I recently bought a tall Kotatsu table from eBay. A kotatsu table has a thick blanket draped over the table frame, while the tabletop sits on top of that. There's a heater on the underside of the frame that heats the enclosed space created by the heavy blanket. You sit with your legs under the blanket and stay nice and warm.
We use it in place of a coffee table and also use it as a dining table. My wife has trouble keeping warm, and she adores this table!
Only downside is that most kotatsu futon are designed for the traditional low table, so finding new covers/blankets is going to be difficult.
But I'm completely sold on the kotatsu concept. Highly recommended for toasty spouses!
Oh, and another cold spouse tip: Bedjet. It's like having your bed sheet made like a hot air balloon! A heater and fan pushes warm (or cold) air into the bag-like sheet. It works much, much faster than a heated blanket and doesn't have wires throughout the sheet that break. Again wins the cold spouse seal of approval.
Kotatsu are great. And you can apply the same concept to a desk. I have a tiny infrared panel mounted on the underside of my desk. IIRC it's rated 150W. I can comfortably work when the room is 15°C while the panel is on roughly 60%. That's 0.5kWh for a working day. A lot better than having to heat the whole room.
I have a 3080 and 5800x under my desk. I turned off ECO mode and keep it slightly overclocked all winter. The more efficient my code, the colder I get.
Yeah, the eBay listing described the table as a desk. Our original intent was to use the table for crafts, laptops, etc etc. It's very quickly morphed into the central location of our little townhouse :)
I want to get some sort of reflective or insulating rug to alleviate some of the effects of the cold concrete floor. But until then, slippers do just fine!
I just bought a BedJet but have yet to hook it up. After receiving the unit, I realized that, due to the way the bed frame is constructed, I need the special flat hose which is on order.
Cannot escape home insulation and energy efficient ventillation if you want to ensure healthy environment from the humidity point of view. Bathroom, cooking, laundry, and people as well, all will produce humid air that will form mold on cold surfaces of an uninsulated home if not properly ventillated. Where the proper level of ventillation needs to be quite intensive for the desired effect - causing elevated energy loss or requiring supplemental heat preservation techniques - except if low level of heating (temperature) is maintained, which raises other kind of concerns.
Older homes were designed to breath.[1] I live in San Francisco and unfortunately contractors often forget this (or don't care or never think to consider it). For example, painters will often use a non-porous latex on the outside with a common consequence that you'll quickly begin to see mold grow on the internal walls where in bygone years this wouldn't have been a problem. Or the paint may be much more prone to blistering as humidity tries to escape.
Most old homes in SF originally had (or at least were modified 100+ years ago to have) gravity fed heaters--no forced air, and no return registers in each room; just a single giant return register at a low point on a bottom floor. I've spoken with A/C contractors who say that there shouldn't be any serious problems rigging up a forced air system to the output registers, even without proper return registers. And plenty of homes do this. But I guess maybe the real problems come if you then being insulating the home--can the forced-air heating system circulate air quick enough without return registers to compensate for the fact the building no longer naturally ventilates? I imagine in most cases it works well enough, but you're still moderately more likely to see mold problems.
[1] To varying extents. My house was built in 1926, and it seems they used a relatively thin tar paper to wrap the house, or at least part of the house. (Unless that was somehow added much later, but I doubt it as the wall facing an adjacent house a few inches away is papered, and the siding is original on that wall.)
Heat recovery ventilation is more energy efficient than an old breathable house. But unfortunately it is not common even in new buildings. If you own a home you probably can install one but renters are out of luck.
Heat recovery ventilation is still a technology in its infancy.
Typically only around 90% of the energy is recovered, even in ideal conditions.
That sounds good, but considering that for 'good air', you really want to be replacing the air fully every 10 minutes. That means after ~1.5 hours, you've lost nearly all the heat in your home.
Combine that with the fact the 90% is an ideal figure - in more typical installations it might be more like 50% because the incoming and outgoing airflows are not balanced, the heat exchanger is full of fluff and dust, and the humidity of the air is such that lots of energy is lost to the latent heat of vaporization.
Is it worth having one if you want a well ventilated house? Yes. Will it be worth replacing it in 5-10 years when more efficient models get designed...? Probably also yes.
> Typically only around 90% of the energy is recovered, even in ideal conditions.
As opposed to the 0% of energy recovered when a house "breathes" (i.e., leaks like a sieve) and lets out all the conditioned air?
> That sounds good, but considering that for 'good air', you really want to be replacing the air fully every 10 minutes.
[citation needed]
ASHRAE 62.2 does not mandate nearly that much air exchange. A 2,000 sq. ft. (200 sq. m) home is about 20,000 cu. ft. of volume, and needs about 100 cfm of ventilation. And some folks (e.g., Lstiburek) think ASHRAE (at least the newer revisions) is too high:
> What "Replacing the air fully" equates to in terms of volume is already a factor of the size of the room/house.
Exactly. If one person lives in a castle, do we need to replace all the air every hour? Certainly not. If we are talking about a person in a 5sqm room (for sleeping) then replacing all air every hour won't be sufficient.
There are more factors besides the number of people and the air volume, but I really didn't want to go into so much detail.
> That means after ~1.5 hours, you've lost nearly all the heat in your home.
As far as I know most of the heat in my home is stored in solid objects like the walls and not the air. Replace all the air and you still have the heat
Unless you live in an adobe/stone/brick house, the thermal mass of your walls is pretty small. Traditional plaster would add a limited amount to a stud-framed house, but in most US houses, what you've said isn't true.
