-7 first thing this morning and got back from the dog walk with an icicle encrusted beard 
-4C at dawn here but it had been -9C through most of the night.
I remember cycling into work in the 90s and on the coldest mornings my (supposed to be warm) breath would freeze in the moustache I wore back then.
Itās snowing here now.
Heavenly! Iād live in your situation in a heartbeat.
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Hope the snow ploughs get to you before you have to start eating weevils and drinking your own urine
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youāre aware heās an aussie right?
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Freezing cold in this poxy house.
Seems impossible to warm the downstairs up.
My son is pretty ill and I think Iām starting to come down with it.
Sounds like he might have Covid by the symptoms
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My neighbour just spent 2 hrs clearing a path for his quad.
Then the tractor arrived and did it properly
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Sorry to hear this Stu. Older buildings with thick masonry walls can resist the chill for a few days but if it goes on longer than that they can cool right down and then it really does require lots of therms to get them back to being comfortable (you can guess how I know this).
For what itās worth thereās a horrible regular cold going round at the moment, so I was going to say āFingers crossed itās not Covidā but to be honest the alternative might not be much less unpleasant 
.
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Yebbut Stu lives in a modern house 
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Ah.
They just track the outside temp, no ?
Youāve lost me Graeme
I live in an old house (rendered 9" brick) with a lot of thermal mass. All I know about modern houses is what I see as I drive past the thousands and thousands of them being built here. So I had the same concerns as are expressed in the opening sentence here viz
that the move to lightweight building construction in housing will lead to higher internal temperatures during the summer, particularly in the warmer future, due to lack of thermal mass
(the same physics would make them colder in the winter too). But the paper seems to say these concerns can be obviated by good design. So Iāve learned something.
Yep, mine is a 60ās end of terrace and is freezing in winter and a furnace in the summer.
The tiles on the front are effectively a single skin and mounted on a single brick inner wall so the heat goes straight out. Not sure what insulation they would have put between the tiles and wall but itāll probably be 60yrs old now (build in 1964)
The front is south facing and that lounge window is 8.5 ft wide so even when cold out the lounge is warm/hot on a sunny day.
Apparently the āmainā road is now clear, so I went to have a look
Stiil, itās a gorgeous day, perfect for a midday walk.
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Rain. Slush can be beautiful too.
You really need to get your insulation surveyed and get some cavity insulation and loft insulation. I donāt know if there are any grants available. The vertical tiling will probably be fixed to a 6" solid block wall, no insulation.
Mmm thatās new thinking to me, but there are a lot of maybes.
Modern house regs for insulation are very strict and improving all the time.
Surely if you have a masonry outer leaf and a well insulated cavity the heat from outside should not cross into the inner leaf therefore having little āstorage heaterā effect.
Just my thoughts
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I also visit a friend in Wales whose house is large, Victorian and built with local stone. Itās wonderfully cool in the summer but despite having full central heating and log fires it never gets up to a comfortable temperature in the winter. Thereās no mains gas there so he uses Calor, I havenāt enquired lately, but a couple of years ago he was using Ā£500 of Propane per month 
Tried a few and they were all out of funds or only for those on benefits.
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