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Comment by paullth | Hacker News Reader

3 of the houses I rented during my time as a student (2006-2010) had no thermostat. They weren't even that bad as houses go, this was in central Guildford and all of them were probably quite valuable but at the same time old. 1 even had a fairly modern combi-boiler but whoever put it in was obviously like "thermostat? who the hell wants one of them"

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So you would have to manually regulate the heating - turn it on and the place just gets hotter and hotter and you manually turn it off?

Mind you, if its anything like our flat even if you left the heating on permanently with the thermostat turned full up it wouldn't get that warm. Although the impact on our gas bill would no doubt be spectacular.

Given how expensive rent is in Guildford it made more financial sense just to try keep it from freezing using the weird timer things that came with the boilers and wear lots of clothes. Yeah, they were all old fashioned single paned/sash window/broken-glass-with-holes type places so getting past 15 degrees in winter was impossible.

Not sure why you're down voted. I find this is at least somewhat accurate today in.

That said, never lived in a house in Scotland that didn't have central heating, gas being the fairly obvious choice. I doubt thermostats are uncommon at all.

"never lived in a house in Scotland that didn't have central heating"

My parents house in Moray didn't have central heating - the halls of residence I lived in when I first went to University had central heating and felt tropical to me. No sooner had I got used to that then I went home again for the Xmas break and felt like I'd moved to Siberia...

Sometimes people see the word "Guildford" and swell with rage. Its almost understandable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3_EYVznn1A.

And when you consider the type of owner (Who gives a toss they are only students landlord) are they ever going to upgrade to a normal system let alone nest.

When you think about it this product is so badly thought out on every level!

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