Sort of, yes. They knew that they had to prevent water so you tend to see homes with larger eves than post WW2 homes. You'll also see attics with windows which seems weird until you realize that was designed to prevent condensation.
Also they built homes much smaller (the average home was less than 1000 sq feet 100 years ago, today it's 2400) and they tended to have smaller, compartmentalized rooms. This allowed for the inefficient home to use less energy anyways.
Where I live there are quite a few ~120 year old homes that are about 2400 sq feet. These would have been built by fairly wealthy people of that time as evidenced by old directories which indicate a live-in servant at most addresses, rift sawn moldings and floors, and stained glass windows on landings/in dining rooms. And although inefficient, they are smaller so they use similar amounts of energy to much larger modern homes.
Somewhat both. Balloon framing existed for houses when homes were heated with fireplaces and sealing the house could have been potentially dangerous as a result.
I find the idea that balloon (rather than platform) framing was part of the heating design of a house a little hard to take. The moment we could switch to platform framing, almost everybody did (not least because shorter studs were cheaper). But a balloon framed house with a fire that escaped the fireplace is going to burn only slightly faster than a platform framed house, and the main determinant is not going to be the framing but things like fire-resistant doors and wall finishes.
If you heat with open fireplaces, then you can't seal the house unless you have really really good artificial ventilation (which you don't because it's 1840 still when you're building this house), regardless of how the house is built. A sealed house with a fire burning in it is a suicide machine.
> A sealed house with a fire burning in it is a suicide machine.
Modern designs use direct vent systems, where instead of using inside air for combustion, they bring in outside air (and then exhaust externally as usual):
Correct, that is a common botched (ignorant, clueless) doing ignoring humidity aspects of highly insulated homes that was not an issue while air tightness (and consequently the energy efficiency) was on a lower level and traditional materials were being used. No excuse for those ignoring this as this is taught for many many decades now for the professionals.
Buildings don’t need to breathe, people do. Buildings need to dry out, and there are many ways to do this that don’t involve uncontrolled air flow that destroys energy efficiency.
You're sort of wrong here and the proof is the massive graveyard of homes built in the 60's, 70's, 80's and early 90's before we really understood new techniques and materials that were being used to build homes. So many of those homes rotted out and rotted out quickly. It's similar to all the moldy basements that were finished without considering that water vapor that can't escape is the real killer. Open up a 100 year old house that has been maintained and you'll see pristine lumber that has hundreds more years if allowed to not rot.
You could take an old house and bring it up to a modern standard but you would never recoup those energy savings both in terms of the cost to upgrade and the energy used to create and transport those materials.
Even just replacing the single glazed, wood windows that have an uninsulated weight box with modern windows is probably not worth it if the existing windows are weatherstripped (the most important thing) and have storm windows.
I think both of you are correct, you can have a tight building, but you need to have a way to get the moisture away from both sides of the vapor barrier. There are definitely been cases in the past 30 years were buildings were built tight without correctly considering removing moisture.
There are lots of dimensions - old building techniques, breathing materials, natural ventilation, proper maintenance etc. And there are lots of solutions and it can be done, but it requires expertise.
It's possible to mess up a very good old house made up of breathing materials with adding some plastic for example.
My parents had their rafters spray-foam insulated about a decade ago, now there's a growing awareness/hysteria about condensation getting trapped in pockets and rotting the timbers. More than likely my parents were fast-talked into it.
The important part is there is exactly one barrier that water cannot get through. Spray foam is generally good. there are different spray foams as well. Open cell and closed cell work completely different.
Water will move through the wood framing to the other side and out. It takes a little longer, but we have plenty of time. It is when the water cannot get out either side that you have a problem.
I am hopeful that the +100r old timbers haven't suffered, unfortunately it's becoming an issue for mortgage companies, who seem to be refusing to lend as a blanket policy. We have a roof guy coming tomorrow to check out the situation though so fingers crossed. We're prepared to have it removed if necessary but aren't relishing the extra cost or the upheaval of clearing the loft.
Foam on timber is a bad idea, for those talking about open cell vs closed cell foam in this thread, beware, both are bad for timber. Im renovating s Victorian property at the moment and when I run the simulations on condensation and vapour pressure etc etc… in several colder climates the system even with open foam accumulates enough moisture content in the wood to rot it. A large part of that is the cold bridging effect generating liquid water close to the wood which it soaks up much faster than it can release during the summer.
Please always run a simulator for your climate before allowing modern materials near timber and or old properties.
It depends if it's open or closed cell foam. If you're insulating the walls of your crawlspace, open cell foam is still recommended on wood because it can breathe
Not in any situation I know of. 3 sides are in foam, the 4th is attached to plywood and the other side of that is the outside. That is enough to let water out. It is slow, but we don't need it to be fast.
For an A+++ energy rated house, you can't have holes in walls where I live. That means you can't have cooker extractors that extract, you can only have them run the air through a filter. But this is really silly, because a major 'exhaust' is water vapor, which filters don't help with. A more humid house is bad for many reasons, and often results in people opening windows anyway. Yes, an A+++ house also requires air refreshing with energy recovery, but it takes ages to get that sort of humidity out that way. Running an airco just for dehumidification is also expensive.
It's short sighted imho. The extractor is precisely the right place to just move air out for all kinds of health reasons, maybe someone should work on one that recaptures some of the heat (that would also make sense!); I have not yet seen one.
