Mulled wine is Roman in origin. They would heat a poor wine with spices such as Safron, yes the spice MORE expensive than gold, Safron, Pepper, and Laurel, then take a better wine add Honey and then add the better wine. Also Dates were used as well it was called Conditum Paradoxum. Just giving you the information, also in these countries it has it's own name : Glühwein in Germany, svařák in Czech Republic, forralt bor in Hungary, vin fiert in Romania, and karstvīns in Latvia. Also HOT water bottles are bad for both your circulation and body, they cause something called Chilnlains, specifically these are lumps on the extremity heated too fast, they can be itchy, sore, they can cause a burning pain, or a stinging sensation. They can and do lead to sores, and blisters, and worse sores. Doctors advise against using Hot water bottles for this reason, and because if the split on you they can scauld your feet!
Many a winters morning had discovered the key would not turn in the door lock as stupidly I'd washed the car the evening before and the lock was iced up, warming the key didn't always work, the one thing that did was pee on the lock, easy for a man but not recommended if parked on the street under a streetlight. The can of WD40 was locked in the car so not accessible. Broken many a debit card using it as an ice scraper, they are very brittle when cold.
hot water poured quickly onto a laminated screen can cause delamination and shatter a toughened glass window, use cold as it's warmer than ice and freezes slower than hot water. Do not leave a car running unattended on the road as illegal and may get stolen, take the cuppa out with one to drink whilst waiting for car to warm up and defrost.
In my parents 1960s UK house we had no central heating, just a coal fire in the living room. At Christmas we would go to the exclusive front room and light another fire. So no heating in the bedrooms. The thing to do with the hot water bottle is put it in the middle of the bed before you go to bed then push it down to keep your feet warm after you get in bed.
As someone who is old enough to remember when single glazing was the norm I can say that we never used those plastic shrink wrapped window insulation. We had the concept of winter and summer curtains. Summer curtains were light and airy and let the air flow into the house to ventilate it and keep it cool during the warmer summer months. Winter curtains were thick heavy material that blocked out light but more importantly blocked drafts and the cold. In my childhood home we even hung two sets of curtains (plus the net curtains of course, no self-respecting housewife back then would have bare windows that everyone could look into) to combat the draft and cold from single pained windows. I believe in the late seventies and the eighties you could by thermal inserts for your curtains which was basically a thermal fabric which connected to your curtains to increase its insulation properties. We also employed the concept of layering clothes. As a teenager I remember wearing tights and a vest, over which you put your jeans and a t shirt/ blouse/top then you would wear a jumper and if it was very cold also a cardigan over that. Luckily, in the early eighties fingerless gloves became popular and we could wear them inside, and flashdance meant that leg warmers were also fashionable. During my younger childhood in the 1970s I remember that I always had school shoes, summer sandals, winter boots and "slippers" a kind of soft indoor shoes. We never wore shoes inside but the slippers with your socks ( and the layer of tights if you wore them) kept your feet warm. We always wore pyjamas or nightdresses to bed and between having your bath and going to bed you wore those and a dressing gown and you slippers. I always had bed socks too. The hot water bottle was always put into your bed about 15 to 30 minutes before bed. This was before central heating radiators so the only heating the bedrooms got was from the radiant heat from the chimney stack. They could feel cold and damp at bed time but the hot water bottle made sure that your bedding wasn't damp and warmed it up. It wasn't designed to stay warm all night but to make sure that you were warm enough to fall asleep and then your own body heat kept the bed warm for you and your nightclothes help retain heat. I always kept my hot water bottle by my feet as that is where I used to and still do feel the cold the most. On top of that, we had the draft excluder on the main living room door - not as posh as the one you showed but a tube of fabric stuff with whatever remnants of fabric, old tights and cushion stuffing we had available. There was also a curtain across the door to prevent drafts. We also had a draft excluder and a curtain across the front door too, to prevent too much cold air coming into the hallway, which could create a draft if you had to open the door to make a cuppa during the evening. I don't remember people going out so much in the evenings back then. Most of the people we knew just hunkered down in their own homes with the radio or the TV for entertainment. Maybe this is why nowadays I flick through the channels and decide there is nothing to watch. We only had three channels in the 1970s but each channel seemed to have its own distinctive programming. More channels doesn't seem to equate to more choice. Or maybe we were more easily pleased back then because our expectations were lower! In our house the "backroom" - a room next to the kitchen that was basically the dining room but was dual purpose use with a sofa and a table with chairs had a coal fire burning all winter because it had a back boiler to heat water. In warmer weather we had the "immersion heater" the electric water heater but electric was more expensive than coal in the 1970s so if we didn't have to use it then we didn't. The "front room" did have a chimney and fireplace but we had a gas fire there and that was used on the weekends. We mainly used the back room to live in, the front room was weekends and special occasions like Christmas. The back room had the TV in it. I don't think the front room had a TV in it until the 1980s, or perhaps the late 1970s. I do remember that for most of my early childhood we rented a black and white TV from Rediffusion ( it was a shop on the high street, you could rent TVs and other appliances but mainly TVs. You went in every week to pay your rental on your TV). Weekly shopping trips included going to the shop front for the coal man and paying your bill, going to the dairy to pay the milkman (milk invariably was delivered daily very early in the morning in time for breakfast by an electric milk float) and then going to the bakers, green grocers and butchers before you even though about going to the supermarket. The house didn't get central heating until about 1986 and double glazing until about 1990 - by this time I had moved out into my own house, which had already had central heating and double glazing, so I don't know if my parents held out for so long before bowing to the new social norm of double glazing and central heating. The funny thing is that we did these things automatically and I don't ever remember feeling that cold. Maybe we were used to being cold and damp most of the time so that we didn't notice it so much. Apologies for rambling so much, but several of the things mentioned seem to be a hangover from the past and as I had the memories and the knowledge to fill in the gaps I thought I would share.
We must be abut the same age, your memories of the 70/80's is also my experience. I bought my first house in 1987 and even though I had both central heating and double gazing (I was posh lol) I had summer and winter curtains. My parents bought their tv from Wigfalls and paid for it weekly, they were very expensive items back then. I can't remember being that cold either but like you say, we were used to it as it was the norm. Happy days, great memories.
Maybe we're a similar age, and my growing up in southern New Zealand was somewhat similar. I grew up with a "Front Room" would now be called a Formal Lounge that us children were not allowed in without permission, was kept just for visitors or some Sunday afternoon teas. We also had Electric heated hotwater, but during the Winter our open fireplace in the main living/dining room, heated a separate system. The Kitchen, Laundry/wash-house and Bathtub therefore had 2 different hot taps to choose from. (note some later systems use only the electric hotwater tank and the "wet-back" (what you called a 'back boiler') could be connected to boost the electric hotwater system). The tube shaped draft excluders at the base of doors we called a "snake". One novelty one was in the shape of a fat cat sitting upright (made with a biscuit tin full of stones inside it for weight), and the long cat's tail formed the door-snake. It's often cheaper to buy hotwater bottles without a fabric cover. They can then have a spare old towel rolled around them. Avoid allowing the rubber directly touch the skin as burns can result, like with delicate skin of frail elderly, or if folks fall asleep drunk in direct contact with the hotwater bottle. A bottle of "cold" water, simply left inside your home is probably still at 12 or 15 Celsius in the morning, and will easily defrost your car windscreen without any risk of breaking the glass. If you use a bought "windscreen washer fluid" then that usually includes a limited antifreeze component. Here, in most parts of New Zealand, we can mostly just use plain water in the windscreen washers, with a squirt of dishwashing liquid. Only occasionally will it freeze and not work first thing on a Winter morning. Soon the engine heat warms it enough to work..
Loved reading this. Thank you - it was not a ramble! I was born in 1990 to a 19 year old mother in the North of England. however we lived as you described. Single glazed windows that were great for drawing on in condensation with your finger, gas fire in the front room which we rarely used, milk and a sack of potatoes delivered to our door, and trips to town involved going to the post office, the butcher, the green grocer... Our TV was black and white with only 4 channels available (though owned, not rented) and I'd share tepid bath water with my four siblings because hot water was limited... but I have no memories of being all that cold. Were we just hardy back then? I don't know if we were poor, frugal, or if living like that was still the norm in the 90s. Our clothes always came from jumble sales, stinking of cigarettes. It's wild to think there was no such thing as the national minimum wage back then.
Tuck the hot water bottle into the top of the bed with your nightclothes ten minutes before you climb into bed. Then slip into your warmed bedclothes and push the hot water bottle towards thr bottom of the bed as you get in. Warm patch at the top of the bed and toasty toes too1
Whenever my girlfriend is having severe period pains she always has a hot water bottle across her stomach to help with it. Has a cutesy alligator one for at home and a smaller fluffy one for at work. Even me as a guy can attest that hugging one when I'm ill is comforting.
I can attest to this. The last time I used a hot water bottle was in 1970's when we just had blankets on our beds. Never used them after nice warm duvets and central heating became a thing. When I was courting, many of my ex-GFs used them to cope with period cramps.
"Even me as a guy can attest that hugging one when I'm ill is comforting." I agree, but it's not just that it's comforting (which it is), they also keep your core temperature up which aids your immune system in fighting off whatever lurgy is at you.
Other parts of the US had/have all the things she mentioned. Hot water bottles are basically obsolete or replaced by alternatives now. We have central heating, heating pads, electric blankets, and things you microwave briefly then use like a hot water bottle but they’re lighter and can’t leak.
My parents’ house was built in the 1920s and even in the 1980s my father saw no need to install central heating. We had a Dutch girl stay with us one winter. At breakfast she commented on seeing frost flowers on her bedroom window. “Don’t you see those in Holland?” asked my mother. “Yes but not on the inside of the window.”
You hug your hot water bottle if using for pain relief, period pain, ear infections when I was little, it’s excellent. For warming the bed put it in an hour or 2 before you go to bed, then you’ll find the cat will claim it even though you’re under the duvet and the cat’s on top.
Love my hot water bottle, even when not particularly cold. Guilty pleasure since i retired - listening to neighbours scraping their windscreens whilst I'm nice and snug under the duvet
Eggnog is actually a drink that was first recorded in Britain in the 1300s or the 14th Century. The British settlers took it to the USA and it was mentioned in 1775 when George Washington served it at Christmas. A Nog refers to a type of cup. It was once quite common to here the term as a "noggin" or noggin of beer.
