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Hot water

A

Alberta

Super Moderator
Staff member
Can you remember the first time you turned on the tap and hot water came out.
I was 8 years old it was 1950.
We had lived in the Staffordshire moorlands,cold water,outside earth toilet,cooking done on the range,parrafin lamps and accumulator radio.
We came to live in Erdington in a police house,gas,electric,bathroom with hot running water and soon after TV.My goodness we were posh.
 
Alberta,
That was progress for you,
some of the good things that did change our lives
my, didn't you think you were posh then,
to have an inside toilet
 
What a lovely thread

I cant recall not having hot water from the tap.......I maybe wrong, but I always seem to remember it, however, I do recall my neighbours black range and gas lights and hot irons and she didnt have hot water
 
I was nearly 30 when I first had the luxury of hot water and a bathroom for the first time. Last week when I had trouble with the boiler we had no hot water, it was terrible having to boil a kettle to have a wash, wash up etc. But I did have a saviour by the name of Kandor who came to my rescue, so it was only for one day thank goodness.
 
I had forgotten the hot irons,my Mom had 2 one heating whilst she was using the other.
I use one as a doorstop now.
 
I do..It was September 3rd 1963...that was the day we moved to 9 Hindlow Close, Nechells.
Until then I had only known a cold water tap in the Kitchen and no Bathroom.
To have a hot bath up till then I had to go to the public Baths in Gt Francis/Willis St where you paid an attendant to fill the bath for you.
 
It was late September 1971. We finally moved from our old house in Aston to a posh house in Kingstanding. The weather was very warm but mom had the fire banked up with coal because the house had a back boiler. I had more than one bath that first night!! It seemed a great luxury to have a bathroom, never mind just the hot tap, mom even bought some proper loo roll :2funny:
 
It takes me back to this morning reading this. The combo boiler has broke in my house and it takes about 2 hours to fill up a bath because i have to keep running downstairs to push a button back in. The washing machine broke last week and my chap tried to fix it but i think its had it now so i have been doing all the washing in the sink by hand (good job i dont have nail extensions).
How women coped with washing years ago is amazing and yet my family were always clean and well fed.
I reckon my great gran is laughing her head off up above at me lol. (i only use her recepies for stew and bread pudding )
 
My parents moved into a house in Witton in the 1930's, and after the war the landlord decided to sell to any of the tenants who wanted to buy. So dad, after a lot of hand wringing and sleepless nights, decided that he would buy ours. There was an outside loo, and the 'coal house' built onto the end of the kitchen, which was where the bathroom was built. He built it himself, it must have taken him half a year of week-ends and evenings to do it. The big day came when the bath arrived, it weighed a ton and a friend helped him plumb it in. The combustion boiler on the kitchen was connected up, dad lit the fire and eventually the hot tap spewed steaming hot water. The bath had a crack and the water leaked through it................
 
Don't remember the Hot water, but the joy when I first time I switched on the electric lights when we moved to Erdington in 1947. Till then we had Gas.

We were opposite Witton Cemetery and I stayed there till I was called up in 1955.

Also to have a garden front & Back :smitten:

Bathroom off the kitchen Toilet just outside the Kitchen door still cold, Coalhouse turn right :D Happy days :laugh:
 
Off topic I know but this subject reminded me of new things and my mother-in-law. This is a true story.

MIL used an iron which heated on the range, a heavy thing which I found difficult to even pick up. Anyway we decided to bring her up to date and gave her an electric iron, which she viewed with great suspicion. One day we called and there she was [no lie] standing in a pair of rubber wellies and with rubber gloves on her hands ironing merrily away !
 
One day luxury arrived at our house in the shape of a second hand Ascot gas water heater. It lived on the
wall above the sink; I say it lived, because it seemed to have a mind of its own. When it was switched on the pilot wouldn’t ignite the gas jet straight away and after a while it would give an almighty “Whoosh” and a flame would shoot out.
Of course,with the heater being set at eye level on the wall, the flame would remove your eye lashes and eyebrows. We looked like a family of Duncan Goodhews.
Eventually it got so bad that we would switch on the heater and run out of the kitchen, shutting the door behind us.
We had to call in the Gas Board who condemned it and took it away; apparently the guy who fitted it for us got it from a house where it had already been declared as unfit to use.
     
    ( taken from Posties life story, available in all good pubs and prisons throughout Great Britain)
 
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