> For an A+++ energy rated house, you can't have holes in walls where I live. That means you can't have cooker extractors that extract, you can only have them run the air through a filter.
It's possible to install dampers that are normally closed for airtightness, but open when the kitchen vent is activated (both on the exhaust, and makeup air, side of things):
Even the Passive House folks are fine with this arrangement (§3.4):
> When the exhaust air system is not operating the exhaust air and intake air vents should close airtight and should not cause any leakage volume flow. Furthermore, additional insulation will be advantageous at these locations.
In general theres two kinds of ways to meet code: by design or by test. They might be referring to a 'design' stipulation which wouldn't require a real test. If they choose to be tested instead, then the 'open when activated' would likely pass.
The point is that those systems do not integrate with extractors, and filtering only removed VOCs and particulates, not water vapour, which you would prefer to extract as well.
Heat recovery from an extractor (eg remove heat from air before expelling) would achieve the goal the rating is aimed at, without compromising indoor air quality by not having a way to remove humidity. Or maybe another kind of integrated dehumidifier that discharges in your sink/plumbing maybe.
Those filter-only extractors won't do for anyone serious about indoor air quality.
yeah but in my opinion in modern homes this is automated and regulated house-wide with the mentioned air circulators that recover the energy. they also expell humidity afaik
Assuming you're joking about the ++'s on the end, the reality is that the efficiency scales (like the appliance energy efficiency scales in europe) were designed when what was considered "good", was vastly different to what it is now.
The choice is to either rebalance/demote everyone who built a top rated property 25 years ago, or add more tiers. Political will means we do the latter.
Why can't we just use numbers? "This house in this climate will use about X kwh per year for heating/cooling". That's what appliances do. No messing with scales and tiers and having to constantly re-balance.
It's also more directly meaningful to customers. An A+++++ mansion is going to use more energy to heat than a modest A+++ house.
Because numbers require everyone who is involved in comparing options (i.e. consudmers) to have intimate knowledge of what those numbers mean. Is X kwh actually good? How does it compare to other houses in the area? What number do you use - the amount of energy it will take to heat the house, or the amount of energy of a specific type you will use. How do you compare those (a house with Natural Gas as a heat source will require significantly less electricity to heat than a house with electric radiators, but will likely _cost_ more).
Using ratings gives a standardised way to compare them. If you compare two houses, one has an A rating and one has a B rating, the B one is strictly worse, by an amount that someone who knows something about this has deemed significant.
> That's what appliances do
Appliances are graded on a similar score here. Every appliance you buy in the EU has one of these [0] labels (which has the same problem).
> An A+++++ mansion is going to use more energy to heat than a modest A+++ house.
You're comparing two different things here, and forgetting a very important point - someone who is going to buy a "mansion" is not going to buy a modest house, so it doesn't matter what the rating of the house is in comparison. What matters is the rating of the mansion next door.
Hm, in the US we have energy labels on appliances like [1] that just tells you how much energy it will likely use. When shopping for a fridge, you can directly compare different models.
It even shows the average cost of other similar products. So you can see both the absolute numbers and a visual representation of how efficient something is in relative terms without having to squint and count '+' marks.
I don't see why we couldn't do that for houses. Maybe use a unit like BTU instead of kwh to account for different heating sources. And include a comparison to the average range for houses in the area.
This would be a lot more concrete and avoid arbitrary ratings. If the ratings are based on bureaucratic rules (i.e. can't have stovetop vents) instead of actual measurements, then it feels a lot less meaningful. "This house will cost about $X to heat each year" is a much more useful piece of information for someone house shopping.
We can, don't have them on hand though. There's still a huge number of houses with B or lower ratings, so I only if you're looking at new builds do you have to count plusses ;)
Mechanical ventilation with Heat Recovery (MHVR) mostly solves this. Air is actively exchanged with outside to regulate humidity from cooking etc but heat from the waste air is captured and used to warm the incoming air. These are now standard in homes in the UK.
“Standard” is a bit strong, maybe? I think the majority of new homes still use trickle ventilation because it’s much cheaper, and not many homes have them retrofitted?
They are certainly common, but I think far from standard.
Where you are makes a big difference. 20 years ago I read about some 'passive house', and realized it was actually less insulated than the codes in Minnesota require - but it was in a mild climate so it was passive, while the more efficient houses in MN are not passive.
Correct, thanks for highlighting that, I edited to explicitly note (beyond 'energy efficient ventillation') that there are heat preservation techniques to use (heat exchangers) with the elevated level of ventilation needs while avoiding high energy loss.
I recently got a CO2 meter for our living room. The results are shockingly bad. I can't imagine having humidity issues from the sources you cite without also first having unhealthy CO2 levels.
We've settled on always leaving one window slightly open if it is windy outside, or 2-3 on still days.
Or you can buy a dehumidifier (I have Sencor SDH 2020WH). This leaves you "only" with the CO2 problem, which requires less ventilation than to let out moisture (YMMV).
I have also bought a dehumidifier fo this purpose, this year. It works great. It uses less energy than I would need to keep the room dry by heating. For insulation I use thermal clothes and thus can significantly lower the room temperature with respect to the standard 20°C-21°C that people have around here.
It's not even a warm/cold food thing, it's more like you're low on energy so your body isn't producing as much heat as usual. When it happens to me it's usually before lunch.
I have good experiences with the "Heattech" line from Uniqlo. It's some synthetic formulation of fibers but does it's job quite well for me, at low cost.