A hot water bottle is for any body part when you’re feeling cold. I use it one to warm my bed up before I get into it. I have female friends who use them when they have period pain (not just English, but Italian, German, etc…).
They're also quite good for the opposite condition. In one heat wave I had a pair of hot water bottles. One would be in the freezer while the other would be behind my back on the sofa. When it stops being effective, you just swap it out for the one in the freezer. It made all the difference.
Electric blankets are an alternative to HWBs; they are placed between the mattress and the under sheet and heat the whole bed. Some double electric blankets are split to allow for each side of a double bed to be heated to different temperatures. I believe that in the US and Canada, electric blankets are placed above the person sleeping.
A work colleague of mine once threw a bucket of nearly boiling water at a frozen windscreen. the water went straight through. this was in the days of toughened glass screens. The hot water hitting the cold class caused it to crack into thousands of little pieces. Use a scraper it saves a lot of time and money in the end. Needless to say we all laughed at him when he told us - cruel aren't we ?
I grew up in Ohio, I had all those things before I moved to the UK. I got my fancy shmancy ice scraper from Morrisons, but I'm sure you could pick one up somewhere else.
Old carpet on the windscreen will stop frost forming on it. For side windows put some clingfilm on the window - the frost is on the clingfilm, not the glass.
Pro tips for car ice on cars! Start the engine, turn the heating to the windscreen, go back inside, come back in 10 minutes when there's actually warm air and the windscreen is clear. (Obviously, depends on your area, please don't get your car stolen)
4’10” actually, pouring water onto a frozen car windscreen is not a terrible idea at all. It works pretty well if the temperature isn’t too far below freezing. Don’t use hot water though, that can crack the glass.
Maybe I've just been lucky these past 30 years, but I use hot water on my windows all the time and have never had a crack in the glass. Numerous people have told me not to do it, but it's always been absolutely fine. And I live in the north of Scotland, where temperatures can get pretty low.
@@grahamlive Depends on the temperature but you can cause thermal shock, similar to how hot glass pan lids can sometimes shatter from being placed on the worktop. Trouble with using water is that if temperatures are cold enough the water can freeze a film of ice across the windscreen which looks fine at first but is actually harder to shift.
I would go to bed with a hot water bottle as a child to keep warm. We never had central heating, so would use gas or paraffin heaters. We would also have a fire in the sitting room during the day. One of the paraffin heaters was also used to boil pans of water during a power cut.
Hot water bottles are incredible for period pain. Other than that they are just used to warm bed. I’m currently sitting in bed cuddling mine to get cosy before going to sleep. It’s also really good for warming your feet. I have a long thin one (about a metre long) that I wrap around my neck if it hurts.
Add a windscreen cover to your winter car repertoire - assuming you remember to put it on the evening before, you have an instantly frost-free (and non-fogging) windscreen in the morning! And a major side benefit is that you get to feel incredibly smug watching the neighbours scraping away at their cars with frozen fingers while you waft away down the road with a perfectly clear windscreen. 😆
? in northern ireland everyone just uses their kettle, you dont boil the water oc just pour the hot water over the window and turn on the wipers to prevent the water refreezing
Wonderful if you remember to check the weather forcast air temperature the night before. I'm old so l remember when a heater was an optional extra & even if you paid the extra it was not very effective. I now have a 16year old subaru hatchback which has hrw and a cabin heater so effective it heats the window glass quickly and effectively from cold so ice on the windows slides off in one piece. I Only credit card scrape mirrors and lights(ice scrapers are too big /inflexible for this)
When I was a kid, back in the 60s, we lived in a mortuary cold house with single glazed badly fitting sash windows, so each family member had their own hot water bottle. Mum was really good at sewing so she made her own hot water bottle covers, often out of old worn out clothes that couldn't be repaired. My favourite was made from corduroy, and she built in pockets either side so I could slip my hands in for warmth, or even my feet when I was small. If I had a cold, I would keep extra tissues in the pockets so I never got caught short without them.
Hot water bottles are very new-fangled. If you visit very old houses or even olde worlde pubs you will often see displayed a "warming-pan". This is a shallow copper pan with a lid and a very long wooden handle. In days of yore these were filled with hot coals, and placed in the bed some time before retiring to take the chill off the sheets. Unlike the hot-water bottle, you were not recommended to cuddle these.....
A note to your pre-frozen car self - a credit card can be used as an emergency ice scraper since it is thin and flexible. It may not be usable afterwards so an alternative type of credit card-like card might be better though. Better than a zip anyway.
The best ice scraper is a credit card works every time. Other times I fill a kettle to the bottom level when boiled add a bit of salt and fill up to overflowing the luke warm water does the job get your wipers going before you pour and stand out the way.
As a brit, my favorite stuffed animal as a kid was actually a hot water bottle cover, and Watson the fluffy dog/water bottle cover is still in use by the following generation.
i used to take the door snake (just a plain one, 70's decor) to bed as a little kid till our doctor on a home visit said it probably wasnt a good idea as i had asthma, i still have that door snake, but he has gone away for the summer right now
Growing up in the 80s every child had a hot water bottle. Put it in your bed some time before you get in to make it warm when you get in and you keep it near you however is comfortable
Yep I think of mulled wine as German. But of course it's tasty alcohol so Brits like it! We have hot toddies (hot whisky) and I've had hot spiced cider, which was delicious. When I have a cold I make hot lemon and honey with a nip of whisky in it.
In Sweden they give you a small glass of Glögg in some super friendly shops. You are better off getting some interlined curtains for our drafty old houses..... Your take on HWBs , hot water bottles and draft excluder sausages was really funny. I remember in the 1970s having a long nightie, socks, dressing gown and coat on top of the bed. Still freezing so tried to kidnap the cat from one of my sisters for a bit warmth. The windows were thick with ice on the inside every morning brrrrr! 🥶😅
I grew up with hot water bottles - no heat in the bedrooms, we'd get ice on the inside of the windows, and I've even experienced clothes freezing in the room. The good old days, eh? For an ice-scraper, I'd recommend getting one from Scandinavia. Problem is, if it's in the car and the doors are frozen. D'oh! Here's one: my first job after leaving school was in Wakefields Army Stores and we sold pocket hand warmers. They were metal cases, into which glowing charcoal was placed. Place in a velvet bag and wrap your hand round it in your pocket. Never used one but we did sell quite a few along with the charcoal tablets used as fuel.
To prevent freezing of the car door, first prepare the door rubbers with talc powder at the start of winter and maybe a couple of times in addition. Frozen locks can be sorted with a match, which you light and warm the key (metal bit). Always carry a box of matches with you in your winter jacket.
@@Phiyedough I decided to leave a really cheap bedsit and moved back into semi-grotty student halls when I woke up one morning, in the last week of November, and found not just ice on the inside of the window but ice on the top of my glass of lime cordial. Sugar lowers the freezing point of water!
If you don't have double glazing you can use bubble wrap to insulate your windows. Just cut it to the size of the glass for each pane, mist some water on the glass and the bubble wrap will stick pretty well. The air pockets have a really good insulating effect. I used to do this in my old flat every winter.
No idea if they still do, but Ford used to have front and rear screen demisting screens. I've always been a bit of a Ford fan but honestly sitting in a Mondeo switching on the front screen defrost and watching it melt within a minute or so was great. It also had a heated section the melted the ice around the windscreen wipers, if they don't still fit them they have gone backwards in car technology.
I worked at Ford back in the 90s and worked on their engine management software. The demisting front screen draws a very high current, so cars fitted with them have uprated alternators. When you turn the screen on, the engine management system bumps the idle speed up by a couple of hundred RPM so that the alternator is producing enough power before engaging a relay to turn on the heating elements (though you may not notice that if the engine is already in a high idle mode immediately after a cold start). They are very effective - though expensive if your windscreen gets damaged and needs to be replaced. I now drive a LandRover which has the same system - love it on these cold winter mornings.
The evolution of the hot water bottle goes back centuries, original servants would take some coals from a fire and put them into a 'bed warmer' it looks like a lidded flat pan on a stick, that could then be pushed into the bed to warm it before their employees got in. Obviously there is some risk with this (this is also house ironing clothes was done, hot coals dropped inside an iron). The heating pan style was abandoned in favour of stoneware jars, these are pretty common in antique shops they are typically bottle shaped with one flat side and a stopper that is on the crown of the side, rather than the top. They were relatively cheap and dint require servants to operate, so became very commonly used. These eventually got replaced by rubber equivalents, and now various nylons and plastics are generally used. Typically people put them at their feet, but if you are actually cold, putting it between your thighs is the best way to warm up. - they also do this with hypothermic patients in some cases, the heat from the bottle transfers quite well into your femoral arteries, putting heat into the body quickly. A lot of people will also use them as a 'remedy' in the same way that Americans use heating pads or microwaveable bags of things like corn husks, for everything from stiff necks to period pains.
I'd forgotten about the shrink-glazing. In the 80s I lived in a house that still had the 1930s single-glazed sash windows, so me and my housemates bought a load of this stuff and taped it (then heated it tight) to every window. IIRC it needed re-applying halfway through the winter because moisture would loosen the tape or some gimboid at a party would poke it with a cigarette. But it did make a difference and was worth putting up for about four months of the year.
My best winter purchase was a long handled ice scraper so you don’t fat a cold, damp chest from leaning over the car. I also got an oil filled radiator this year - love it!
All electric heaters are 100% efficient, whatever power rating they will provide the same heat. Oil filled take longer to heat up initially but release heat over a longer period including after they are switched off. A fan heater for example gives instant heat but only as long as it is running and also has to power the fan so slightly less efficient overall. The little plug-in ones from China invented by a ‘jet engineer’ will not heat your room in seconds and cost almost nothing, that is a huge con.
Back in the early 1950s ginger beer was sold in stoneware bottles of varying capacities from 1 pint (20 fluid ozs in the UK) up to 4 pints. We paid a returnable deposit for the bottle but fewer were returned in winter because they made excellent hot water bottles and boiling water could be used in them. They were wrapped in a hand towel and slipped into our beds about 2 hours before bedtime. No duvets in those days but in winter we used several woolen blankets topped with an embroidered quilt. I never owned a rubber hot water bottle until I married and my wife and I set up in our own home.
