Yes, it's funny the way everyone feels things differently - my old boss used to set the office aircon to 25, and we'd all be sweating like mad under our shirts and ties! Everyone used to comment on how hot it was and he didn't say anything... in the end he left, thank goodness, I became the boss and from then on it was set to 21 by mutual agreement of us all. We then became *very* popular in summer on days like these, as aircon was a rare commodity in the school.

What I will say though is that you can easily warm up if you're cold (thicker duvet, extra layers, bigger coat), but if you feel the heat and 25 makes you sweat then you're stuffed - it's essentially aircon or suffer. I'd say the majority of people seem to prefer cooler rather than warmer for things like working, sleeping, mowing the lawn, and so it's no wonder that more and more condenser units have been appearing on people's walls up the road!

Aside from the -25 bit, I think north Kent or south Essex would serve you well - they're both dry and warm, and if anything the disparity with the rest of the country is just getting bigger...

nowhere in the UK would truly satisfy someone who wants hot, sunny summers. That's why we move to Spain and Australia. The hottest place in the UK (in the summer) is west London/east Berkshire where average highs are just shy of 24C in July, which would be considered downright cold in the middle of summer in most of the world. Indeed in most places 24C would be closer to the average lows in the summer.

For lovers of reliably hot, sunny weather, the only option is still to emigrate (ditto for cold, snowy winters). I doubt Rob would notice any appreciable difference moving from Hampshire to Kent.

I'm up routinely at 4am and really need to be in bed by 9pm. I'm probably one of the few people who would rather the clocks didn't go forward! Noise can be a problem but it would certainly be unreasonable to complain at that time, the vast majority of people don't go to bed at 9 in the evening. I walk to work and do a 6-2 shift. This originated from Covid when we split up into 3 shifts to reduce contact with colleagues and myself and a few others just kept on with it. I love it, really suits my pretty extreme body clock down to the ground. I wear shorts almost all the time when not at work and have found that as long as I'm moving 0C (assuming no wind) is my lower limit to being comfortable. I once walked to work in shorts at -4C in order to 'test my limits'. Let's just say I won't be doing that again.

I haven't got 30 years of my own data yet but I do now have 16 years so I will have to see if there is a trend within this more recent period.

Don't grow a lot of stuff then Col? If you did I'm afraid it's a labour of love in the Essex dust bowl. I don't have to cut the grass much these days - or at least only to suck up the layer of leaves that adorn the grass because the trees are drought shredding already!

Yes, I do enjoy that, although being retired it is available whenever I want. The biggest benefit to me is that (if the pollen doesn't get me) is my eyes stop watering. I have dry eye syndrome and the slightest cool breeze makes them permanently watering which is both irritating and embarrassing when people think you are crying! Plus we have a good management system now. Open doors and windows all evening and again in the morning. Curtains closed on any south facing window. Then close everything when inside and outside temperature equilibrates. Then keep shut all day till outside temp again matches inside then open up patio doors and kitchen door to allow air flow again. This seems to keep our living room, which luckily faces north at about 4C below outside temp. This is mainly for my wife's benefit who doesn't produce sweat so gets quite unwell above about 26C. Add to all  that the wonderful aircon in the south facing bedroom which is great for sleeping and also a quick cool down at any time of day. The only issue is my study where the PC is and I spend a lot of time is small and south facing and gets up to 36C regularly. I might have to get another aircon unit in there at this rate with its attendant ugly big compressor on the side of the house.

Welcome to my world. The retired chav next door sits out in it all day with his bare fat belly hanging over his shorts. Thank God for six foot fences and established tall shrubs. He has converted his back garden into a paved pub garden (compared to my wildlife garden)for frequent family visits with tables, chairs, sun umbrellas and enough solar lights I'm surprised EasyJet from Southend don't try and land there! Throw in the West Ham flag and the blaring constant smooth radio (There's only so many times you can listen to "Sweet Caroline" and "China in your Hand"!) and I don't even want to go out there. Much nicer in the 21C cloudier days when they stay in and I go out.

LOL.  