Funny that, I'm wearing the Heattech Ultra turtleneck right now, it cost 30€ and is probably the comfiest top I own. The reason I was asking for alternatives is simply that I can't get a non-turtleneck one in my size because they sell out immediately.
Overall I'm really happy with all the clothes I got from Uniqlo.
If you have a Decathlon nearby, you could try theirs. The basic Wedze thermal underwear - very much not fancy, 100% polyester, but warm and more than OK to wear indoors - is only €6.99 for a pair of pants or shirt. They also carry more expensive items, some of them in wool, and usually much cheaper than other brands.
I use icebreaker brand, made of merino wool.
They are among the most expensive, but I can wear the long underpants for weeks without them smelling bad.
I wear a brand called Brass Monkeys - (from the british slang term for bloody freezing - "it's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey") They're merino from New Zealand. They're great, hard wearing and not itchy. Fit's on the small side though, definitely size up.
I've got a few sets of cheap (low-cost supermarket) and moderately-expensive thermals. They're not marketed or branded for sport etc. but both are equally excellent. The more expensive set is thinner and feels just as effective, but is more comfortable (ease of movement) on days when I am outside and more active. With a set of thin, long socks worn over the thermal layer's lower legs, and thicker long socks on top, my feet are nice and warm if I'm sedentary or active for the day.
Aclima. Norwegian merino (so doesn't smell) underwear, not cheap but not the most expensive at least here in Europe. Several different lines with different levels of insulation. I use the "warmwool" line and it's very warm indeed.
I bought Helly Hansen years ago (ten years already, I guess). I only have thermal trousers and paid around 25 euros, if I remember correctly. The trousers are still doing fine after a lot of use.
depends on your activity level and how sweaty you get. Its critical to not get sweaty. I would go for something cheap if you are using it to just chill at home without much activity.
The "clo" seems problematic as a unit. I know people who dress in hoodies in 100 degree weather and don't break a sweat. I know others who are sweating in shorts in the winter. I put out a lot more heat than my wife and yet I _feel_ cold a lot more than she does. Comfortable temperature is too subjective to get its own unit. It strikes me as something that was developed during that period of the early 1900s when they believed all of life could be reduced to a calculation.
people differ. Maybe you need more clo to be comfortable, but still the clo unit is valuable. Similarly you might need more calories than your wife, which doesn't make an unit of calories problematic.
A calorie is not a subjective unit. A "clo" is by its definition.
>one "clo" equals the thermal insulation required to keep a resting person (for instance, a couch potato) indefinitely comfortable at a temperature of 21° Celsius (70° Fahrenheit)
This assumes we all produce the same output heat. We do not. Even at rest people output different amounts of heat. Normal skin temps range by almost 8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Edit:
Forgot to add "comfortable" is in the definition and comfort is always a subjective. I might be comfortable in my underwear at 70 degrees. And someone else (apparently) is comfortable in a three piece suit at 70.
The article acknowledges this: "The most significant factor influencing thermal comfort - even more important than air temperature and clothing - is body heat production" ... "The clo-values given for different indoor air temperatures are thus not more than guidelines - personal differences will occur."
Hot climates: air-liquid heat exchangers with our own blood as the working fluid. Like a dialysis machine, but permanently glued to our backs. Plug ourselves in to turn the fan on, use our power packs on the go. Don't sit down too fast, don't run out of juice.
Cold climates: same idea with an integrated block heater. Now we can sit in your basements in our t shirts and boxers.
Later, our glucose vitamin pumps keep our blood sugar at ideal levels as our digestive tracts atrophy and eventually becomes vestiges.
With relief, we can literally feel the heat and sugar spreading from our centers out towards our extremities as we drop in and power on our headsets...
Much later, we introduce blood oxygenator units to get rid of those troublesome respiratory issues.
Now and in the future, science fiction, pitch deck, and existing tech become blurred together.
I'm shocked and disappointed at how expensive retrofitting insulation into a minimally insulated 1930s Bay Area house actually is. I estimate gas heating costs at around 2500$ / year (nov-march), while insulating floors, walls and roof would cost a shocking 60K$ for an average size 3bdrm.
If the insulation cuts heating cost in half, that's a 1250$ savings per year, meaning a 48 year break even time assuming zero discount rate. It absolutely doesn't make sense to do the work unless there's a massive tax subsidy or contractor costs come down (which is bad for the environment)
@jpdaigle Clearly too many factors play into however you received that quote...But, maybe this can help you...
Years ago, i researched insulating my home...an old home that was split into 2 living portions...and whose front half/portion was built in late 1800s, and back portion of home was built around late 1910s. So, you can imagine it was pretty much a sieve, just burning our money. So, i did get a few costly quotes...but the cheap husband in me wondered if i can do things piecemeal....and i assure you that its possible. There are lots of factors to consider....but you can research and determine for yourself.
Here is my suggestion:
1. Contact your electric company/provider...and ask them if they offer a free energy assessment. Ours did, and it helped us determine the exact zones/sections of our home where we had the worse heat loss. This assessment was so valuable, i wold have paid to have this done!
2. Research where you/your family spend the most time in the home. My opinion is that the bedrooms should be the last places to insulate, since blankets (and bodies) help keep things warm in this type of room.
3. Consider which areas of the home can be insulated via easier methods - like spray foamy stuff - which may only need little holes and not necessary to tear down full walls, etc. Some of these foams are not as insulating as traditional options, but the ease and cost is more than enough to justify things.
4. Ideally start on the outside walls of the home, and of the specific rooms/area where you will focus your first work.
There is so much more on thios topic...but keeping the work low in scope, and iterative really can help...its all about being clever here. Good luck!!