I remember that my mother inherited 2 metal hot water bottles from the 1930s - they would have been about the same size as those stoneware bottles. Ours were always in layers of my dad's old socks - the ones with unrepairable holes in them. and yes wollen blankets in our house too. We always had brushed cotton sheets in winter because they were warmer than the normal cotton sheets.
Mulled wine: "brought to the UK by the Romans, who called it mulsum." Hot water bottles (A.K.A. "The Hotty Botty"): Once made from stoneware (pottery). You use them to warm up the bed before you get in. Insulating film: when you can afford it, rather than plastic sheeting and duck tape!
As someone from the US state of Indiana, ice scrapers for car windows are a necessity here, and even more so for someone who lives near Lake Michigan. Door draft stoppers are common here too. Portable heaters are common as well, and the radiator type is available, but I don't use one for 2 reasons. My home is usually warm enough for a nearly 75 year old home to not need one. Also, even if I could use one, my home's outdated wiring prevents me from using one, as its not sufficient to handle the usage. I never heard of Mulled Wine, but it might be available at stores. Aldi USA sells the German version, Gluhwein. I don't know if theres a difference, but after learning i have liver damage, due to not knowing i have had Hepatitis B for possibly since age 17, that I have cirrhosis of the liver, and if I want to delay having to get a liver transplant, I can never have any alcohol again. Last one, window film, and that's common in Indiana. I haven't had to use it, but know people who do use it, and sometimes, it's not easy to use. My mom did have to use plastic on windows of a couple of different homes. She used thick plastic sheets that you could only see light, but not see out of the windows. She thought that was more important, than seeing out of windows, but the window film was useless. Of course, the home I lived in, in early 1994, there was a major cold snap to where air temperatures during the daytime were as low as -24°F, or around -31°C, which lasted up to 2 weeks. It normally doesn't get that cold in Northern Indiana (maybe states like Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Northern Wisconsin and upper Michigan), that both water and sewer lines froze up on not only my home, but neighboring homes as well. It took 3 weeks for the ground to thaw out enough to let water run again, and a month for the sewer lines to thaw out. That is one experience I never want to live through again.
The thing I find amusing is that so many people just consider insulation as keeping heat in. It also keeps hot air out. A well insulated building will keep you warm in winter and cool in summer.
Get a heat pad. I got one couple years ago and haven’t looked back. No more refilling, just turn it on again if you need a boost, and safer. They turn off automatically after 90 mins unlike electric blankets and are hotter with more settings. You never know when a hole will appear in a bottle with hot water in it. I have two in different rooms now. You need something over it so either sit on it or put it over you and then a layer on top, for best results.
1. Mulled wine sounds delicious. 2. No opinion. 3. Here in Pennsylvania we absolutely need ice scrapers, beginning in November in the mornings. 4. Door draft blockers are important in winter. 5. No opinion.
Hot water bottle tip! Before going to bed put the fresh hot water bottle in your bed where you would typically put your feet a few minuets before going to bed for warm toesies when you climb in! Also, you can use your Draft Excluder for your windows if you have a big enough window ledge instead of the Thermo Cover!
I am in bed in my coat with a hot water bottle on my tummy right now. Winter has not been kind this year. I have to have a new boiler and it cannot be fitted until end of January. We have a wood burner so soon I will go downstairs and snuggle up next to that with some mulled wine and feel better.
You canuse the hot water bottle any way you like. My wife uses it to warm her bed and pyjamas before going to bed. I use one occasionally to keep my feet warm on cold winter night. Just do what comes naturally!
Use your hot water bottle any where any time. I'm using one as I watch this. It's going up to 29° C today here in Chch NZ, but it's not there yet and I am old. Take it out with you to friends places and in the car till the car heating kicks in- yeah I've had old cars. Even sitting outside on a winters day, you'll love the hottie- smokers will relate to that. On a zoom call when you can't just get up to get the blood moving. The combo of a hottie on your lap and your hands wrapped around a hot cuppa makes winter life bearable. One cold place I was in needed 2 hottie 9 months of the year. I use boiling water in mine- was too scared to until seeing a friend do it to. It stays hot longer.
2:06 the hot water bottle is the modern bed pan only a little bit more safer and more mobile like you can have a hot water bottle wrapped with a towel for extra protection to prevent your skin burning put that definitely depends on the style of hot water bottle you use while you are watching tv in your living room underneath the blankets either during winter or when you are sick. just make sure that you got the steam out and that the lid is tight and not leaking .
Hot water bottles were really designed, I think, for pre-centrally heated housing. There might have been fire-places in the bedrooms for coal fires - but if no fires or didn't want to/couldn't afford to light one - the bed could be warmed before getting in and then warm feet when you got in to bed. Even with central heating, some people don't always turn them on in the winter in the bedroom - so hot water bottles are good. My personal use for one has mainly been to help relax the muscles etc. during menstrual cramps! (Hot water bottles, made from rubber, were the "modern" version of the earlier bedpans.) I think egg nog was more a UK thing in the past - my grandma's childhood maybe. Mulled wine took over more when the more European style Christmas markets became more common in UK. Maybe from the 1970's / '80's. I lived in a house in the UK for about 4 years, that was designed to be warm in winter and cool in summer - with no central heating or air conditioning systems. In winter when it was very cold, we used on oil filled radiator and it warmed the whole house - only two bedrooms; but quite large rooms. So cheap to keep warm!
Every drug store in America sells hot water bottles. The are usually used for sore joints and muscles and are not especially for cold weather. The drug store really isn't the place for bed-heating objects.
I think it went metal bed warmers with hot coals, then ceramic hot water bottles then the modern ones. My grandpa once dropped his ceramic one in the sink, hot water bottle survived but the sink smashed 😂.
Back in the old days before bedrooms with heating there were bedpans. A long handled pan that held perhaps a heated brick that was slide around the bed to warm it up.
@@Brian3989 My god-mother was a farm-wife who milked the house cow, gathered the eggs, plucked the pheasant, fed the pigs (and cured their hams) as well as cooking wonderful meals, growing most of the vegetables, doing needlepoint and making parsnip wine. This is 1949-50. Above the fireplace in the ‘parlour’ hung a brass bedpan. It had the diameter of a large frying pan but at least twice the depth. It had a hinged lid that could be opened by a little insulated lever (because the lid got hot) and a long, turned, wooden handle that stuck straight out from the side. At bedtime she’d get it down from the wall put a hand-shovel’s worth of hot coals from the fire into it and go up to warm up her bed. As a child, I had to be certifiably ill to be allowed a hottie but I was a little furnace, normally, so I don’t remember suffering for more than a minute or so when I climbed into an ice-cold bed.
Back in the day, you would heat up your bed using a lidded shallow pan that contained hot coals in it and would be removed before you got into it. Rubber hot water bottles are a modern version of that, although they are ideal for the easement of pain especially period pain.
Yes, my grandma used a bed warming pan when I used to visit her in the countryside. She would slowly wipe it all around the inside of the bed, leaving it comfortably warmed for me to quickly get into.
There were also ceramic hot water bottles before the rubber ones. They were cylindrical, with the stopper on the side, so that when the bottle was lying on its side, the stopper was at the top. I think they were known as pigs.
I got the Revheads claw like scraper a few years ago and it's brilliant. Very sturdy and you can really dig into the ice. BTW never pour boiling water on your frozen windscreen, you risk destroying it. Get a scraper but if you must use water add enough cold water to cool it then slowly trickle it so the ice slowly melts
Hot water bottle how to use: boil kettle; pour a little cold water in the bottle and then add amount half the HWB with the hot water; screw top on very tightly. Use to warm up in whatever way you want; usually in a unwarm bed for the feet. Use with or without cover.
Hot water bottles are used to warm any part that is cold hand'feet, or just embrace. It can also be used to put in your coat for going out in cold nights.
My dad used the shrink film on the windows every winter until he could afford double glazing. It really works well at stopping the draughts and even helped with the house from our busy road.
I take *_TWO_* Hot Water Bottles to bed, one for warm feet, one for aches and pains. Mine are plain rubber, without covers (but only £2 each in a department store sale). I fill with 70-80℃ water, I have a temperature selectable kettle (one of my best Aldi purchases). I wrap them in bath towels, so they don't burn, or feel too hot. I wrap 'asymmetrically' with more layers of towel on one side than the other. The nett effect is they stay pleasantly warm against me much longer than a 'nude' HWB, so more effective. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. 🎅🎉 ☮
I use my hot water bottle in the evening while relaxing watching tv. You can tuck it inside your dressing gown or in between your thighs which really makes you feel warm. I wouldn't be without a hot water bottle in the winter. A real life saver. They are made of natural rubber and i always use my fluffy cover as you can actually scold yourself without a cover.
The hot water bottle evolved from a stoneware bottle known as a pig, about the size of a 2l bottle of coke with a snout like shape at one end and a stopper on top. Again filled with hot water but obviously much heavier and not as easy to snuggle as the rubber bottles. I remember staying in a holiday home many years ago that had box beds and pigs which were a nice and toasty combination. Having an air gap does do wonders for keeping the cold out. I live in an old stone cottage and have a ceiling to floor length curtain that covers the front door which stops draughts but also gives enough insulation that there's a noticeable difference in the whole house if it's not across.
May I recommend the ceramic hot water bottle. The rubber bottles have a limited life before they break with the danger of hot water landing in your lap (this happened to a friend of mine at the place I work.) The potential problem with the ceramic ones is the soft washer where the stopper goes in - but easily replaced with leather. Otherwise they last for ever.
I use an old 4 pint stoneware waterbottle, I wrap it in wool and place it against my back so it heats my core and being so large it stays warm much longer than the modern soft rubber bottles.
I have a plug in hybrid vehicle. From an app on my phone I set my departure time and the car warms the car up automatically. No scraping and an as warm as toast interior.....
Start your engine and put the windscreen fans on (or electric de-icer on - looking at my Kuga :)) ), this will help to loosen up the ice. Even though I have central heating and the house is new build so its well insulated, nothing beats getting into a bed with a waterbottle in it to heat up my feet (winter treat)
I haven't used heat based window film, but some of the cloudy privacy stuff and it was fairly ridgid to apply, and you just needed to use a gentle scraper to move air bubles around or prick them with a pin
I live in MN and I have used most of these things. Rather than an oil filled radiator I had a space heater for my office. I've used the window film many times in my life, especially in older houses that were poorly insulated. My first home in MN was very well insulated and I didn't need any of the extras but I''ve lived in two homes over 100 years old, and one needs all the extras.
