37100

We have teleriscaldamento which exempts us from the number of hours. Our zone is from the 15th Oct until the 15th April. Most years the town hall has to modify the dates due to cold weather.

JACHA

Ah well there is hope for us then. Mind you probably very few places in Italy get down to -7 overnight and we are very lucky in winter to get to 10 degrees in the daytime. Most importantly we have lots of sunny days. When we visitedy Rovereto in December for a day trip I was freezing with all my thermals on. Trento was very much like the weather we have here in winter.

37100

Where are you Jacha? Yes, cold in Trento in the winter. Very similar to Verona.

jonwel

They say it's better for your health if you limit the temperature to 20° and I tend to agree, although old people need a bit more. But it annoys me that the first thing some people do when they feel a bit cold is to turn up the heating. They should first put on warmer clothes or put an extra blanket on the bed and then turn up the heating if it's not enough.
And at night I can't stand sleeping in a warm room! If you get down under those blankets it's much better!

Winters have become warmer in Italy over recent years but in the past it could get very cold in North Italy and it was quite common to get down to -10 or even lower. On average I found December and January colder than in the south of England.

Whereabouts do you live in Australia, Jacha? We in Europe imagine it's never cold there, but it can't be true - Canberra is high up, I know, and then the extreme south can't be that warm.

EDIT: Crossed with Concierge!

JACHA

Yes we are in Canberra. Very very cold winter especially this year and can be 41 C in Summer. We are now in Spring where it 5c overnight and up to 25 c during the day. Yes the heater is on at 18 overnight.
I too don't like a warm bedroom but my husband absolutely freezes. He wears full thermals in winter and is never warm. He does have a health issue that effects him. In fact our friends tease him about wearing a jumper nearly all the time.We have put in double glazed windows, shutters and good insulation, and we get sun into the small family area where we sit in winter. So we are doing all the things to warm up the house so I am really really warm.
Verona is a beautiful place. We were there in January and it was all sunshine. It is a place on our list if we do decided to live in Italy for 12 months. Walking alongside the river under a full moon was magical. People were very friendly and my husband says he had the best ever cheese platter there.
Every place we have been in Italy we have found really friendly people. I know it is different being on holiday but it is the people doing their everyday jobs who have been so welcoming.
I just love the place. Heating or not.lol

Serrano

That's what the law says (well, technically 22° is the absolute maximum). And in all honesty, although as someone else has pointed out, the law is fairly widely disregarded you will in practice find very few houses heated to above that - cost being the issue rather than legality. What people do often ignore is the dates and occasionally the hours of operation.

And as you correctly point out, this applies only to central heating.

philat98

I seem to remember reading in a book by Paul Ginsborg that Italy has around 90,000 laws.
I can imagine that quite a few are broken every day and the offenders go unpunished.

Serrano

I think that's fair comment. The art lies in knowing which you can (relatively) safely ignore, and which you can't. It is left as an exercise to the student .....

ononno

Somewhere around 1968 I finally began to understand the basic difference between the Anglo Saxon common law justice system, and the continental Napoleonic codes system. I remember coming to the conclusion that the only way to be sure of not breaking any laws was to be 6 feet under. I was proved wrong not too long ago when a brother-in-law was exhumed for dna tests in an inheritance/paternity dispute!
bye bye dicette l'inglese😯

JACHA

ononno- Could you please write a book. You have had experiences in your life that would make fascinating reading.
Regards

ononno

But would it sell?
ciao for now,
'o nonno

JACHA

Well I would buy one. Then we could get a real view of living in Italy and not thru rose colored glasses like most of the books are. And then there is the movie rights.lol

jonwel

Two nice books (although rather old now) are "Italian neighbours" and "An Italian education" by Tim Parks. He's not too biased, he just explains the impact of the Italian way of life on someone with a British mentality.