Hoover Film From 1950

[collector2]

From the information I have been given early on in some parts of the UK the electrical boards had two meters on a house. One supplied power for lighting, which was billed at a very reasonable rate. While the other supplied everything else and was way more expensive. People got around this by using the light sockets for most small appliances so they could use the cheap rate.

 

[vintagerepairer]

Two meters

Now that I had never heard. Interesting.

For a good deal of years there has been the economy 7 service, which gives 7 hours of very cheap electricity overnight, useful for homes which rely on storage heating, but it's usefulness is pretty much limited to storage heating. This is because the "day rate" of electricity is so very much higher than it is for none-Economy 7 consumers, and this is all year round, so you really have to draw a heck of electricity during the night throughout the winter & colder times in order to make the savings over the whole year.

 

[anthony]

i would

imagine its a good saving considering the average storage heater is around 3000 watts and the fact that there would be at least three or four in the average house .some of the council properties i visit have them they have a dual meter giving two readings one for normal use and one for eco 7 there would also be an imersion heater giving a tank of hot water heating up through the night ,i dont think this system is very efficient as the heat is released slowly through the day so by the time evening comes around when most people want the heat its just about gone this is what tenants tell me anyway but i am sure theres a member out there thats better informed than me .Getting back to the films the little hoover washer would have been a godsend to most people back then but using one of those these days would be considered hard work .I can remember as a small boy going with my mum to the comunal wash house [usually on a monday] this was a place atached to the local swimming pool [probably because of the constant supply of hot water in there were about a dozen hotpoint empress washers all with there own belfast sink and wooden draining board [everything you needed to do the weekly wash ].My mum got one of those small Hoover washers around 1959 our house had no hot water system just an ascot heater over the kichen sink but we did have a gas boiler [think it was called THE DEAN]that had to be filled and took about 45 mins to come to the boil then the water was transfered to the washer after all the washing was done and been through the wringer mum simply pushed the machine over to the back door let down the drain hose and the hot soapy water ran into the yard and down the only drain that little washer was worth its weight in gold what with four kids to wash for but it still took best part of the day to do a weeks washing sometimes mum would do a midweek wash just to lessen the load

 

[vintagerepairer]

Savings

Hello Anthony

There is no doubt in my mind that if a whole house is heated with storage heaters then the savings made at night on the cheap rate will make up for the extra cost of electricity consumed during the day, however, my own experiences of electric storage heating is that -not withstanding the streets and villages in the UK which do not have mains gas- they tend to be apartments and flats which use this form of heating. As such, there are some wonderful portable electric radiators on sale which by my calculations would probably work out much cheaper on standard rate electricity than storage heaters on the economy 7 + higher day rate. Either way, I do not like storage heating.

A lot of the retirement flats I looked at were heated this way, indeed one of the attractions to this one I am in now was the fact that the heating and hot water is included as part of the rent as it all comes from a central system for the entire building. It is powered by gas, but we have no gas in the apartments, just the radiators.

As for your washday memories, that is a very interesting memory you have. Such things would be alien of course to many generations of today.

 

[sebo_fan]

I agree here. I had to live with storage heaters in my last rental and found them to be of little use. They were difficult to open for cleaning and some of them were too old and stank of a fishy odour when they eventually worked.

 

[spiraclean]

Geez, storage heaters... better than no heat at all, but that's all I can say about them. They do require regular tending, in that you need to anticipate the following day's weather and adjust the heat input accordingly. Get it wrong and you'll either run out of stored heat, or waste energy for no reason.

When I moved into my current flat the electricity was set up for Economy 7, which is odd considering we have gas heat and hot water on a combi boiler. There is a disused power point in the bathroom cupboard for a hot water cylinder however, so at one time there may have been a heatstore tank in there. Either way, E7 was absolutely not suited to our needs, as we generally use all of our electricity through the day when it is most expensive, but barely any at night. A call to our provider soon sorted that, and once we went onto a conventional flat-rate tariff the costs dropped considerably. Our meter still has separate day and night readings, but both are now charged at the same standard rate.

We couldn't even get the benefit of off-peak electricity by running the washer, dryer and dishwasher overnight. That's doable if you live in a house, but in a flat with neighbours downstairs, cranking up a laundrette in the small hours of the morning doesn't tend to go down too well.

 

[vintagerepairer]

Well, not withstanding the dryer, dishwashers and washing machines now use such a small amount of electricity that it's probably never going t be worth using them on Economy 7, unless of course one already has it for storage heating. Otherwise you'd have to be getting up in the night to do several loads in order to even attempt making it worthwhile!

I learned something new here again, as I always thought it was necessary to have a new meter fitted when one was discontinuing Economy 7. A house I rent had been wired for it and a new tenant wanted out. As such, the electricity provider insisted on installing a new digital meter, which in fact looked like the one already there, except half the size. This was last year.

 

[vacbear58]

Two meters & Ecomony 7

I must say I have never heard of two meters being used to provide light on one and power on the other, it was always my belief that the use of light sockets was due to the lack of wall sockets rather than anything else, and I endorse the comments made by others that they were highly unsuitable.

I was surprised to find out that our "ring main" domestic wiring system was devised as a means of reducing the use, or rather the need for, copper wiring in the post war housing boom in a period when resources were scarce.

The old way of economy seven was to have two meters, but more recently there is simply one meter with two readouts on it, one for day rate and one for night rate, I don't know when this system was introduced, but its what I have had in my current home for nearly 10 years.