I daughter used to love have a hot water bottle wrapped in a blanket to cuddle and put in the bed 10/15 minutes before getting in to warm it up. Now has a heated blanket!!
If you are going to be using a hot water bottle please make sure you read the date on the top and replace it every few years approx 3/4 because it can wear out and you will be scalded
There’s nothing worse than waking to the sensation of a wet patch in bed, when a hot water bottle has perished and leaked. It really is worth keeping an eye on the production date moulded into all bottles.
hot water bottle - in bed to pre-warm and keep it near your eet during the night. ice scraper - invaluable - scrape off the main frost front and back - and then engage the in-car front/rear heating. our modern cars tend to have front screen heating too. A bank card will do in an emergency. COLD water with the wipers on can work if it's not too cold. I have a draught excluder on the living room door - as it is next to the porch and even though it's a double glazed front door, it's still draughty. once again, most windows and doors are double glazed and I've never had to use window wrap.
You can use boiling water in a hot water bottle. It can be better, when it is freezing cold. There is a variant of them that you can get, that, instead of the typical shape, it is like a sausage, with the bottle being about 80cm long, from Amazon.
Like many didn't grow up with central heating or double glazed windows, I still layer up even indoors. The hot water bottles have a use by date on the neck so don't use it after that date otherwise it'll likely burst
As a child we would make draft excluders out of old tights and crumpled newspaper stuffed down the leg, i still make them but with odd bits of wool and material. Also made a long cushion for my back when laying down, (so nice to rest your back against) the same way, with pompoms on one side for decoration.
Upto 1980s many houses didn't have central heating, my Nan didn't even have a bathroom with outsidetoilet till mid 80s so Hot Water bottles were needed then and still have good snugly feel to use now 😊
I actually use my hot water bottle more in the summer! If you like to camp but get chilly sleeping under canvas then a hot water bottle in the bottom of your sleeping bag to keep your toes warm is definitely the way forward.
I have a 'stone 'hot water bottle. It's a pottery cylinder with a filler cap half-way along, that can be filled with boiling water and put into your bed, say, two hours ahead of time. It heats up the whole bed, and after two hours, has cooled just enough that you can hold your bare feet against it. Still luke warm in the morning too. They are still made, and you can find Victorian ones at antique fairs and flee markets. You might need a new sealing washer around the filler cap though - the original ones have usually perished.
Since 20 years I have not scraped off ice from the windshields of my cars, because I have moved to Cyprus. But it can get cold here, and therefore hot water bottles and oil-filled radiators (and sometimes mulled wine) are standard equipment. Since I live in Cyprus I hate winters. For me now temperatures under 20 degree Celsius are freezing.
I have recently just fitted a long thick curtain in front of my front door(on the inside), had to add some curtain weights. Now it works great to keep the drift out. I don't use the front room much, but it helps to keep the cold air out. I mainly use the back lounge, this way the front room is always clean and tidy for guests. 🍻 The back lounge, is always a little messy, and the only room I smoke in (yes I plan to quit tomorrow, but tomorrow has yet to come).
Luke warm water clears the ice, providing it’s not too below zero. And a “hottie bottie” is brilliant at any time. I have a few available for sleep over friends and family alike. Always a good stand by. Curtains and door draft excluders are ALWAYS a must, whether you have double glazing or not! KEEP WARM, BEST WISHES
My Dad used the cling film double glazing in the house we grew up in. Really faffy, but he's extremely precise with things like that and got it on and looking good. It was quite effective, but having seen what a nuisance it was to apply, I'm glad I have double glazing!
A hot water bottle is a must when winter camping , though it doesn't stop the build up of ice around the top of your sleeping bag and try not to touch the inner leaf of your tent , you get showered in tiny ice particles , plus if you get undressed in the dark you get an miniature lightening show as your clothes discharge the built up static
I live in a colder state in Australia. Our houses are made for heat not cold. We usually only have a week or two where it is needed in July. I use a hot water bottle for the kids and grandkids ( just filled from the hot water tap) to warm up their beds in winter. Placed in the bed 1/2 hour before bedtime. I use a plastic paint scrapper with a bottle of cold water to get ice off my car windshield. Never use hot water as it can crack your windshield.
Hot water bottles are a modern equivalent of an old bed warming pan. They are used to heat the bed before you get in but also for additional heat throughout the night. However you can use a hot water bottle anytime. Many people use them to help alleviate pain. They now come in all shapes and sizes, including long thin ones which allow heat to transferred over more length of the body rather than just one spot which you get with the traditional type.
In my country, a hot water bottel's name could be roughly translated as a "warmer". A good thing to have when the temperature outside is about +10 degrees, but the heating isn't on yet (we have a central heating, not individual, unless it's a rural area). It makes your bed nice and warm, and keeps additional warm for several hours. It also attracts a cat, so I don't have to keep her on my knees all the time, and I finally can do something else.
A hot water bottle comes either by itself (just rubber bottle) or with a covering. Without the cover the temperature of the hot water (MAX 60 Celsius or 140 Fahrenheit) can be scalding and lose temperature quickly. With a thin fleece or wool cover the 60 Celsius temperature is muted and stays hot a bit longer. With a thick fluffy fur cover the 60 Celsius temperature feels warm but stays warm for a long period of time (a few hours)
I'd say mulled wine is much more a continental European thing than British, albeit relatively common here. Traditionally heated by inserting a red-hot poker (and I don't mean the flower!) Having grown up in southern California since the age of 2, most of these things were new to me when I re-immigrated at age 22! - That being said, after 50 years back in the UK, I've never heard of the insulating film for windows.
Hot water bottles are good to take into bed with you on cold nights, but my preferred use for them is over my stomach when I'm experiencing period pains. Works a charm. Just make sure to only fill them up 3/4 of the way, and not the whole way, or it may burst and that's no fun for anyone.
I think window film was inspired by tenants whose landlords wouldn’t spring for double glazing? But it’s also worth remembering that many houses in the UK can have windows that cannot be changed. Preservation orders can be placed on houses or often whole streets, where homeowners must keep everything in the manner in which it was built, replacing windows with modern double glazed units is often not allowed. This type of preservation is so tightly adhered to that a house that needs repairs to brick work or brickwork repointed, must source appropriate bricks and use the period correct mortar. In some cases the council will even ask you to paint your house with yoghurt when the brickwork is complete, so that lichens and mosses that were present before renovation return more quickly so that the place can quickly blend back in
I have a friend who lives in a grade 2 listed house near York, he wanted to replace the old rotten windows, he received a list of approved window manufacturers from the local council. He adamantly didn't want plastic so opted for hand made (no 2 windows were the same size) oak sash windows made. For a relatively small amount (compared to the window cost) he had double glazed window units fitted into the sash window frames that met the grade 2 listing standards. They looked nice, but he has to oil them every 2-3 years and they cost a bloody fortune! I think he had them fitted about 12 maybe 15 years ago and he paid over 25 grand for the windows to be made and fitted. All it did was convince me to never consider buying or living in a grade 2 listed house.
@@jaidee9570 my mom lived in a house that began life as a hunting lodge, a single hall with a kitchen attached. Every hundred years or so a new addition was made to the building the end result was a house that had four or five extensions, each of then from a different century, each of them with a different set of rules about how things could be altered
A hot water bottle under a blanket is a great way to keep warm without having to heat the whole room. Great for people watching the cost of heating but need to be warm for medicinal reasons Also period pain back pain etc. best thing ever.
After researching this video, I really want this turbo-looking ice scraper now: amzn.to/3ZIDNvz
The best way is to start the car, turn on the heated everything, then go back indoors and fill a bowl with tepid water and use that !
Warm water from a kettle will melt ice on your windscreen!!!😊😊😊
Mulled wine is Roman in origin. They would heat a poor wine with spices such as Safron, yes the spice MORE expensive than gold, Safron, Pepper, and Laurel, then take a better wine add Honey and then add the better wine. Also Dates were used as well it was called Conditum Paradoxum. Just giving you the information, also in these countries it has it's own name : Glühwein in Germany, svařák in Czech Republic, forralt bor in Hungary, vin fiert in Romania, and karstvīns in Latvia.
Also HOT water bottles are bad for both your circulation and body, they cause something called Chilnlains, specifically these are lumps on the extremity heated too fast, they can be itchy, sore, they can cause a burning pain, or a stinging sensation. They can and do lead to sores, and blisters, and worse sores. Doctors advise against using Hot water bottles for this reason, and because if the split on you they can scauld your feet!
Many a winters morning had discovered the key would not turn in the door lock as stupidly I'd washed the car the evening before and the lock was iced up, warming the key didn't always work, the one thing that did was pee on the lock, easy for a man but not recommended if parked on the street under a streetlight. The can of WD40 was locked in the car so not accessible. Broken many a debit card using it as an ice scraper, they are very brittle when cold.
hot water poured quickly onto a laminated screen can cause delamination and shatter a toughened glass window, use cold as it's warmer than ice and freezes slower than hot water. Do not leave a car running unattended on the road as illegal and may get stolen, take the cuppa out with one to drink whilst waiting for car to warm up and defrost.
In my parents 1960s UK house we had no central heating, just a coal fire in the living room. At Christmas we would go to the exclusive front room and light another fire. So no heating in the bedrooms. The thing to do with the hot water bottle is put it in the middle of the bed before you go to bed then push it down to keep your feet warm after you get in bed.
Same here. Only sad thing about central heating is no Jack Frost pictures on the windows.
As someone who is old enough to remember when single glazing was the norm I can say that we never used those plastic shrink wrapped window insulation. We had the concept of winter and summer curtains. Summer curtains were light and airy and let the air flow into the house to ventilate it and keep it cool during the warmer summer months. Winter curtains were thick heavy material that blocked out light but more importantly blocked drafts and the cold. In my childhood home we even hung two sets of curtains (plus the net curtains of course, no self-respecting housewife back then would have bare windows that everyone could look into) to combat the draft and cold from single pained windows. I believe in the late seventies and the eighties you could by thermal inserts for your curtains which was basically a thermal fabric which connected to your curtains to increase its insulation properties.
