iamthecreaturefromuranus

Central heating barely exists in Australia, same for underfloor heating... the reason... because I can use my ducted air-con to keep the house cool in summer as well. Why install two systems, central heating AND aircon when one will do the job... admittedly nowhere near as well on the heating front.

Dorothy

You obviously have never felt my feet in the middle of winter.

moneypenny20

Strangely, no, I haven't. But I have slept in that house and you'd be better off in a bikini in an Igloo

Gems

You can actually buy radiator systems in Australia (similar to UK). Ive seen it on Aus internet websites.

Im seriously considering this if we build. I know reverse aircon is good but if you have asthma/allergies its not so healthy for you.

Gems

iamthecreaturefromuranus

I'm sure you can, but they are very uncommon and finding someone to install/maintain/parts could be a problem as well... just checked my local yellow pages and there are page after page of aircon installers, but I couldn't find a one who did central heating... and I'm not even in one of the hotter parts of Oz.

lapin_windstar

You're proving my point a little there!

Dorothy

9c may sound warm when you're living in a climate where it goes down below 0, but when you've lived here a while you aclimatise. More than 40 years in Canada and I've never been so cold as a Perth winter.

Officer Dibble

The house we live in at the moment is very icy cold during the day, even in the summer it doesnt really warm up until noon. Once it gets dark we use the reverse cycle air con to heat the lounge and dining and use oil filled radiators to heat the bedrooms up and close the doors. We thought the reverse cycle had packed up a few weeks ago but had a look and the filters were black with filth, after a rinse it worked perfectly. I think you have to forget trying to heat the whole house and just focus on the rooms you actually use.

ABCDiamond

A drop in temp from 34 to 14 is a drop of 20 degrees,
it feels the same as going down from 20 to zero.

It often isn't the actually temperature that matters, it is the change that is noticed.

Anyway, for heating, we use heating to warm the house up, same as we used to in the UK. Although not as often

Most people that I know, use the reverse cycle air con.
Some people install central heating, some use electric heaters, and others don't use anything, and ... for them.... it gets cold...

copa

In canberra some people still go jogging in shorts when it is 1 or 2 degrees... down to -7 they may wear jogging tights, light gloves and a long sleeve top.

Central heating is not unusual in Canberra ... some of the central heating units can get aircon attachments so they both heat and cool on the one system..

hoveactually

After freezing through our first winter here we installed ducted evaporative cooling and separate gas ducted central heating when we built our house. Works very well and much cheaper to run that ducted reverse cycle.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

It may not be unusual in Canberra... but Canberra isn't your average Australian city.. it gets more frost, a lot more, than my old home town of Manchester.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

Really... based on what?

pompeyblonde

I get dressed in front of the gas oven, like I did as a kid in the 70's! happy days!

Burbage

Start a bush fire.