Sadly his type his now in the ascendancy and educated people like you are in decline.  Welcome to Farage UK.  A hell hole of angry gammon, beer guts and discarded vapes

I can certainly empathise with that! The people who bought the new houses built up my road (bungalow gets knocked down, 2 or 3 houses go up) all seem to be the sort that treat their garden as an extra room, pave it over, or replace the grass with plastic, with plastic plants, and then think nothing of sitting out there all evening every evening making a racket, yacking away on speakerphones, letting their kids scream, plus the aforementioned smells. Then you get the oonts-oonts-oonts music on occasion (thankfully not every day), or what my late mum called "walla walla" music... I'd much rather have Smooth Radio, frankly!

Meanwhile flags have started appearing in people's gardens - one in my road, but two on the neighbouring one (including a West Ham one, a while one with some logo on it, and a Union Flag at the other end of my road) - again, how I miss having elderly neighbours. They had proper gardens, space for ponds (I've now got the last one in the area) and more importantly didn't subject the neighbourhood to their music, entertainment and food choices. 

I'm still using a portable aircon with a hose attached to the front as well as the back. Clunky, but it does mean I can vent it down the stairs during the day, then redirect it into my bedroom at night. Proper aircon requires planning permission (despite what most of the vendors will tell you), and it's fair to say nobody bothers with going through that process! I would say aircon is essential these days (I've had a portable for 20 years), unless you're one of those whose internal thermostat is wired 8 degrees above everyone else! Oh, one other positive from a portable - they make a racket which while meaning you don't get as restful a sleep, at least goes some way to drowning out the racket from others.

Autumn can't come soon enough, frankly; when it starts getting dark at 7, or when it's raining, all of the above stops and it goes back to being as quiet as it was when I was a youngster. 

I think I should be grateful for my neighbours then. The people across the road do sometimes have music but not really loud enough to notice (especially if I am in my back garden further away) and I only have neighbours on one side anyway. 

I am one of the two remaining people in my row of six not to have entirely paved over the front garden, though, and next door has plastic grass in the back too. The days of people taking pride in their gardens sadly seem to be over. I don’t have time to keep mine as tidy as I would like but I do make sure it has nice wildlife friendly plants. 

I had always been indifferent when it comes to summer, preferring spring and autumn...even winter. However, after the 18months of rain which started Aug 2023 i've decided i'll never take summer for granted again. 

Contrary to other comments on here my anti-social neighbours are a pair of 80year olds who light their Rayburn morning and night 365 days of the year. Nothing quite spoils your day like acrid black smoke wafting in through your, and your kids, bedroom windows at 6am in the morning. 

There are few things as depressing as antisocial neighbours who intrude into one's personal space. Thankfully we have a lane full of good folks who don't make smells, rackets or create a bad atmosphere. The folks in the churchyard next door are very quiet! The most annoying trend is the fashion for huge cars parked on pavements, so people, some with wheelchairs, prams etc. are compelled to walk a line littered with dog turds. We sit in our garden looking across the village green and smile at the antics of the young of the village! Not so keen on the trade in skunk and pills No one seems to care about enforcing the speed limits, never mind drug dealing to children. Tom Lehrer caught it:

The Old Dope Peddler 

I checked with my LA and didn't need planning permission for the compressor on the side of my house. Use a lot less energy as well to get 18C chilled room. 30 minutes at 500W although of course uses a bit of the new environmentally much better R32 HFC refrigerant. Can be your world for £1100 Darren. 😀

Exactly that. When I moved in 50 years ago it was quite a posh road really. We bought it off the director of a haulage company and a retired Colonel lived in the detached house opposite. Next door neighbour was the elderly retired Post Office Mistress as they were known then.  That changed when she died to a young couple with kids who were tolerable. He was a decorator come jobbing second rate builder so they moved to a massive detached house from the proceeds of his non-tax paying business and we've got what we have now. Other side was the elderly couple, the one who got mugged. He died and she is in a home so that has joyfully be left empty for four years and has naturally re-wilded! Depending on who we get there might be the tipping point to move! The funny thing with these types is they have no clue their behavior is annoying or what your politics might be but are happy to tell you their Daily Mail version of the world. Realising conflict would make things unbearable we poodle along and act friendly enough and I put up with the "alright Dave O" greeting !