We also employed the concept of layering clothes. As a teenager I remember wearing tights and a vest, over which you put your jeans and a t shirt/ blouse/top then you would wear a jumper and if it was very cold also a cardigan over that. Luckily, in the early eighties fingerless gloves became popular and we could wear them inside, and flashdance meant that leg warmers were also fashionable. During my younger childhood in the 1970s I remember that I always had school shoes, summer sandals, winter boots and "slippers" a kind of soft indoor shoes. We never wore shoes inside but the slippers with your socks ( and the layer of tights if you wore them) kept your feet warm. We always wore pyjamas or nightdresses to bed and between having your bath and going to bed you wore those and a dressing gown and you slippers. I always had bed socks too.
The hot water bottle was always put into your bed about 15 to 30 minutes before bed. This was before central heating radiators so the only heating the bedrooms got was from the radiant heat from the chimney stack. They could feel cold and damp at bed time but the hot water bottle made sure that your bedding wasn't damp and warmed it up. It wasn't designed to stay warm all night but to make sure that you were warm enough to fall asleep and then your own body heat kept the bed warm for you and your nightclothes help retain heat. I always kept my hot water bottle by my feet as that is where I used to and still do feel the cold the most.
On top of that, we had the draft excluder on the main living room door - not as posh as the one you showed but a tube of fabric stuff with whatever remnants of fabric, old tights and cushion stuffing we had available. There was also a curtain across the door to prevent drafts. We also had a draft excluder and a curtain across the front door too, to prevent too much cold air coming into the hallway, which could create a draft if you had to open the door to make a cuppa during the evening.
I don't remember people going out so much in the evenings back then. Most of the people we knew just hunkered down in their own homes with the radio or the TV for entertainment. Maybe this is why nowadays I flick through the channels and decide there is nothing to watch. We only had three channels in the 1970s but each channel seemed to have its own distinctive programming. More channels doesn't seem to equate to more choice. Or maybe we were more easily pleased back then because our expectations were lower!
In our house the "backroom" - a room next to the kitchen that was basically the dining room but was dual purpose use with a sofa and a table with chairs had a coal fire burning all winter because it had a back boiler to heat water. In warmer weather we had the "immersion heater" the electric water heater but electric was more expensive than coal in the 1970s so if we didn't have to use it then we didn't. The "front room" did have a chimney and fireplace but we had a gas fire there and that was used on the weekends. We mainly used the back room to live in, the front room was weekends and special occasions like Christmas. The back room had the TV in it. I don't think the front room had a TV in it until the 1980s, or perhaps the late 1970s. I do remember that for most of my early childhood we rented a black and white TV from Rediffusion ( it was a shop on the high street, you could rent TVs and other appliances but mainly TVs. You went in every week to pay your rental on your TV). Weekly shopping trips included going to the shop front for the coal man and paying your bill, going to the dairy to pay the milkman (milk invariably was delivered daily very early in the morning in time for breakfast by an electric milk float) and then going to the bakers, green grocers and butchers before you even though about going to the supermarket.
The house didn't get central heating until about 1986 and double glazing until about 1990 - by this time I had moved out into my own house, which had already had central heating and double glazing, so I don't know if my parents held out for so long before bowing to the new social norm of double glazing and central heating. The funny thing is that we did these things automatically and I don't ever remember feeling that cold. Maybe we were used to being cold and damp most of the time so that we didn't notice it so much.
Apologies for rambling so much, but several of the things mentioned seem to be a hangover from the past and as I had the memories and the knowledge to fill in the gaps I thought I would share.
We must be abut the same age, your memories of the 70/80's is also my experience. I bought my first house in 1987 and even though I had both central heating and double gazing (I was posh lol) I had summer and winter curtains. My parents bought their tv from Wigfalls and paid for it weekly, they were very expensive items back then. I can't remember being that cold either but like you say, we were used to it as it was the norm. Happy days, great memories.
Maybe we're a similar age, and my growing up in southern New Zealand was somewhat similar. I grew up with a "Front Room" would now be called a Formal Lounge that us children were not allowed in without permission, was kept just for visitors or some Sunday afternoon teas.
We also had Electric heated hotwater, but during the Winter our open fireplace in the main living/dining room, heated a separate system. The Kitchen, Laundry/wash-house and Bathtub therefore had 2 different hot taps to choose from. (note some later systems use only the electric hotwater tank and the "wet-back" (what you called a 'back boiler') could be connected to boost the electric hotwater system).
The tube shaped draft excluders at the base of doors we called a "snake". One novelty one was in the shape of a fat cat sitting upright (made with a biscuit tin full of stones inside it for weight), and the long cat's tail formed the door-snake.
It's often cheaper to buy hotwater bottles without a fabric cover. They can then have a spare old towel rolled around them. Avoid allowing the rubber directly touch the skin as burns can result, like with delicate skin of frail elderly, or if folks fall asleep drunk in direct contact with the hotwater bottle.
A bottle of "cold" water, simply left inside your home is probably still at 12 or 15 Celsius in the morning, and will easily defrost your car windscreen without any risk of breaking the glass.
If you use a bought "windscreen washer fluid" then that usually includes a limited antifreeze component. Here, in most parts of New Zealand, we can mostly just use plain water in the windscreen washers, with a squirt of dishwashing liquid. Only occasionally will it freeze and not work first thing on a Winter morning. Soon the engine heat warms it enough to work..
Loved reading this. Thank you - it was not a ramble! I was born in 1990 to a 19 year old mother in the North of England. however we lived as you described. Single glazed windows that were great for drawing on in condensation with your finger, gas fire in the front room which we rarely used, milk and a sack of potatoes delivered to our door, and trips to town involved going to the post office, the butcher, the green grocer... Our TV was black and white with only 4 channels available (though owned, not rented) and I'd share tepid bath water with my four siblings because hot water was limited... but I have no memories of being all that cold. Were we just hardy back then? I don't know if we were poor, frugal, or if living like that was still the norm in the 90s. Our clothes always came from jumble sales, stinking of cigarettes. It's wild to think there was no such thing as the national minimum wage back then.
I’m 56 and I loved reading this ❤
I'm 73 and we had minimum wage in 1970.
Tuck the hot water bottle into the top of the bed with your nightclothes ten minutes before you climb into bed. Then slip into your warmed bedclothes and push the hot water bottle towards thr bottom of the bed as you get in. Warm patch at the top of the bed and toasty toes too1
This is the way
All of the above and cheaper than an electric blanket.
Whenever my girlfriend is having severe period pains she always has a hot water bottle across her stomach to help with it. Has a cutesy alligator one for at home and a smaller fluffy one for at work. Even me as a guy can attest that hugging one when I'm ill is comforting.
Ffs😅
I can attest to this. The last time I used a hot water bottle was in 1970's when we just had blankets on our beds. Never used them after nice warm duvets and central heating became a thing. When I was courting, many of my ex-GFs used them to cope with period cramps.
"Even me as a guy can attest that hugging one when I'm ill is comforting."
I agree, but it's not just that it's comforting (which it is), they also keep your core temperature up which aids your immune system in fighting off whatever lurgy is at you.
@@smythharris2635 Any further explanation or just typing for fun?
Other parts of the US had/have all the things she mentioned. Hot water bottles are basically obsolete or replaced by alternatives now. We have central heating, heating pads, electric blankets, and things you microwave briefly then use like a hot water bottle but they’re lighter and can’t leak.
My parents’ house was built in the 1920s and even in the 1980s my father saw no need to install central heating. We had a Dutch girl stay with us one winter. At breakfast she commented on seeing frost flowers on her bedroom window. “Don’t you see those in Holland?” asked my mother. “Yes but not on the inside of the window.”
You hug your hot water bottle if using for pain relief, period pain, ear infections when I was little, it’s excellent. For warming the bed put it in an hour or 2 before you go to bed, then you’ll find the cat will claim it even though you’re under the duvet and the cat’s on top.
The best thing for warming the bed is a bed (warming) pan that you fill with hot coals and slide in under the covers.
Love my hot water bottle, even when not particularly cold. Guilty pleasure since i retired - listening to neighbours scraping their windscreens whilst I'm nice and snug under the duvet
Me too. I only don't have mine when it's too hot to be comfortable in the summer.
Retired too - I know that guilty pleasure!
Like waking up suddenly thinking "I've slept-in!" & then realising it's Sunday/you're on holiday/retired 😊 If only we could bottle that feeling...
lol I know that feeling 🎉
@@TheCatBilboit’s a fantastic feeling 🎉
Eggnog is actually a drink that was first recorded in Britain in the 1300s or the 14th Century. The British settlers took it to the USA and it was mentioned in 1775 when George Washington served it at Christmas. A Nog refers to a type of cup. It was once quite common to here the term as a "noggin" or noggin of beer.
Yes. I think a posset is similar. And we always drank advocaat at Christmas.
Egg nog is served at European markets too.
A hot water bottle is for any body part when you’re feeling cold. I use it one to warm my bed up before I get into it. I have female friends who use them when they have period pain (not just English, but Italian, German, etc…).
They're also quite good for the opposite condition. In one heat wave I had a pair of hot water bottles. One would be in the freezer while the other would be behind my back on the sofa. When it stops being effective, you just swap it out for the one in the freezer. It made all the difference.
My technique is to put the hot water bottle up where my torso will be 15 minutes or so before bed, then put it down by my feet when I go into bed.
@@Safetysealed That's what I was taught as a kid. Even with a woolly cover it would have been too hot to touch without that quarter-hour delay.
I use an electric blanket.
2:04 HWBs are also used medicinally - to relieve discomfort or pain by localised heating of the affected area.
Electric blankets are an alternative to HWBs; they are placed between the mattress and the under sheet and heat the whole bed. Some double electric blankets are split to allow for each side of a double bed to be heated to different temperatures. I believe that in the US and Canada, electric blankets are placed above the person sleeping.
A work colleague of mine once threw a bucket of nearly boiling water at a frozen windscreen. the water went straight through. this was in the days of toughened glass screens. The hot water hitting the cold class caused it to crack into thousands of little pieces. Use a scraper it saves a lot of time and money in the end.
Needless to say we all laughed at him when he told us - cruel aren't we ?
Never, ever use boiling water to clear a windscreen. Slightly warm water works, any water above freezing will work.
A plastic bag full of lukewarm water still works.
But sitting in the car, with the demisters and heated car seats on full, is much more civilised. 😊
I use normal tap water, warm enough to melt the ice, just make sure you use the wipers to clear the screen of water before it freezes
I grew up in Ohio, I had all those things before I moved to the UK. I got my fancy shmancy ice scraper from Morrisons, but I'm sure you could pick one up somewhere else.