Numbers don't look great but you would need to consider the following too.
Any cooling cost you have that will also benefit from insulation and the fact that within 10years time you most likely need to upgrade the gas heater with something non fossil.
Also it is questionable if gas prices will remain where they are currently.
You could prioritize insulating some areas instead of all of them. Attic is the most effective and easy to do since it is usually open. Walls are less effective but expensive to drill holes or open up walls. Floors or basement are least effective but easy.
That is what I did, insulating the attic but not getting around to the walls and basement.
Construction is incredibly expensive. Why that is complicated. In a lot of the ways the problems though is our lack of newer affordable homes. Newer homes tend to cost more and have all the tech. Older homes are cheaper but paying someone else to upgrade them is crazy expensive.
It's all fine and dandy until it's +40 outside for a week, you can't insulate your body against that.
I'd bet insulating your home (at construction time) for the same effect is also cheaper over a lifetime of a house than warm clothes for all the inhabitants.
Lastly, the pleasure of going near naked at home is worth every penny.
Depending on the assumptions: the cost of heating has amounted to several-to-many salaries for some - even for white collars of industrialized countries in recent times.
I wear silk thermal underwear around the house, under normal clothes. I keep the thermostat at 55 degrees Fahrenheit (12.75 C) except for the first two hours after I wake up. And I live in a very cold climate.
EDIT: I have no mold, but I live in a very dry environment — high altitude, mountainous. Lots of snow but very dry air. Today it was 10 F (-12 C), but that is not typical. We are in a cold spell. I am nowhere near the sea, like Denmark, as mentioned in other comments.
Try this. You can do it. As another commenter wrote, get gloves with the fingertips cut out.
That is 13 degrees Celsius, that's pretty cold. Currently, due to the war in Ukraine and a reliance on Russian gas many Danish companies and government offices have been turning down the heat to 19 or 20 degrees Celsius. This has come with warning from engineers to not go much lower. In cold and wet climates, dropping below 19 degrees during the winter will damage building and allow mold to grow.
I can see 13 degrees not doing much harm in places arctic perhaps, but it is something to be aware of.
Just thinking out loud, I'd guess people living there would be an important factor since we produce quite a lot of water vapor, as do things like cooking etc. And when the house is cold, this has a tendency to condense on any surfaces. And humid porous surfaces (drywall) and even insulation will probably be a good substrate for mold.
Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air. Humans and their activities give off moisture. In winter humans maintain warmer than ambient temperatures. Therefore at some point the warm wet air is going to cool and reach its dew point.
Ideally you don't want this happening in the house, whether it does depends on the inside temp and the outside temp and humidity inside and out.
So there's a few knobs you can twiddle, temp being one.
They say 18 degrees, to avoid issue with moisture. It very much depends on how the home is built I'd assume, because holiday homes are normally kept colder, down to 5 degrees, during the winter.
Warning, annecdata: we turned down our heating signifcantly this winter, and both my roommate and me have gotten quite a bit of mold on and around our windows.
If you're able to invest in better windows (good double or even triple glazing), that will solve it. But just wiping down the window sill semi-regularly works well, even if it's an annoying chore.
Sure, but there are insulation solutions that mostly prevent it. For example insulation foam layered between vapor permeable foil on the cold side and vapor inhibiting foil on the warm side.
But drywall (and other porous surfaces) are supposed to help regulate moisture, so if they never get an opportunity to dry because it's permanently cold and humid, yeah, that'll be a problem. Cracking a window at least 30 minutes per day (ideally on dry days) does wonders, though it won't help temperatures in winter.
Yep in theory it's all nice and easy, just put foils in and open the windows sometimes.
In practice... say, there is a dog that likes to gnaw on corners and thus punctures the vapor barrier. Happened to my own house's outside insulation. That's just one of many "unforeseen" ways how these foils and barriers stop working. I fully expect the polystyrene there to get moldy in 20 years or even less.
One does not have to measure something to require it.
The insurance company does not want stupid actions by the owner causing property losses. If you have utilities shut off to the property for a month in freezing winter weather and all of the pipes freeze, they’ll be able to determine that you did not maintain 16 degrees.
Theres a wide gap between freezing and 16 degrees.
Which suggests this is more about mold etc. If they don't want to cover frozen pipes then fair enough, they should really state that because then it becomes unclear what the situation is in the case of a garage or if you have a pipe in the attic or cellar.
It's likely not about any one type of damage in particular and more about 16 c being a reasonable lower bound for indoor temperatures of a properly maintained property. Nobody from the insurance company is going around checking to see if people's houses are 15.5 degrees so they can cancel their policies. Provisions like this are just a slightly more objective way to say "don't neglect your damn property".
Now this also doesn't mean that frozen pipes aren't covered. It is possible to have pipes freeze while keeping normal indoor air temps. Not all pipes are in conditioned space.
>Nobody from the insurance company is going around checking to see if people's houses are 15.5 degrees so they can cancel their policies.
No of course they won't. That would be giving up good money. Instead when you make a claim they'll reject it on some basis around the property not being kept at 16c.
That's weird: in Denmark, I guess temperature would go above 19 degrees about 6 months a year. That means that buildings are built with the expectation of being warmed...
I think most buildings are build with an expectation of cold in the winter. Building for warmth would result in burst pipes during winter, when the temperature goes below freezing
I might be in for a surprise, but I don't think there has been a year where the temperature has been above 19 degrees for six months of the year. I'm curious if you have a source on that?