I do have a garden but the trouble with too much rain is the weeds grow rampant and if it's wet you are of course less inclined to go out and tend to it so it compounds itself. And then there's the slugs of course who want to eat my hostas. The long dry spell during the spring was great, enough rain to keep things going but no danger of rapid weed growth. 

I have an air source heat pump and didn't require planning permission for that - and the compressor is the same size as an air-con unit. Unfortunately mine doesn't do cooling. It's only really my office that gets quite warm as it has windows on the south and west sides - the sun has just started coming through so it will heat up through the afternoon. Currently 30C indoors but doesn't feel too bad with a breeze wafting through the sliding doors.

You're lucky that your council doesn't know the rules (which are that the permitted development exemptions don't apply to air-to-air source heat pumps which have a cooling function - i.e. aircon units). Make sure you have it in writing from them just in case any nosy neighbours decide to complain!

My own council, Swale, does know the rules - which require planning permission for aircon units - but it seems they don't enforce them unless someone complains (and they have 10 years in which to do so). That would be a very long 10-year wait, as who knows what neighbours you'll have during that time?

Incidentally it'd be way more than £1100 for me, as it'd involve running a new electrical circuit, and there's simply no room for the cabling to punch through the wall outside from the consumer unit - so it'd have to run internally for at least part of the way, which would mean needing to redecorate at least 2 rooms... and *that* would cost way more on its own! It's even more fiddly as there's Artex everywhere in my house, the sort that has asbestos in it.

Maybe one day, if it really gets unbearable, but until then I'll make do with my portable. 

A slightly different, and more poignant moan from me. The prolonged very warm/hot spell down here has finished off my favourite wolf, dear old Nuka. I helped raise him from a pup 14 years ago, and he always treated me differently to everyone else: he saw me as a fun person, and would come up with new games on a regular basis (such as "jack in the box", where he would solicit a belly rub with wagging tail, then after a random number of rubs would suddenly spring up and snap his teeth half an inch from my face, then leg it - his way of saying "you're 'it', now chase me!"). He didn't play those games with anyone else, and he would always be waiting at the corner of his enclosure when he heard my car. 

He'd been under the weather for a while, had stopped going on his walks, and it turns out he was riddled with cancer. The last week has finished him off - he was struggling to cope with the heat and he was put down earlier this morning. 

This was my last walk with him, just a couple of months ago - Tsa, the owner, and unusually on the backup lead, came on it too - almost as if she knew. 'Bye, Nuka, I'm sorry the summer finished you off. 💔

Very sorry to hear that Darren.

Personally I do like the summer and hot weather mostly because it’s nice to get out of the house etc, but my flat is awful in this weather. The balcony windows gets full sun for about 6hrs so it heats up like a greenhouse, and the heat doesn’t dissipate. Even after the hot spell the residule heat in the buiiding takes days to get rid off.

Late Autumn / Winter are my favourite seasons. I love how the nights draw in and the cold - as you say nothing better than duvets etc to warm up.

Also, I completely relate to others re inconsiderate neighbours. Some flats seem to forget that everyone is hot and everyone has to have their balcony doors open. People then play loud booming music and smoke weed. It’s so powerful the smell that it gets into my flat and I have to use air spray. It annoys be because clearly they don’t want the smell in their homes and then don’t care that others may have to deal with it.

I know a lot of members on here have found the heat in the SE unbearable. I do like extremes and feel really left out this year having only experienced one hot day (25 C+)

Even when Edinburgh has had it's few days between 21-24 C I've been in the damp cool Lakes or Dales!!

I'm just back from a drizzly foggy Lake District (around 16 C mostly) to a drizzly Edinburgh, 14 C

At least I'm of to Portugal for 4 weeks in late summer.....I'm really missing some sunshine!!

In this day and age it would be outrageous if you weren't given planning permission unless you put the compressor in  the middle of your entrance path! With the electric you don't need a separate circuit because these are low power devices and draw less current that your plug in portable one I think. Mine draws 500W on my smart meter. They are rated at 2.5KW but that's fine anyway on your upstairs ring main. Mine is a spur off a bedroom socket. All Part P and IEEC regs signed off paperwork. If you can't run through the wall then you could just have some internal plastic trunking. The biggest cost above £1100 supply and fit is if you don't have a good entry point into the room from an outside wall I think.