Old carpet on the windscreen will stop frost forming on it. For side windows put some clingfilm on the window - the frost is on the clingfilm, not the glass.
The European equivalent to mulled wine is gluhwein and is always better with an extra dash of rum from your hip flask!
Mulled wine has been around in the U.K. since the Romans so yes, UK and European
Pro tips for car ice on cars!
Start the engine, turn the heating to the windscreen, go back inside, come back in 10 minutes when there's actually warm air and the windscreen is clear.
(Obviously, depends on your area, please don't get your car stolen)
de-icer spray is very useful , especially for frozen door locks/handles .
4’10” actually, pouring water onto a frozen car windscreen is not a terrible idea at all. It works pretty well if the temperature isn’t too far below freezing. Don’t use hot water though, that can crack the glass.
Maybe I've just been lucky these past 30 years, but I use hot water on my windows all the time and have never had a crack in the glass. Numerous people have told me not to do it, but it's always been absolutely fine. And I live in the north of Scotland, where temperatures can get pretty low.
@@grahamlive Depends on the temperature but you can cause thermal shock, similar to how hot glass pan lids can sometimes shatter from being placed on the worktop.
Trouble with using water is that if temperatures are cold enough the water can freeze a film of ice across the windscreen which looks fine at first but is actually harder to shift.
Use Salted water.
@@alangreenwood292 don't use salted water. It may work to de-ice but will also cause serious corrosion issues.
@@noggintube Yup. I live by the sea in Northern England. Salt laden winds cause corrosion which leads to many an MOT failure.
I would go to bed with a hot water bottle as a child to keep warm. We never had central heating, so would use gas or paraffin heaters.
We would also have a fire in the sitting room during the day.
One of the paraffin heaters was also used to boil pans of water during a power cut.
Hot water bottles are incredible for period pain. Other than that they are just used to warm bed. I’m currently sitting in bed cuddling mine to get cosy before going to sleep. It’s also really good for warming your feet. I have a long thin one (about a metre long) that I wrap around my neck if it hurts.
Add a windscreen cover to your winter car repertoire - assuming you remember to put it on the evening before, you have an instantly frost-free (and non-fogging) windscreen in the morning! And a major side benefit is that you get to feel incredibly smug watching the neighbours scraping away at their cars with frozen fingers while you waft away down the road with a perfectly clear windscreen. 😆
? in northern ireland everyone just uses their kettle, you dont boil the water oc just pour the hot water over the window and turn on the wipers to prevent the water refreezing
Wonderful if you remember to check the weather forcast air temperature the night before.
I'm old so l remember when a heater was an optional extra & even if you paid the extra it was not very effective.
I now have a 16year old subaru hatchback which has hrw and a cabin heater so effective it heats the window glass quickly and effectively from cold so ice on the windows slides off in one piece. I Only credit card scrape mirrors and lights(ice scrapers are too big /inflexible for this)
Park the car in the garage, a rare thing these days partly due to many garages being too small.
When I was a kid, back in the 60s, we lived in a mortuary cold house with single glazed badly fitting sash windows, so each family member had their own hot water bottle. Mum was really good at sewing so she made her own hot water bottle covers, often out of old worn out clothes that couldn't be repaired. My favourite was made from corduroy, and she built in pockets either side so I could slip my hands in for warmth, or even my feet when I was small. If I had a cold, I would keep extra tissues in the pockets so I never got caught short without them.
I used to like the sign in the Watford John Lewis shop which said "Nightdress cases and draught excluders".
So funny
Hot water bottles are very new-fangled. If you visit very old houses or even olde worlde pubs you will often see displayed a "warming-pan". This is a shallow copper pan with a lid and a very long wooden handle. In days of yore these were filled with hot coals, and placed in the bed some time before retiring to take the chill off the sheets. Unlike the hot-water bottle, you were not recommended to cuddle these.....
Or a brick warmed by the fire then taken to bed.
A note to your pre-frozen car self - a credit card can be used as an emergency ice scraper since it is thin and flexible. It may not be usable afterwards so an alternative type of credit card-like card might be better though. Better than a zip anyway.
I tend to keep out of date cards just for various scraping jobs.
@@grahvis So do we!
The best ice scraper is a credit card works every time. Other times I fill a kettle to the bottom level when boiled add a bit of salt and fill up to overflowing the luke warm water does the job get your wipers going before you pour and stand out the way.
Mulled cider is nice, too
Some old mulled ale recipes out there too
As a brit, my favorite stuffed animal as a kid was actually a hot water bottle cover, and Watson the fluffy dog/water bottle cover is still in use by the following generation.
i used to take the door snake (just a plain one, 70's decor) to bed as a little kid till our doctor on a home visit said it probably wasnt a good idea as i had asthma, i still have that door snake, but he has gone away for the summer right now
Growing up in the 80s every child had a hot water bottle. Put it in your bed some time before you get in to make it warm when you get in and you keep it near you however is comfortable
If you didn't have one, you'd get one or Christmas. I had Peter Rabbit.
0:30 No it's not. It's European, Glühwein in German and Glögg in swedish, its very common.
Yep I think of mulled wine as German. But of course it's tasty alcohol so Brits like it! We have hot toddies (hot whisky) and I've had hot spiced cider, which was delicious. When I have a cold I make hot lemon and honey with a nip of whisky in it.
In Sweden they give you a small glass of Glögg in some super friendly shops.
You are better off getting some interlined curtains for our drafty old houses.....
Your take on HWBs , hot water bottles and draft excluder sausages was really funny.
I remember in the 1970s having a long nightie, socks, dressing gown and coat on top of the bed. Still freezing so tried to kidnap the cat from one of my sisters for a bit warmth. The windows were thick with ice on the inside every morning brrrrr! 🥶😅
@@emilydavison2053it's not specifically German. It came with the Romans so spread across Europe with them and so most regions have their own version.
As a Brit never heard of this before the 1970s. I thought it was German.
I grew up with hot water bottles - no heat in the bedrooms, we'd get ice on the inside of the windows, and I've even experienced clothes freezing in the room. The good old days, eh?
For an ice-scraper, I'd recommend getting one from Scandinavia. Problem is, if it's in the car and the doors are frozen. D'oh!
Here's one: my first job after leaving school was in Wakefields Army Stores and we sold pocket hand warmers. They were metal cases, into which glowing charcoal was placed. Place in a velvet bag and wrap your hand round it in your pocket. Never used one but we did sell quite a few along with the charcoal tablets used as fuel.
To prevent freezing of the car door, first prepare the door rubbers with talc powder at the start of winter and maybe a couple of times in addition. Frozen locks can be sorted with a match, which you light and warm the key (metal bit). Always carry a box of matches with you in your winter jacket.
My father had those hand warmers, as did my grandmother. I use electronic, rechargeable ones - bliss in one's pockets on a very cold day.
Yes, I have always taken a glass of water with me when going to bed and have known ice to form on the top!
Those were the good old days.
@@Phiyedough I decided to leave a really cheap bedsit and moved back into semi-grotty student halls when I woke up one morning, in the last week of November, and found not just ice on the inside of the window but ice on the top of my glass of lime cordial. Sugar lowers the freezing point of water!
If you don't have double glazing you can use bubble wrap to insulate your windows. Just cut it to the size of the glass for each pane, mist some water on the glass and the bubble wrap will stick pretty well.
The air pockets have a really good insulating effect. I used to do this in my old flat every winter.
No idea if they still do, but Ford used to have front and rear screen demisting screens. I've always been a bit of a Ford fan but honestly sitting in a Mondeo switching on the front screen defrost and watching it melt within a minute or so was great. It also had a heated section the melted the ice around the windscreen wipers, if they don't still fit them they have gone backwards in car technology.
They still have heated front screens. Living in the countryside with no garage, that screen is wonderful! 🇬🇧👍
I worked at Ford back in the 90s and worked on their engine management software. The demisting front screen draws a very high current, so cars fitted with them have uprated alternators. When you turn the screen on, the engine management system bumps the idle speed up by a couple of hundred RPM so that the alternator is producing enough power before engaging a relay to turn on the heating elements (though you may not notice that if the engine is already in a high idle mode immediately after a cold start). They are very effective - though expensive if your windscreen gets damaged and needs to be replaced. I now drive a LandRover which has the same system - love it on these cold winter mornings.
The evolution of the hot water bottle goes back centuries, original servants would take some coals from a fire and put them into a 'bed warmer' it looks like a lidded flat pan on a stick, that could then be pushed into the bed to warm it before their employees got in. Obviously there is some risk with this (this is also house ironing clothes was done, hot coals dropped inside an iron). The heating pan style was abandoned in favour of stoneware jars, these are pretty common in antique shops they are typically bottle shaped with one flat side and a stopper that is on the crown of the side, rather than the top. They were relatively cheap and dint require servants to operate, so became very commonly used. These eventually got replaced by rubber equivalents, and now various nylons and plastics are generally used. Typically people put them at their feet, but if you are actually cold, putting it between your thighs is the best way to warm up. - they also do this with hypothermic patients in some cases, the heat from the bottle transfers quite well into your femoral arteries, putting heat into the body quickly.
A lot of people will also use them as a 'remedy' in the same way that Americans use heating pads or microwaveable bags of things like corn husks, for everything from stiff necks to period pains.
I'd forgotten about the shrink-glazing. In the 80s I lived in a house that still had the 1930s single-glazed sash windows, so me and my housemates bought a load of this stuff and taped it (then heated it tight) to every window. IIRC it needed re-applying halfway through the winter because moisture would loosen the tape or some gimboid at a party would poke it with a cigarette. But it did make a difference and was worth putting up for about four months of the year.
Hot water bottles can be great. If you have achy muscles, it can help. It's great when you're not feeling well or just want some extra warmth.
My best winter purchase was a long handled ice scraper so you don’t fat a cold, damp chest from leaning over the car. I also got an oil filled radiator this year - love it!
Those oil-filled radiators cost an absolute fortune cost an absolute fortune to run. Just a heads up.
All electric heaters are 100% efficient, whatever power rating they will provide the same heat. Oil filled take longer to heat up initially but release heat over a longer period including after they are switched off. A fan heater for example gives instant heat but only as long as it is running and also has to power the fan so slightly less efficient overall. The little plug-in ones from China invented by a ‘jet engineer’ will not heat your room in seconds and cost almost nothing, that is a huge con.
