon for my Gran who can't put her washing on the line anymore, much better than the old vented dryers and doesn't create a lot of moisture.
And on that point, small vented tumble dryers that simply vented out the front, you got fluff everywhere and needed to keep a window open to stop it getting damp.

 

[takno]

I'm in the grandparent age group, and live in a detached house which is plumbed for water based central heating from a very centrally sited cast-iron gas boiler - i.e. it's not sited on an external wall, but in a cupboard under the centrally sited stairs, with piped external ventilation to it.
After 30+ years of totally reliable service the boiler failed, and by then government edict stopped me getting a straight replacement. The only permitted boiler now, would be a modern gas fired condensing boiler sited on an external wall. This would require a massive change of pipework and loss of cupboard space in the kitchen; in a house full of my furniture and junk, so I moved away from gas to using electric convectors - both oil filled, and plain for quicker response. The house isn't as warm as it used to be, but I've not had to put up with the hassle of having trademen in the house.

We've got a back boiler fitted, but it died a couple of years ago, and hadn't been turned on for a year or so before that. Having a kettle and shower is just about enough for hot water, although I think I'd probably quite like one of those combined hot-tap and and boiling tap units under the sink really. Convector heaters are much better than central heating though - they're mostly on pretty much minimum setting just to take the chill off, and barely cost anything to run. If I feel like having the one of the rooms a bit cozier I can just turn them up. Massively cheaper than having central heating on all the time, and to my mind more comfortable.

 

[Busaholic]

Girlfriends - I haven't one in my home for almost a year now!

My wife has banned me having them in the house!

Our first TV, rented monthly from Radio Rentals, was Black and White with doors that could be closed when it wasn't being watched. We rented it so we could watch the first series of Monty Python.

 

[Gloster]

Our first TV, rented monthly from Radio Rentals, was Black and White with doors that could be closed when it wasn't being watched. We rented it so we could watch the first series of Monty Python.

...which was in colour.

 

[dgl]

And something I am way too young to have experienced, the first "set top boxes", which converted Band III ITV signals to BI so ITV could be received on BBC/BI only TV's, and further to that the original AP TV's that didn't have a tuning dial and as such were fixed frequency.

Separate answering machines, most having a tape for storage, and analogue cordless phones.

Lastly, Amstrad products. Lots of TV's/VCR's/Hi-Fi systems and computers. Now relegated to being a subsidiary of SKY and no products are visibly identified as being Amstrad products. Add Ferguson, PYE, GEC, Murphy and others to the defunct brand list.

 

[Butts]

And something I am way too young to have experienced, the first "set top boxes", which converted Band III ITV signals to BI so ITV could be received on BBC/BI only TV's, and further to that the original AP TV's that didn't have a tuning dial and as such were fixed frequency.

Separate answering machines, most having a tape for storage, and analogue cordless phones.

Lastly, Amstrad products. Lots of TV's/VCR's/Hi-Fi systems and computers. Now relegated to being a subsidiary of SKY and no products are visibly identified as being Amstrad products. Add Ferguson, PYE, GEC, Murphy and others to the defunct brand list.

Add Bush, Rank, EMI, English Electric, Ferranti, Alba ....