I actually find storage heaters work quite well, I have only one and it generally covers my heating needs for the whole house with only an occasional supplement with additional heat during the coldest weather. There is a damper control which reduces the heat output during the day which suits me as I am out at work all day - perhaps it would be different if I was at home more, but even at weekends its OK, although you need to remember to keep doors shut. Likewise my water is heated during the night which is fine for the shower in the morning although I can boost it during the day if necessary (at day rate) - most hot water cylinders have provision for two immersion heaters, the night rate heater being at the bottom and the day rate half way up. I tend to run my washing machine and dishwasher at night too to take advantage of the cheaper electricity, although as both are cold fill only I can run them during the day without depleting the hot water.

All electric space and water heating tends to be popular with developers of apartments and small houses as it is much cheaper and easier to install, and with good insulation it can work well.

By far the WORST heating system I ever had was a warm air heating system powered by like a huge storage heater, which was totally useless. This was in 1977 when I moved into a council flat which had probably been built about 10 years before and was not well insulated. At the time it was very expensive to run and, as the air outlets were all at ceiling level, all it did was heat the air at the top of the room. That was not used for long I can tell you!

Al

 

[vintagerepairer]

Meters

Vacbear, that meter you have is descriptive of the type installed in the property I rent out. The new meter looked almost identical, except it was half the size and did not have the facility to take dual readings.

Inexplicably, and like another member mentioned about their own property, this flat I purchased had long been connected to mains gas and had gas central heating. Why the Economy 7 had never been altered was beyond me, indeed I never even noticed until the tenant contacted me. I never actually lived in the premises so hadn't really had a bill in my name.

Though I have no doubt it can work well, for a flat like the one I speak of, one would have to use very little power on the day rate to make it worth the while of heating the two or three storage heaters which would have been here originally. I suppose for people who are out at work all day then it's not much of a problem, though it does seem that the heat is being expelled in their absence.

 

[vacbear58]

Wash houses

Anthony is correct in that for many industrial areas there were public wash houses available to do the laundry, attached to swimming baths or public bath houses where again there would have been copious supplies of hot water. These would have been a boon top many housewives living in small, and often over crowded, houses where there would have been few facilities for washing and even fewer for drying clothes in the often temperamental British climate. As well as camaraderie while attending to the family wash, they could also get the whole lot washed and DRIED, and sometimes even ironed in one fell swoop.



I have seen pictures of wash houses provided in some post war housing developments (actually using Hotpoint Empress too) but these were the exception rather than the rule, do to the ever present pressure to keep prices low. However, the vast amount of private housing developments from the 1920s onward did not have these facilities so it was either send them "out" to a laundry or struggle with them yourself, often in a tiny kitchen. So, although they would be scorned by today's society, a washing machine such as the Hoover would have been little short of a god send to any housewife with a whole week's laundry for a family to face. Actually the water from an Ascot should have been hot enough for the Hoover but they did struggle with the long established tradition that clothes needed to be boiled so portable boilers (Electrical = Burco, Gas = Dean, same company though) remained popular and why, very quickly washing machines with heaters became the standard here aside from the problem of limited hot water supplies when water was only heated by a back boiler on the living room fire place.

In fact they probably did not NEED to be boiled with the development of detergents after the WW2, although we did wear clothes a lot longer then than we do now. I expect most people of my age remember the bars of Fairy (green) or Sunlight (yellow) household soap by the kitchen sink ready to be used to scrub collars and cuffs. I even remember Fanny and Johnnie Cradock advertising Fairy Soap back in the 1960s - Opening line, Fanny to Johnnie, while brandishing a shirt collar at him "Been down the coal hole?".

Al

 

[vacbear58]

@ vintagerepairer

Benny

They key is actually to use the things as they were intended to be used as many people did not read the instructions (never mind some tenants who take little care over the facilities provided) and, and this is a much more recent development, good insulation in the building. I was pleasantly surprised to find how storage heaters fitted my needs having had both those and "proper" central heating with radiators one I moved into a modern and well insulated house

Al

 

[anthony]

the Ascot

geyser was capable of producing very hot water[i remember my gran making tea with water from hers] but as some of you may remember they ran very slowly .In the house i mention above we had a full size bath in the kitchen with a formica worktop covering it the Ascot tap could be swung over either the sink or bath but it would have taken forever to fill a bath so water was brought to the boil in the dean boiler then transfered to the bath for the once a week bathing sesion .the little hoover washer was literally a godsend no more prams full of dirty washing to be trundled to the washouse and back and mum could wash 2 or 3 times a week if she wanted although i do remember her getting a fiew electric shocks because the machine had no switch to stop or start you simply put the plug in or out [there was no switch on the only socket ]and mums wet hands didnt help later my uncle fitted a switch low down on the machine so it could be controled with the foot .Around the early 60s spindryers were becoming popular and mum was desperate to have one she came home from work one day to find the little Hoover gone and a brand new Hoovermatic twintub in its place [the one with the metalic blue spinner lid she couldnt have been more delighted if dad had bought her a Dior frock the hoover washer had a heater so that could be used to fill the bath instead of the boiler although us small kids were treated diferently water was warmed in the washer the machine was then unplugged one after the other would be stood in it and bathed [i can still smell Camay soap].In 1966 we moved into a brand new council house that had a bathroom .a ring main [a socket in every room]and central heating running off the Parkray fire in the living room absolute luxury