> That means that buildings are built with the expectation of being warmed...
That doesn't seem strange to me. At even lower temperatures, water pipes will burst, so you have to heat it at least a little in winter. Waste heat from humans might be enough to avoid freezing temperatures, but then humans also produce a lot of humidity, causing mold.
If you are actually being serious, I would caution others from following your example. Houses usually require a certain indoor temperature to prevent problems from moisture buildup in the structure (walls etc).
Have you had moisture problems in your house/apartment? The advice I see cautions against letting insulated spaces drop below 18 degrees C or so (around 65 F) as you’ll start to have issues with moisture buildup.
No, but I live in a very dry environment — high altitude. Lots of snow but very dry air. Nowhere near the sea like Denmark as mentioned in other comments.
every time I've tried gloves with no fingertips it just feels like the finger holes are restricting the blood going to my fingertips. I feel like my fingers get colder than they would if I just didn't wear gloves
I do feel that personal-climate-control clothing has potential in our future world of more climate extremes. Some kind of backpack with a fluid pump, heater-cooler unit, and battery. Cooling/heating fluid gets pumped around a suit. Inductive charging via pads on the posterior, as long as your seat is part of the superchairger network.
It will if the air is moving sufficiently fast over it, e.g in combination with the fan cooler. Or you can have a bucket with a mix of water, ice and salt, and point the fan to blow over it (we did this in army and it actually works fine as a poor man AC alternative).
Even if it doesn't evaporate, it will still absorb body heat, briefly. Similarly, if you are in a humid area, sitting in a bath / some body of water will help a lot. Don't underestimate the heat capacity of water.
It reminded me of the body suits which people need in Termination Shock (2021)[0]. Written by Neal Stephenson, the same dude who wrote Snow Crash. Can recommend Termination Shock, very interesting, global story about climate change and the involved politics etc.
These body suits do exactly what's being described in these comments. Wearable packs which regulate humidity, temperature etc.
I could see that happening for heat: hot water bags are amazing, and being able to "wear" one occasionally on the upper back (using some improvisation with an empty backpack to keep it in place) has been one of the few things I consider a benefit of WFH. But cooling? Sure, the technology is doable but won't you get a very huge mess with condensation?
Relying on human selfishness by putting a price on the externalities of emissions seems to me far more likely to succeed than preaching self-abnegation.
Pay more for more heat or pay for fancy thermal underwear. Choose what selfishly makes you happier.
I completely agree that that would be a more effective approach, and we should all campaign for it. That isn't the world that we live in though, so instead I have to choose not to be selfish.
FWIW, I don't wear fancy thermal underwear. I do accept that wearing a warm jumper during the winter (while heating my house to 19 or 20 degC) is a perfectly reasonable compromise.
Exactly. I mean, I don't pretend to wear only boxers at home during winter... but just my jeans and a t-shirt? C'mon. Also, I don't see the need to turn on the heating in the whole house: it's usually turned on only in the living room (where I spent 90% of the time). The bathroom, kitchen, hallways, they all could be as cold as needed, I don't mind. As for the bedroom: as soon as I'm inside bed for at least 10 minutes, I'm already warm no matter if the heating is off.
If your house is properly insulated the others rooms will be warm just because your living room is. May as well heat them all as the cost difference is minimal and then you can be comfortable that other 10% of the time.
When I first read this something about it stuck in my brain, but I couldn't put my finger on it until just now.
>May as well heat them all as the cost difference is minimal
If you sit down and reason out the math, you find that this isn't actually true.
The total heat loss is proportional to the temperature difference integrated over the total area of the building envelope (weighted by U-value). The integrated heat flux through this surface must equal the heat supplied within the interior, primarily by the heating system.
If rooms with exterior walls are colder (when in the equilibrium maintained by the heating system), then by definition you're losing less energy through that surface, so therefore less energy must be added.
--
The advice also wildly disagreed with my own experience, which is that shutting off unused rooms (especially rooms that are naturally colder anyway) has resulted in large energy savings.
I do make sure to regularly monitor such rooms for any sign of moisture or mold, but blocking off the vent/under-door airflow (and keeping a particularly chilly guest room closet ajar) seems to suffice.
What are you talking about? I wear merino every single day, year-round, and it is absolutely not going to ruin the clothing or your health. My socks, my undershirts, and my boxers are all made of merino wool. It's not as miraculous of a fabric as some people claim, but merino /is/ pretty awesome, and it is not going to in any way damage your health any more than any other fabric you might be exposed to.
What I meant was wearing a t-shirt and shorts in a room at 19c and feeling awesome versus being all dressed up in a merino tight fitting sweater and tight fitting leggings in a cooler room. I see no health benefits there, really, no matter how breathable and natural merino is.
And you would need to wash that wool daily (or rather often) if you were wearing it daily. And by now you probably know that merino is a sensitive fabric, and the more you wash it — the faster it degrades (compared to cotton).
That all adds up. And I don't see it as being practical and making too much sense, that's it.
First thing: the article does not advocate against heating your home as most comments here seem to suggest. Quote: "this article is not a plea to get rid of heating systems altogether [..] for many of us, a heating system remains a necessity".
Secondly I have experimented quite a lot this winter with clothing to reduce home heating requirements. I used to keep my home at 24C(74F) and wear short pants and short sleeves made of cotton. Now I keep the home at 20C(68F) during the day and 18C(64F) during the night. My heating bill is now half and I did notice I sleep a lot better at 18C then I used to at 24C.
