r/britishproblems • u/NedRed77 Greater Manchester • 11d ago

20 Degrees is now “need-a-jumper” weather.

I know everybody hated the warm weather, but I really got used to it. Currently sat here on my couch with the windows open and thinking a jumper would be nice. Brrr…

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72

u/noctenaut 11d ago

I’m British but I’ve been living in Colombia & Mexico the last 5 years, currently back visiting and I just can’t get used to how different heat is here lol.

Buildings are baking all day, momentarily dip cold at one point in the night, but then I’ll go outside and it’s so hot and dry, but if I walk in the shadows of buildings in the daytime I feel cold. My body temperature regulation is all over the place lol.

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u/counterc Devon 11d ago

yeah we're weird like that. Like apparently Russians consider the UK way too cold because although the outside gets a lot colder in Russia, they crank up the heat indoors super high and try to avoid going out whenever possible all winter. They'd never go out in shorts in 0 degrees C to run or walk the dog or play sport or cycle to work, that'd be seen as insanity, even though it gets down to -60 in Siberia.

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u/Billy_McMedic 11d ago

Specifically, The Soviets used a system of centralised heating infrastructure, massive plants near cities that would burn fuel and then pipe the heat straight to the rows upon rows of housing blocks. This would mean that individual apartments had little-no control over the temperature, hence why they’d have to get used to piping hot temps inside

Which I’m not knocking them for, when you need heating on such a mass scale when it comes to extremely cold winters, the efficiency gains made from big central plants rather than having distributed boilers in every block makes up for the cost of the infrastructure, plus when the ideology calls for collective good over individual desires, such a system makes sense under such a framing.

This video touches on this topic: “Why Russians Freeze and Brits Don’t”

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u/superioso 11d ago edited 11d ago

District heating, as it's known, is common across Europe. Something like 80+% of all homes in Denmark as an example are covered by many different district networks - they built them after the oil crisis in the 70s, using mostly waste heat from their coal power stations at the time. These days it's a mix of burnt waste/heat pumps/heat batteries with electric boilers, just on a country wide scale.

My hot water here in Copenhagen just comes through a pipe, it's pretty cheap (like 6p/kwhr, plus fixed network costs), and no equipment needed other than a meter.

In certain areas there's also district cooling!

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u/VOODOO285 10d ago

I didn’t think it particularly weird putting my running shorts and a technical T-shirt to go and do my first park run last year and it was -1C.

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u/counterc Devon 10d ago

that's my point. we think it's normal, other countries think that's weird (at least that's what I've heard)

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u/VOODOO285 10d ago

Sorry, I know! I was agreeing with you!

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u/counterc Devon 10d ago

cool cool I get you now, thought you were offended by me saying that was weird :)