Summer has finally arrived in the UK, and with it a major heatwave. Temperatures topped 30 degrees all across the country today, and it's still hot and humid now. I'm typing this in the video office at the top of the eastern tower, an hour past midnight, and though all the casements are flung wide to the moonlit night, not a breath of wind stirs anywhere across all the leagues of Langstonedale.

This old hall was not built for heat, but to give shelter against the wild storms of winter and the wolves of the Chase. We have no air conditioning nor even ceiling fans, so on those rare occasions when the temperature rises, we swelter. Lady Jasmine, all the windows of her great chamber flung wide and the curtains of the grand four poster drawn back, the servants in their bedchambers, windows again flung open to the night air. And below in the stables of the home farm courtyard, the horses whicker and the hunting hounds are restless in the redolent darkness.

But we do not complain. There's a glorious full moon flooding the Chase with silver light from a cloudless sky, and nights like this are rare and precious here. Onwards! Into the warm night.

30 Celsius sounds pretty good to me. We had almost a full week of days that reached 100+ degrees Fahrenheit (about 43 Celsius).

Lack of air conditioners sounds rough to me even at that temp though. I have to have AC at least in my office otherwise my computers would overheat and I'm pretty sure my fluff ball cat would overheat too.

But at least you can always get wet to cool off

Glad you liked the post! Good to know people are reading Off Topic too, there are some good posts in here sometimes.

Hope the a/c doesn't conk out, that sounds like serious heat.


There's only ever a few weeks of the year where a/c would be worth having in homes in the UK so generally it's only in public or commercial premises, and hotels. The problem when it does get hot though is humidity - I gather where the air is dry it can get much hotter and still be quite bearable as long as you keep out of the sun, but with our moist air, it can be like walking into an oven.

To give an idea, it's currently over 15 degrees in the dungeon, yet the damp on the floor from hosing Honeysuckle and Felicity down after their mud and gunge fun last weekend is refusing to evaporate - too much moisture already in the air.

Spot on about getting wet though! May go for a paddle in the river in my boilersuit and wellies after lunch, wet clothes are the best a/c!

Considering how everyone in the UK talks about "AC" as if it's only sold as a stand-alone system, I'm getting the impression that they don't really know about heat pumps. It's pretty much all anyone in the continental US installs these days in new construction.

It's essentially an air conditioner that has a reversing valve. It's AC in hot weather and heating in cold weather. Works pretty efficiently down to around freezing and after that, they typically have an auxiliary internal heating device, either gas or electric. With temps above freezing, a heat pump uses about 1/3 as much power as an equivalent electric heater and is typically cheaper than gas as well.

Besides the standard "replaces the old furnace" sized system, there are also mini-split systems that have a stand-alone box that goes outside, a relatively small wall-mounted unit for inside, and a pair of copper pipes between them. They come in sizes suitable for a small room all the way up to a whole house, so they are great for "zone" issues like having drafty room that is tough to heat in the winter.

Of course, you can also go the cheap "window unit" AC-only route, but those tend to be REALLY expensive to operate compared to a permanent system.

In photos of UK houses, I seem to see a lot of what looks like modern steam radiators. Does the UK actually still have a lot of steam/hot water systems or are those just fancy electric units made to look like radiators?

I'm aware of the technology of heat pumps, but it's not something you see in use (or even advertised) here. I've mainly seen them mentioned in "technology of the future" type articles, usually with the external unit buried in the ground, which means they'd still work slightly below zero air temperatures, as the ground tends not to be as cold, and some parts of the UK actually have some geothermal heat.


I know people who have portable a/c units for use at home on the hottest days of summer, but that tends to only be a few days a year. It's becoming standard in cars though.


The standard method of heating in UK houses nowadays is Gas Central Heating, where you have a gas fired combination boiler which provides both hot water for the radiators and instant hot water whenever a hot tap is opened (well, instant bar the water already in the pipe). So yes, hot water radiators.

Here at the Hall we still have the cast iron radiators (and in the Great Hall, below-floor cast iron heating pipes and grilles) and coal-fired furnace installed by her ladyship's great grandfather in the 1880s, but the average modern house will have a condensing boiler and modern steel radiators, which is what you're seeing in photos.

I gather steam radiators were common in New York (and elsewhere in the US?) at one time, but the only place I've ever seen steam radiators over here is in steam-era railway carriages, where they ran off a valved feed from the locomotive's boiler. In the diesel era, "steam generators" were fitted to the early locos to allow them to steam-heat coaches, though gradually the coaches switched to electric heat provided by a 1000V supply from the locomotive's generator.

Here in the southeastern U.S., Summers are described with what is known as "The 3 H's". That is:

Hazy

Hot

Humid

We are supposed to get temps in the upper 90s (that's Fahrenheit ) with a heat index of over 105 degrees this weekend.

Thank goodness for central air-conditioning.

Here is a gif to get you through the hot Summer weather.

Or if the snow is too cold for you, here is a picture of a nice, cool Autumn day (Fall is only two months away ).

That's not snow, JediKnight. That's a cocaine blizzard.

Really? Seems wasteful.