I wear synthetic form fitting long pants and sleeves thermal base layer and a loose synthetic robe on top of those. The base layer keeps more heat but more importantly evacuates sweat a lot better than cotton. The robe is what keeps most of the heat trapping air inside being thick but also air between it and the base layer. You can find a lot of material on the internet about layering clothes and what each layer should do. One mistake I used to make and the article seems to think so as well is that the base layer's role is to keep heat.
I chose synthetic over wool for home because of the huge price difference and also the wear resistance. It's 10 euros vs 200 euros, I can wash it without care, I won't cry if they get stained with coffee, etc. I use merino wool when going out.
After these experiments I plan to get rid of most of my cotton clothes and replace them with synthetic and merino wool, even for the summer. I can't believe how I put up with the humidity trapping cotton for so long.
I am also interested to hear what other people experimented in this regard and their results.
It does not advocate but it gives certain numbers so it proposes that one could go below 18C. If I keep my flat at 18C or below I get loads of condensation and mold. I don't need some special clothes to feel comfortable between 19C - 20C sweatpants and sweatshirt are cozy enough. That said - if someone needs 24C to feel comfortable it might be useful to get some thermal underwear and turn heat down to 20C.
If I need to dress differently indoors in winter than in summer, I'd consider my house defective. It might be energy efficient to dress a lot more in winter and keep the thermostat at 18 instead of 21 or 22 indoors, but I don't want to. 300mm outer wall insulation, expensive windows, and air heat recycling is something I'll happily invest in to NOT have to lower the thermostat.
I don't want to sound harsh, but "my personal comfort is more important than finding ways to reduce energy consumption" seems pretty selfish to me. That's the kind of things that make me think trying to reduce our carbon footprint is utterly hopeless. How is it weird/defective to adapt to natural conditions? We're not talking about letting people freeze in their home, but just putting on one more layer when it's cold outside.
A modern building with modern and super expensive insulation use less heating power. Ironically the second comment of your video says "Actually the major key to success is an unlimited budget."
What a discovery. That's not the case of 99,99% of buildings on this planet though.
However, the article you are commenting just says that before buying tens of thousands dollars of insulating material that you'll have to install somehow, the first thing you can do is wearing a pull over and a pair of socks.
Nobody says that you have to choose between insulating your home or your body. Just do both if you can.
> What a discovery. That's not the case of 99,99% of buildings on this planet though.
Which is already being addressed:
> Key to the PGH approach is balancing expenditures and gains. Where other programs use specific energy-use targets or other criteria, and the building code establishes a baseline (“the worst house you can legally build”), a PGH goes above code until it stops making financial sense. On some new homes, that may be not far above code, and on other projects performance may rival that of a Passive House, but in most cases it will be somewhere in between those two standards.
Being able to live at 22C, 40-60% RH, and filtered air exchange via ERV, isn't as difficult as going to the moon. An increase of 5-10% in building cost for better air sealing, a little more insulation (and reducing thermal bridging), and some mechanicals isn't crazy.
> An increase of 5-10% in building cost for better air sealing, a little more insulation (and reducing thermal bridging), and some mechanicals isn't crazy.
Yes but you forgot the part where the vast majority of the world population don't live in a brand new building.
Insulating my not so old house (1998) to be up to the modern norms would cost me something like 50/60k€.
But it is crazy a new home is like 300k just for the house maybe closer to 400-500k for anything decent on the coasts. 30-50k buys a lot of electricity or nat gas.
Great insulation is not very expensive. It is somewhat more expensive, but not a whole lot. We are talking about a few thousand dollars on a project that will already cost you upwards of $300,000 (assuming you already own farmland you want to build a 5000 square foot house on - farmland because it implies cheaper labor than in the city)
You are talking about a new construction project. On this you are right. Been there, done that.
However most people in the world already live in an existing building. Insulating an existing building is not what I would call cheap, especially if you are still paying a mortgage.
There is for sure less you can do for existing construction, but it isn't nothing. There are still a lot of attics in cold places with R10-R20 insulation that can cheaply be brought closer to R40-R60. (About a month ago I bought my attic to R40 for $4k, remove all old insulation, air seal, and then new )
Most existing houses get a significant remodel once in a while as well. If you are doing that you should bring the changed areas to better code. Much siding only lasts for 25 years, so just put insulation under it while doing the regular replacement can make a big difference as well for not much more since you have to pay for a lot of labor.
I haven't used a fossil Joule for heating in my life (e.g. oil, gas or fossil generated electricity), that helps me defend it at least somewhat.
If I had gas heating or fossil electricity I would probably have a different view of it. I mean right now it's mostly just economics: either I spend on insulation, or renewable energy, or I don't spend and lower the thermostat.
> If I need to dress differently indoors in winter than in summer, I'd consider my house defective.
Funny, I find it weird to dress (so) differently indoors to out in winter. Why should it take more preparation to leave my house in winter than in summer? That seems like a defect.
Where I live it gets cold enough for the pipes to freeze if I don't heat the house. While I can live in a tent and thus wear the same clothing indoors as outdoors, I consider not having to go outside for a bathroom a plus and thus I keep my house warm enough that I can have indoor plumbing. Once I have committed to having plumbing, the cost to heat to the point where I'm comfortable without extra layers is minimal.
I heat the house, I said 'so differently', I'll put a coat on - I just don't want to be rolling my sleeves down, putting a jumper on (perhaps taking my shirt off temporarily and putting a vest on), and then putting a coat on. I'll usually wear some light coat/jumper outside in summer anyway (UK!), so my point is just that I don't want extra things to put on (ok, a scarf & gloves) - they can be thicker and more waterproof than the summer ones.
