For months, I’ve been doing covert operations, mostly in the dark. After the lights go out, I slink around the house, unseen by my husband, turning down the radiator knobs in the sitting room, the TV room, the spare room and the hall. I didn’t touch the one in my wife’s office, for tactical reasons.
Sometimes, he will pass the radiator, notice that it is set to the snowflake symbol and turn it back up. As soon as I could, I turned back down.
When he came out I also tampered with the thermostat, which would eventually turn back on, triumphantly assuming he had won this latest skirmish, not realizing that all the sneaking around the house swiveling radiator dials renders the thermostat generally irrelevant except in the office. That’s why I didn’t touch that.
Sarah Frieze (yes, really) slinks around the house, unseen by her husband, Anthony, turning on the radiators in all rooms except hers – for tactical reasons
Smart? Not always. After I made the wrong call in the spare room and stuck in the highest setting, which broke the mechanism. I cost £80 plumber’s visit. Which I can keep a secret from my husband.
It’s mid-November and already British households have been locked in a bitter war over heating. A new poll found one in four regularly argue with their partner about the temperature, while 18 percent are frustrated by family members who are judgmental. If he knew about it, sure.
My husband and I are practical, detail-oriented people. We agree on the level of light needed at night, on the weekly shopping list component and on the right day in December to put up the Christmas decorations. But it’s hot we fight through.
The poll found that one in four couples regularly argue about the temperature at home, while 18 per cent are frustrated with family members playing around (shown by model)
My daughter and I call it the Cold War, and they rage in our house with strict, albeit unconventional, gender lines.
Research published in 2019 shows that men and women generally want a variety of indoor temperatures. Overall, Professor Nicole Sintov, from Ohio State University, found women tend to be warmer in size compared to men’s preferences which are often chillier.
It’s a difference that has long been the topic of office battles.
In 2015, a paper titled ‘Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequality in thermal comfort’ shows thermostats are set in office buildings according to a 1960s formula based on the heat needs of a 40-year-old man weighing 11 st.
Men perform better in colder temperatures, it seems, while women perform mental tasks at a higher level when it’s warmer, meaning that corporate thermostats usually favor the perfect male work environment at the expense of women.
“Now we see this in family conflicts over temperature, where women may be losing the thermostat battle,” said Prof Sintov. ‘This shows the status quo gender bias in heat settings which leads to a thermal environment of the home that does not suit women’s preferences.’
Well, some women. Maybe Prof. Sintov wants to come and study with us, because it’s right in my house. I am far tougher in the cold than my husband Anthony. And while our 21-year-old son is wearing bare feet and a T-shirt, shivering like a whippet and complaining about the cold, my daughter – a 23-year-old climate change warrior and charity shop devotee – is dressed. other tweeds and natural fiber jumpers, and wrap yourself in a duvet if all else fails. Given half a chance, he’ll turn the dial down too.
My husband, by contrast, is a tropical flower. Where I like the thermostat at a quick, economical 17c, they turn it into a milky 24c (according to this week’s poll, the ‘ideal’ temperature for your home is 19.5c).
I’m afraid they’re hacking into one of our app-controlled heating systems and can control the thermostat remotely, which is what happened to my horrible friend Deborah. ‘I turned it on because I was at home freezing and he monitored it through the app from work and it went down. This is a yo-yo battle!’
To be fair, my husband has two credible defenses: he was born in Australia, and he pays the heating bill. I didn’t pay anything. We split it out quite evenly, but the things I pay for – supermarket, subscription TV and water bills – do not cause the same drama.
I’m a loving enough wife and I don’t want direct conflict, so I fight guerrilla warfare. We live in a narrow terraced house. My husband insists that near the bottom of the house you have radiators in all the rooms because they are warm upstairs. A particular front line is the large radiator in our hall, which belches heat into the street every time we open the front door.
‘Hot air up the stairs,’ said Anthony firmly.
The bone of contention between Susannah and Anthony is the radiator in the hallway, which heats up the street every time they open the front door.
‘Thermal convection replaces the cooler air in the street with the hot air in our hall,’ I returned.
Ah, these summer nights of banter and debate.
Enemies were thawed by buying people crimson and white paint fleecy throw to ‘wear’ indoors instead of depending on the heat level of the hothouse. At first, he wasn’t impressed, but when I told him how much it cost and how much it suited him, he balked.
The news that we can try to claim household expenses because we work at home likes him. ‘My employers will pay for us to be warm enough at work,’ he crowed, ‘so they can pay for us to be warm enough at home!’
But I’m not eligible because I’m freelance, and his relief (given by the Income Tax Earnings & Pensions Act 2003) is limited to £244 a year with tons of paperwork that even he doesn’t think is worth the effort.
Susannah suffered from cold feet, but her husband disagreed with her suggestion that she do thermal convection under the sheets.
It took a family meeting and a negotiation based on poker – ‘I will see you 17 degrees, and I will raise it to 19 degrees’ – for us to reach a compromise, helped by the fact that now we have low costs. underfloor heating in the kitchen with a separate thermostat set to 18.2c by us builders that none of us know how to change.
So now I work happily at the kitchen table in the basement, and the master controls the thermostat set at 22c in his own glory upstairs.
The only place of true peace is in the bedroom, where no one likes the heat, they prefer a cold nose and a thick blanket.
But then came the Cold War. For a hot blooded person, I have cold tortoise feet. For some reason, my wife rejected her friendly suggestion that we practice thermal convection under the sheets. ‘No, I don’t want your cold feet stuck to your warm calves,’ he grumbled.
For now, I’ll continue to hold low-level resistance – and with gas prices on the rise, hope to take advantage by Christmas.
ANTHONY wrote:
There was a time at the beginning of the thermostat battle when I allowed my husband’s arguments to persuade me that turning off the heating was good for us and for the wallet.
The problem was, we both looked like Soviet-era gulag prisoners, wrapped in layers upon layers, covered in hoods and scarves. Not only do I have a hard time bending my arms to type, but opening the door to countless posts for people who work at home is just embarrassing.
At the start of his thermostat battle with Susannah, Anthony says he looks like a Soviet-era gulag prisoner, wrapped in layers upon layers, covered in hoods and scarves.
The delivery driver, outside, in branded fur and tights, is surprised by the recipient of the Siberian parcel, inside, with his hands in fingerless gloves.
‘Are you all right, mate?’ they asked. ‘Boiler on the blink?’
He was right about when he bought the ermine-trimmed robe. It wraps around my chilled kidneys, and makes me feel like an eccentric aristocrat in his unheatable Scottish castle. And it can be easily thrown away when the doorbell rings 100 times a day.
What Susannah has not gone to – since she rebelled against the modern tendency to ‘blame’ everything on menopause – is that her natural body temperature is rather higher than that. Hot flushes mean we are not operating on a level playing field.
Not that I’d be stupid enough to bring this to a thermostat battle. If I know about menopause, you have to choose your battles carefully.