Back in the early 1950s ginger beer was sold in stoneware bottles of varying capacities from 1 pint (20 fluid ozs in the UK) up to 4 pints. We paid a returnable deposit for the bottle but fewer were returned in winter because they made excellent hot water bottles and boiling water could be used in them. They were wrapped in a hand towel and slipped into our beds about 2 hours before bedtime.
No duvets in those days but in winter we used several woolen blankets topped with an embroidered quilt.
I never owned a rubber hot water bottle until I married and my wife and I set up in our own home.
I remember that my mother inherited 2 metal hot water bottles from the 1930s - they would have been about the same size as those stoneware bottles. Ours were always in layers of my dad's old socks - the ones with unrepairable holes in them. and yes wollen blankets in our house too. We always had brushed cotton sheets in winter because they were warmer than the normal cotton sheets.
You can swap that insulation film for bubble wrap. The bubbles trap the sunlight and heat up, while also slowing the exit of heat from the inside.
Mulled wine: "brought to the UK by the Romans, who called it mulsum."
Hot water bottles (A.K.A. "The Hotty Botty"): Once made from stoneware (pottery). You use them to warm up the bed before you get in.
Insulating film: when you can afford it, rather than plastic sheeting and duck tape!
You can also use Foam pipe covers on the bottom of the doors too.
As someone from the US state of Indiana, ice scrapers for car windows are a necessity here, and even more so for someone who lives near Lake Michigan.
Door draft stoppers are common here too.
Portable heaters are common as well, and the radiator type is available, but I don't use one for 2 reasons. My home is usually warm enough for a nearly 75 year old home to not need one. Also, even if I could use one, my home's outdated wiring prevents me from using one, as its not sufficient to handle the usage.
I never heard of Mulled Wine, but it might be available at stores. Aldi USA sells the German version, Gluhwein. I don't know if theres a difference, but after learning i have liver damage, due to not knowing i have had Hepatitis B for possibly since age 17, that I have cirrhosis of the liver, and if I want to delay having to get a liver transplant, I can never have any alcohol again.
Last one, window film, and that's common in Indiana. I haven't had to use it, but know people who do use it, and sometimes, it's not easy to use. My mom did have to use plastic on windows of a couple of different homes. She used thick plastic sheets that you could only see light, but not see out of the windows. She thought that was more important, than seeing out of windows, but the window film was useless. Of course, the home I lived in, in early 1994, there was a major cold snap to where air temperatures during the daytime were as low as -24°F, or around -31°C, which lasted up to 2 weeks. It normally doesn't get that cold in Northern Indiana (maybe states like Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Northern Wisconsin and upper Michigan), that both water and sewer lines froze up on not only my home, but neighboring homes as well. It took 3 weeks for the ground to thaw out enough to let water run again, and a month for the sewer lines to thaw out. That is one experience I never want to live through again.
The thing I find amusing is that so many people just consider insulation as keeping heat in. It also keeps hot air out. A well insulated building will keep you warm in winter and cool in summer.
Get a heat pad. I got one couple years ago and haven’t looked back. No more refilling, just turn it on again if you need a boost, and safer. They turn off automatically after 90 mins unlike electric blankets and are hotter with more settings. You never know when a hole will appear in a bottle with hot water in it. I have two in different rooms now. You need something over it so either sit on it or put it over you and then a layer on top, for best results.
1. Mulled wine sounds delicious.
2. No opinion.
3. Here in Pennsylvania we absolutely need ice scrapers, beginning in November in the mornings.
4. Door draft blockers are important in winter.
5. No opinion.
I like my slipper socks and re-usable hand warmers.
Hot water bottle tip! Before going to bed put the fresh hot water bottle in your bed where you would typically put your feet a few minuets before going to bed for warm toesies when you climb in!
Also, you can use your Draft Excluder for your windows if you have a big enough window ledge instead of the Thermo Cover!
Top tip - NEVER leave your car running on the drive to warm up/defrost and walk away from it. Loads of cars are stolen in this way.
And if it is stolen good luck claiming on your insurance!
it's also illegal I believe, to leave a vehicle unattended with the engine running.
You must live in a dodgy area if any random passerby might be a car thief.
@@Kevin-mx1vi This is the UK. EVERYWHERE is a dodgy area. Maybe except for gated communities where the Elite live like Sandbanks.
@@kingoftadpoles On a public road. I don't think many know it's illegal to have the engine running, while parked, even if you are in it.
I am in bed in my coat with a hot water bottle on my tummy right now. Winter has not been kind this year. I have to have a new boiler and it cannot be fitted until end of January. We have a wood burner so soon I will go downstairs and snuggle up next to that with some mulled wine and feel better.
You canuse the hot water bottle any way you like. My wife uses it to warm her bed and pyjamas before going to bed. I use one occasionally to keep my feet warm on cold winter night. Just do what comes naturally!
Use your hot water bottle any where any time. I'm using one as I watch this. It's going up to 29° C today here in Chch NZ, but it's not there yet and I am old.
Take it out with you to friends places and in the car till the car heating kicks in- yeah I've had old cars. Even sitting outside on a winters day, you'll love the hottie- smokers will relate to that. On a zoom call when you can't just get up to get the blood moving. The combo of a hottie on your lap and your hands wrapped around a hot cuppa makes winter life bearable.
One cold place I was in needed 2 hottie 9 months of the year.
I use boiling water in mine- was too scared to until seeing a friend do it to. It stays hot longer.
2:06 the hot water bottle is the modern bed pan only a little bit more safer and more mobile like you can have a hot water bottle wrapped with a towel for extra protection to prevent your skin burning put that definitely depends on the style of hot water bottle you use while you are watching tv in your living room underneath the blankets either during winter or when you are sick. just make sure that you got the steam out and that the lid is tight and not leaking .
Hot water bottles were really designed, I think, for pre-centrally heated housing. There might have been fire-places in the bedrooms for coal fires - but if no fires or didn't want to/couldn't afford to light one - the bed could be warmed before getting in and then warm feet when you got in to bed. Even with central heating, some people don't always turn them on in the winter in the bedroom - so hot water bottles are good. My personal use for one has mainly been to help relax the muscles etc. during menstrual cramps! (Hot water bottles, made from rubber, were the "modern" version of the earlier bedpans.)
I think egg nog was more a UK thing in the past - my grandma's childhood maybe. Mulled wine took over more when the more European style Christmas markets became more common in UK. Maybe from the 1970's / '80's. I lived in a house in the UK for about 4 years, that was designed to be warm in winter and cool in summer - with no central heating or air conditioning systems. In winter when it was very cold, we used on oil filled radiator and it warmed the whole house - only two bedrooms; but quite large rooms. So cheap to keep warm!
Every drug store in America sells hot water bottles. The are usually used for sore joints and muscles and are not especially for cold weather. The drug store really isn't the place for bed-heating objects.
I think it went metal bed warmers with hot coals, then ceramic hot water bottles then the modern ones. My grandpa once dropped his ceramic one in the sink, hot water bottle survived but the sink smashed 😂.
Back in the old days before bedrooms with heating there were bedpans. A long handled pan that held perhaps a heated brick that was slide around the bed to warm it up.
@@Brian3989
My god-mother was a farm-wife who milked the house cow, gathered the eggs, plucked the pheasant, fed the pigs (and cured their hams) as well as cooking wonderful meals, growing most of the vegetables, doing needlepoint and making parsnip wine.
This is 1949-50.
Above the fireplace in the ‘parlour’ hung a brass bedpan. It had the diameter of a large frying pan but at least twice the depth. It had a hinged lid that could be opened by a little insulated lever (because the lid got hot) and a long, turned, wooden handle that stuck straight out from the side.
At bedtime she’d get it down from the wall put a hand-shovel’s worth of hot coals from the fire into it and go up to warm up her bed.
As a child, I had to be certifiably ill to be allowed a hottie but I was a little furnace, normally, so I don’t remember suffering for more than a minute or so when I climbed into an ice-cold bed.
Back in the day, you would heat up your bed using a lidded shallow pan that contained hot coals in it and would be removed before you got into it. Rubber hot water bottles are a modern version of that, although they are ideal for the easement of pain especially period pain.
Yes, my grandma used a bed warming pan when I used to visit her in the countryside. She would slowly wipe it all around the inside of the bed, leaving it comfortably warmed for me to quickly get into.
There were also ceramic hot water bottles before the rubber ones. They were cylindrical, with the stopper on the side, so that when the bottle was lying on its side, the stopper was at the top. I think they were known as pigs.
@@weehelen1
Oh yes I remember those, not very cuddly though lol 😝
@@weehelen1 Oh totally. I forgot about those ones.
I got the Revheads claw like scraper a few years ago and it's brilliant. Very sturdy and you can really dig into the ice.
BTW never pour boiling water on your frozen windscreen, you risk destroying it. Get a scraper but if you must use water add enough cold water to cool it then slowly trickle it so the ice slowly melts
Hot water bottle how to use: boil kettle; pour a little cold water in the bottle and then add amount half the HWB with the hot water; screw top on very tightly. Use to warm up in whatever way you want; usually in a unwarm bed for the feet. Use with or without cover.
Hot water bottles are used to warm any part that is cold hand'feet, or just embrace. It can also be used to put in your coat for going out in cold nights.
You exactly described the correct use of a hot water bottle. In the cold weather it's lovely to put a HWB by your feet.
My dad used the shrink film on the windows every winter until he could afford double glazing. It really works well at stopping the draughts and even helped with the house from our busy road.
I take *_TWO_* Hot Water Bottles to bed, one for warm feet, one for aches and pains. Mine are plain rubber, without covers (but only £2 each in a department store sale). I fill with 70-80℃ water, I have a temperature selectable kettle (one of my best Aldi purchases). I wrap them in bath towels, so they don't burn, or feel too hot. I wrap 'asymmetrically' with more layers of towel on one side than the other. The nett effect is they stay pleasantly warm against me much longer than a 'nude' HWB, so more effective.
Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. 🎅🎉 ☮
Born and bred in England, and in the whole of my 52 years of life I have never seen or used any insulation on my windows.
