Our House

This is our house. It was built in 1972 so it is just 40 years old. Like all houses in Britain it has a pitched roof so that rain and snow run off and external gutters to collect the rainwater down drainpipes to the grid into the sewers. The roads have grids in the gutters too.
Inside the groundfloor has a living room, dining room, cloakroom, Kitchen and a small room we use as a single bed room for guests. Upstairs there is a bathroom, and three bedrooms which can take a double bed but we use one as a study. We are a small family, just the two of us now, and our one daughter when she was younger. When she was at school and we both were working we used the house as having two bedrooms and three studies and ate at the table in the kitchen.
The builder who built the house bought a farmer's field and built roads and a number of houses  on it. Such a development is called an estate. There are several roads but only one in and out. All the houses look similar.
The concern in our houses is to keep them warm. The walls are made of a double skin of bricks with a gap betweem filled with foam insulation. There is fibreglass insulation in the loft. The windows have double-glazed units of two sheets of glass with a vacuum between to keep the heat in.
The heating is by central heating, a boiler heating water which is pumped to radiators in each room. We use gas to heat the boiler and have a gas fire in the living room as well. The gas is not in bottles but comes in pipes which are laid under the road.