Brrr!

[davidgillon]

Several hours of sleet driving in from the East this morning have left my front bedroom windows literally frosted from top top bottom. First time I've ever seen that happen. The downstairs front window is the kitchen, with the boiler right next to them, so doesn't have the full effect, however the front door handle and letterbox are sheathed in ice.

I went out for a quick waddle up and down the street, just to see what the entrance to the estate was like, and everything had that same 2mm sheath of ice - crunch, crackle! Where my neighbours had cleared the paths was a sheer skating rink, while where they had pitched the snow they had shifted was far safer walking.

I wasn't out more than 10 minutes, I've been back inside half an hour, and my sinuses still hurt from the cold. There's freezing rain falling right now, so the skating rink effect is just going to get worse. I've got a bowl of soup heating and I'm staying right here until it's gone!

Comments

[hamletta]

I'm in the South East and it's not as bad but still I'm hesitant to venture outside...

We're leaving for holidays on Sunday--I'm keeping fingers crossed the airports are open by then...

Stay warm!

[davidgillon]

Oh, this was in the South East - Kent.

Good luck with the airport!

[hamletta]

Wow. I'm in East Surrey, so we're almost neighbours!

[jesse_the_k]

Window frost is pretty, but best appreciated in photos :,)

Are windows typically double-paned? How old is your accommodation? (I just realized that the vast majority of houses and apartments in the northern US are built with central heating in mind. Not true in your country.)

[davidgillon]

Double-glazing is pretty much standard (family friends own a double-glazing firm and are doing very nicely, thank you).

My house was built (20-ish years ago) with double-glazing from new, but I had it replaced with a better standard of unit about five years ago, which made an appreciable difference - you used to be able to feel the temperature gradient as you walked across the living room towards the french windows. Friday's ice-covering didn't melt until nearly midnight, which I thought was a pretty good advert for the double-glazing's efficiency, seeing as it was 21C inside the house.

Pretty much all UK housing since the '70s has been built to be centrally-heated - since North Sea Gas came online and we went to a national gas supply network. I can just remember having coal in my parent's house, which was built in the late '60s, and having gas installed making a real difference. Most pre-existing UK housing has been converted to central-heating even if it was originally built with fireplaces. The UK doesn't get as much snow as the US, but mildly sub-zero (Centigrade) temperatures are common in winter, so there's a considerable reason to switch to central-heating. It's air-con where we don't follow the pattern in the States.