I'm genuinely so sorry to hear about this. I know what it's like to lose a dog but a magnificent wolf, though not a house pet, must be as bad. They are such beautiful and fascinating animals. 😪

I'm a notch down from Darren in that I like warm sunny weather up to say 26C so long as we get the rain the wildlife, trees and plants need. This is essential to our environment as opposed to the sun worship of individual humans.

 I also understand why weather enthusiasts like us look forward to extreme weather event so the hope of the odd record hot day is fine.

But what I really, really don't get is the attraction of long hot spells like these with temperatures relentlessly in the upper twenties and low thirties.

Perhaps somebody on here who likes this can explain exactly what 33C brings to the party that 26C doesn't? I mean you can still live in shorts, you can sunbathe if you want (I mean people smoke don't they), have barbeques, get in and out of a pool without freezing, sit out in the evenings and so on. So what can't you do? Because at 33C the majority of people can't do a lot. They get tired and irritable, many feel ill and are ill, most can't sleep well and most can't do physical activities and more. So why the attraction?

Glad I was away for the second half of June as it was more of the sick-joke, excruciatingly awful garbage that has made this the most detestable year I've ever lived through e.g. 27.9C on Friday 20th followed by vile murky gloom for the Saturday.

Previous Saturday (14th) was horrifically wet as were the three prior to that when I was still here. Record breaking Weekend Curse territory without a doubt. It's just relentless. Even worse than the past two years when it was just Sunday that was beyond dreadful. Now it's both days.

June ended up yet another wetter than average month due to the weekend horrors and it's a horrible dull cool start to July.

The only thing I despise more than this tripe is the deranged misanthropic nutjobs spreading poison about "heatwaves" being a danger to your health. I put heatwave in inverted commas because the supposed blistering temperatures are just what most of the rest of the world experience in summer as a matter of routine.

I just spent two weeks in Southern Italy and contrary to what appears on the Broadcasting B0llocks Corporation website, there wasn't a severe life threatening heatwave there. Just normal temperatures and weather for that area which is responsible for the people there being amongst the healthiest in Europe. Only unhealthy looking people there were the British and German tourists which says it all.

While truly cretinous organisations in this joke of a country were advising people not to go out, the waiters and waitresses at the hotel I stayed in, were working in hotter temperatures wearing trousers and long sleeves to no ill effect. This country is truly the laughing stock of the world.

I have always had a saying, 23 is good for me. You can do most things outside in temps of 23 degrees, you can also sleep at night. 

However, I think the issue in this country is, enthusiasts like us on here look for extremes. Extremes to what is our ‘normal’ weather. We look into the distant charts to find the beast from the east, high temps and sun in the summer. Most of us also like the thundery breakdown. Although they seem more rare these days.

But, recent times weather like we have currently is become the new ‘norm’ as a teenager in the 1980’s temps reaching 28 were hot to me. We went to Greece and Spain for the ‘higher’ temps.

Another issue is, no matter what the weather in this country, someone won’t be happy. And we still have not adapted in this country for potential ‘hot’ summers. I drive around in my car and the amount of houses in the middle of the day with windows open, curtains and blinds open and the temps outside are 30 degrees. Yes you might get a breeze blow through your house, but the temp of that breeze is the same as the outside temp. 

Just look around Mediterranean countries and how they keep their homes in summer, shutters closed, windows closed. Only when the outside temp is lower than your inside temp do they open them.

Thats more about educating people, and if the trend continues to warmer and hotter summers I would imagine air con and shutters may become the new norm here in the UK. We would adapt as humans to live in a hotter climate.

I honestly do not think people love temps in the mid 30’s in this country, it’s more about finding the extremities, just like in winter. However, if we had 6-8 winters of heavy snow, drifting, roads closed and no public transport, how long would it be before we moaned about that extreme?

But for how many more years will this weather be unusual? Who knows 😉 time will tell.