I'm a big fan of hot water bottles, particularly now that central heating oil is 58p/litre. They're so much hotter than those wheat-filled bags (and are less prone to being seen as food source for any visiting mice).
I was pleased last year to find a smart cream-coloured one as a change from traditional bright ones (strangely, unbeknown to either of us, my Mum bought an identical one 200 miles away the same week). But the trouble with normal ones is that they use a whole kettle of water (I don't go for the wishy-washy approach of using hot tap water), taking time to boil and leaving none spare for a cuppa.
I'd only ever seen 'normal' sized ones, but a good discovery was that they now make 0.5 litre ones and I picked up a pair a pound shop. These seemed great - you can fill one or two and still make a drink. They are great, but not for long - sadly they're too small to hold their heat well.
Best of all are middle sized ones that I bought for £1.50 each in a shop in Diss last weekend - one for me and one for my Mum. These hold a litre, which proves to be the perfect size. It stays hot for ages and is a good size for defrosting fingers when wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa hoping that the lounge will warm up soon. (A neighbour's suggestion of running a fan at the top of the stairs to drive the warm air back downstairs actually works surprisingly well and helps a lot.)
What I really fancy is an electric hot water bottle that you could just plug in instead of having to pour out nearly boiling water. I looked in vain a few years ago and remembered the idea recently so tried again. I found a whole website devoted to hot water bottles, which showed one but it's no longer available. Some similar ones were on ebay but I was a bit nervous about buying this type of thing from there and the Technomage flatly refused to have it in the house anyway. Even if I ever do ever get something like that I'll certainly want to use one of my excellent Masterplug countdown timers to provide some extra reassurance in case it forgets to cut out....(they're recommended for use on the iron too).
3 comments:
Hmm, surely what you need is a well wrapped decaying isotope which is reasonably exothermic but not instantly deadly. That way you save on all the boiling water, though radiation sickness may well kick in so caution is advised.
For heating smaller rooms I can heartily recommend an investment in tealights - having 30 or so of them burning manages to warm up my sitting room. Granted it is smaller than yours, however if you add an oil-filled radiator at the stairs-end then it should be fine (yes my central heating broke down in Amsterdam....)
Central heating is a wasteful nonsense, everyone knows that temperatures above 15C are harmful to humans. In fact in the 1960s and 70s temperatures never exceeded this figure in Yorkshire and as a result everyone was much happier. Modern life is rubbish and you can't even get small urchins to clean chimnneys for a fair price.
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