I use my hot water bottle in the evening while relaxing watching tv. You can tuck it inside your dressing gown or in between your thighs which really makes you feel warm. I wouldn't be without a hot water bottle in the winter. A real life saver. They are made of natural rubber and i always use my fluffy cover as you can actually scold yourself without a cover.
The hot water bottle evolved from a stoneware bottle known as a pig, about the size of a 2l bottle of coke with a snout like shape at one end and a stopper on top. Again filled with hot water but obviously much heavier and not as easy to snuggle as the rubber bottles. I remember staying in a holiday home many years ago that had box beds and pigs which were a nice and toasty combination.
Having an air gap does do wonders for keeping the cold out. I live in an old stone cottage and have a ceiling to floor length curtain that covers the front door which stops draughts but also gives enough insulation that there's a noticeable difference in the whole house if it's not across.
May I recommend the ceramic hot water bottle. The rubber bottles have a limited life before they break with the danger of hot water landing in your lap (this happened to a friend of mine at the place I work.) The potential problem with the ceramic ones is the soft washer where the stopper goes in - but easily replaced with leather. Otherwise they last for ever.
Door draft stoppers are also called "door sausages" in Australia.
I use an old 4 pint stoneware waterbottle, I wrap it in wool and place it against my back so it heats my core and being so large it stays warm much longer than the modern soft rubber bottles.
I have a plug in hybrid vehicle. From an app on my phone I set my departure time and the car warms the car up automatically. No scraping and an as warm as toast interior.....
Start your engine and put the windscreen fans on (or electric de-icer on - looking at my Kuga :)) ), this will help to loosen up the ice. Even though I have central heating and the house is new build so its well insulated, nothing beats getting into a bed with a waterbottle in it to heat up my feet (winter treat)
I haven't used heat based window film, but some of the cloudy privacy stuff and it was fairly ridgid to apply, and you just needed to use a gentle scraper to move air bubles around or prick them with a pin
I live in MN and I have used most of these things. Rather than an oil filled radiator I had a space heater for my office. I've used the window film many times in my life, especially in older houses that were poorly insulated. My first home in MN was very well insulated and I didn't need any of the extras but I''ve lived in two homes over 100 years old, and one needs all the extras.
MN??
I daughter used to love have a hot water bottle wrapped in a blanket to cuddle and put in the bed 10/15 minutes before getting in to warm it up. Now has a heated blanket!!
If you are going to be using a hot water bottle please make sure you read the date on the top and replace it every few years approx 3/4 because it can wear out and you will be scalded
There’s nothing worse than waking to the sensation of a wet patch in bed, when a hot water bottle has perished and leaked. It really is worth keeping an eye on the production date moulded into all bottles.
hot water bottle - in bed to pre-warm and keep it near your eet during the night.
ice scraper - invaluable - scrape off the main frost front and back - and then engage the in-car front/rear heating. our modern cars tend to have front screen heating too. A bank card will do in an emergency. COLD water with the wipers on can work if it's not too cold.
I have a draught excluder on the living room door - as it is next to the porch and even though it's a double glazed front door, it's still draughty.
once again, most windows and doors are double glazed and I've never had to use window wrap.
You can use boiling water in a hot water bottle. It can be better, when it is freezing cold.
There is a variant of them that you can get, that, instead of the typical shape, it is like a sausage, with the bottle being about 80cm long, from Amazon.
Like many didn't grow up with central heating or double glazed windows, I still layer up even indoors. The hot water bottles have a use by date on the neck so don't use it after that date otherwise it'll likely burst
I use boiling water in hot water bottles and it doesn't seem to affect them. They all spring a leak eventually whatever you do.
Definitely good for period pain, comforting for pain x
Hot water bottles are to put in a cold bed in the winter, to warm it up , mainly for your feet.
As a kid in the 50s, my mother would take a steel shelf from the fireside oven, wrap it in a bath towel, and warm my bed, before i went up.
As a child we would make draft excluders out of old tights and crumpled newspaper stuffed down the leg, i still make them but with odd bits of wool and material. Also made a long cushion for my back when laying down, (so nice to rest your back against) the same way, with pompoms on one side for decoration.
Upto 1980s many houses didn't have central heating, my Nan didn't even have a bathroom with outsidetoilet till mid 80s so Hot Water bottles were needed then and still have good snugly feel to use now 😊
I actually use my hot water bottle more in the summer! If you like to camp but get chilly sleeping under canvas then a hot water bottle in the bottom of your sleeping bag to keep your toes warm is definitely the way forward.
I have a 'stone 'hot water bottle. It's a pottery cylinder with a filler cap half-way along, that can be filled with boiling water and put into your bed, say, two hours ahead of time. It heats up the whole bed, and after two hours, has cooled just enough that you can hold your bare feet against it. Still luke warm in the morning too. They are still made, and you can find Victorian ones at antique fairs and flee markets. You might need a new sealing washer around the filler cap though - the original ones have usually perished.
Since 20 years I have not scraped off ice from the windshields of my cars, because I have moved to Cyprus. But it can get cold here, and therefore hot water bottles and oil-filled radiators (and sometimes mulled wine) are standard equipment.
Since I live in Cyprus I hate winters. For me now temperatures under 20 degree Celsius are freezing.
I have recently just fitted a long thick curtain in front of my front door(on the inside), had to add some curtain weights. Now it works great to keep the drift out. I don't use the front room much, but it helps to keep the cold air out. I mainly use the back lounge, this way the front room is always clean and tidy for guests. 🍻
The back lounge, is always a little messy, and the only room I smoke in (yes I plan to quit tomorrow, but tomorrow has yet to come).
Luke warm water clears the ice, providing it’s not too below zero. And a “hottie bottie” is brilliant at any time. I have a few available for sleep over friends and family alike. Always a good stand by. Curtains and door draft excluders are ALWAYS a must, whether you have double glazing or not! KEEP WARM, BEST WISHES
My Dad used the cling film double glazing in the house we grew up in.
Really faffy, but he's extremely precise with things like that and got it on and looking good. It was quite effective, but having seen what a nuisance it was to apply, I'm glad I have double glazing!
A hot water bottle is a must when winter camping , though it doesn't stop the build up of ice around the top of your sleeping bag and try not to touch the inner leaf of your tent , you get showered in tiny ice particles , plus if you get undressed in the dark you get an miniature lightening show as your clothes discharge the built up static
I live in a colder state in Australia. Our houses are made for heat not cold. We usually only have a week or two where it is needed in July. I use a hot water bottle for the kids and grandkids ( just filled from the hot water tap) to warm up their beds in winter. Placed in the bed 1/2 hour before bedtime. I use a plastic paint scrapper with a bottle of cold water to get ice off my car windshield. Never use hot water as it can crack your windshield.
Hot water bottles are a modern equivalent of an old bed warming pan. They are used to heat the bed before you get in but also for additional heat throughout the night. However you can use a hot water bottle anytime. Many people use them to help alleviate pain. They now come in all shapes and sizes, including long thin ones which allow heat to transferred over more length of the body rather than just one spot which you get with the traditional type.
In my country, a hot water bottel's name could be roughly translated as a "warmer". A good thing to have when the temperature outside is about +10 degrees, but the heating isn't on yet (we have a central heating, not individual, unless it's a rural area). It makes your bed nice and warm, and keeps additional warm for several hours. It also attracts a cat, so I don't have to keep her on my knees all the time, and I finally can do something else.
A hot water bottle comes either by itself (just rubber bottle) or with a covering.
Without the cover the temperature of the hot water (MAX 60 Celsius or 140 Fahrenheit) can be scalding and lose temperature quickly.
With a thin fleece or wool cover the 60 Celsius temperature is muted and stays hot a bit longer.
With a thick fluffy fur cover the 60 Celsius temperature feels warm but stays warm for a long period of time (a few hours)
All of these are very normal in a German winter too.❄⛄
(Never tried the last one though. My windows aren't 50 years old.)
I'd say mulled wine is much more a continental European thing than British, albeit relatively common here. Traditionally heated by inserting a red-hot poker (and I don't mean the flower!)
Having grown up in southern California since the age of 2, most of these things were new to me when I re-immigrated at age 22! - That being said, after 50 years back in the UK, I've never heard of the insulating film for windows.
Mulled wine has been around for centuries here. Gluwein (spelling check needed) is definitely similar across Germany etc. Good stuff either way!
Hot water bottles are good to take into bed with you on cold nights, but my preferred use for them is over my stomach when I'm experiencing period pains. Works a charm.
Just make sure to only fill them up 3/4 of the way, and not the whole way, or it may burst and that's no fun for anyone.
I think window film was inspired by tenants whose landlords wouldn’t spring for double glazing? But it’s also worth remembering that many houses in the UK can have windows that cannot be changed. Preservation orders can be placed on houses or often whole streets, where homeowners must keep everything in the manner in which it was built, replacing windows with modern double glazed units is often not allowed.
This type of preservation is so tightly adhered to that a house that needs repairs to brick work or brickwork repointed, must source appropriate bricks and use the period correct mortar. In some cases the council will even ask you to paint your house with yoghurt when the brickwork is complete, so that lichens and mosses that were present before renovation return more quickly so that the place can quickly blend back in
I have a friend who lives in a grade 2 listed house near York, he wanted to replace the old rotten windows, he received a list of approved window manufacturers from the local council. He adamantly didn't want plastic so opted for hand made (no 2 windows were the same size) oak sash windows made. For a relatively small amount (compared to the window cost) he had double glazed window units fitted into the sash window frames that met the grade 2 listing standards.
They looked nice, but he has to oil them every 2-3 years and they cost a bloody fortune! I think he had them fitted about 12 maybe 15 years ago and he paid over 25 grand for the windows to be made and fitted. All it did was convince me to never consider buying or living in a grade 2 listed house.
@@jaidee9570 my mom lived in a house that began life as a hunting lodge, a single hall with a kitchen attached. Every hundred years or so a new addition was made to the building the end result was a house that had four or five extensions, each of then from a different century, each of them with a different set of rules about how things could be altered
The hot water bottle is used to store the mulled wine that you take to bed with you, in case you feel like a drink during the night.
yum, rubber flavoured !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! .-)
I don't like a covering on my hot water bottle. Great if you have stomach pain.
A hot water bottle under a blanket is a great way to keep warm without having to heat the whole room. Great for people watching the cost of heating but need to be warm for medicinal reasons
Also period pain back pain etc. best thing ever.