I live where there is freezing 6 months per year and people never wear shoes indoors. Getting dressed when going outside is done basically 101 months of 12, as the hottest summer months you are having "room temperature" also outdoors.
Because some people live there where in summer, you need just a T-shirt, and in winter you need a sweater and a heavy winter jacket or a coat above. And a good hat.
Strongly agree with this. The /entire point/ of technology is to make human beings more productive, more comfortable, and to make life more enjoyable. Why would I voluntarily give up on modern technology to instead have a more miserable existence?
I am actively working on plans for a new home construction that will meet PassivHaus standards and use FAR FAR FAR less energy than the place I currently live, and be able to use primarily locally sourced renewable (rooftop solar) for the majority of its energy requirements. This is both much better for the environment, and much better for my quality of life, and doesn't require me to wear thermals and pajamas with fur slippers to bed under two duvets in order to not freeze to death while I'm sleeping. I don't understand the mindset of someone who would bust their ass working in order to live like a pauper pre-industrial revolution. I work so I can afford to have luxuries like indoor plumbing, effective heating and cooling, and comfort-based climate controls.
The environment is a major concern for me, and I applaud folks for thinking of ways for humanity to use less energy, but going without what I consider to be basic modern amenities is not the way. We can use modern technology to drastically (like several orders of magnitude) reduce our energy usage without resorting to a drop in quality of life.
Apartment building is another way of saving energy. My parents one was in the middle of the house, and we'd shut all radiators, and still it was very warm inside. I guess if per-apartment counters were added, people would keep their appartments cooler, but still it would require very few heating.
And I remember the time when we had poor insulation, mostly in windows - it was misery to stay indoors in a sweater, still feeling a bit cold, but in warm sneakers, and feet sweating. Triple-glass packet windows were a blessing!
If I have to wear that sweater inside my own home, where I get to control the thermostat, I would say that this is a more miserable existence. I'm not sure what there is that's not understandable about that.
It's better to change clothes when it's -10..-25 C (14..-10F) outside. You can't stay indoors in heavy clothes and heavy shoes (and snow and sand and salt will melt indoors).
I'm sure people here are having so much disagreement because they live in very different climates.
I stayed some days in Italy in winter, and their indoor heating was just minimal, it was like +17 C (62 F). I did find it miserable. You can't take a shower quietly, because it's cold in the bathroom too, and you must dress up very very quickly. How do people in such places go to the toilet when they wake up at night? Do they sleep dressed? Or dress up, or just endure the cold for couple of minutes?
I'll find it ok to put on a sweater for the most cold week or two in a year, but not for months.
Not necessarily. Underwear I'll grant, it'd be uncomfortable not to, but otherwise I don't see why one has to wear clothes.
Also, do blankets count as clothes? You (or I, at least :-)) can easily be comfortable "wearing" just a blanket and underwear at a temp of around 10
°C.
According to a joke, the definition of a warm climate is that it gets cold inside in the winter. When cold weather is seen as a temporary inconvenience, people will rather invest in bigger homes than in better insulation.
Similarly, a cold climate is where it gets hot inside in the summer. And then there is coastal California, which has elements of both.
Fully agree, I hate that cold moist feeling in the house. I tried keeping the thermostat low, it makes me unhappy. I prefer to spend money on the house indeed. That said I do wear more clothes indoors in the winter, but that's impossible to avoid in our climate (now it's about 2 deg C outside).
If you have moist air in a home that is heated 17°C or more, heating is not the issue. Correct aeration is. Ironically you will feel hotter in a correctly aerated house heated at 18°C than in a house heated at 22°C but with moist air.
Indeed - and of all the luxuries I can splurge on, it ranks very high. But as I have clarified elsewhere: I don't use fossil energy. I consider heating a home with e.g. fossil gas to be an equally bad idea as freezing.
This is an important distinction to make. By omitting it your original comment seems to be purposely touting a lack of concern for personal emissions reduction.
My low-tech keep-warm solution this past winter was the mighty hot water bottle. It cost $5 from some knick-knack store and it does an excellent job of keeping my sheets warm until long after I've fallen asleep. It saved me from shelling out for an electric blanket.
Nitpick but statements like
“this is why we have resorted to clothing ever since we left our origins in Africa (where it was hot enough to survive without additional layers of clothing).”
really make me question the basic intelligence of the author.
Nonetheless, there is some odd distortion there, with short circuits: the author relates «hair (or feathers)» to «heat transfer», but some argue that hair - that humans did in fact keep - is a protection against insects (to feel them as they "land"), before heat conservation; and on the same line the reason to leave the eastern African peri-rift was to escape insects (and other pests), which resist less in colder climates. The topmost human killers include, after mosquitoes, bugs and flies. Hair is not a protection from canids, but they remain near the top of human killers and cold climates reduce the threat coming from strays, and some types of clothing can offer some protection.
Clothing is not just a matter of heat conservation.
A negative remark without any details is just an insult, not a criticism.
Insult my basic intelligence as well, but I personally think the fact that we are the only non-tropical ape is interesting and relevant. Even amongst primates in general there are very few that have ever made it in temperate areas and they never got as far as us. All this despite us not having fur
I think the article doesn't explain the pumping coefficient correctly and so it gets into this rabbit hole about how long and tight clothing is better:
> Long underwear has more advantages over other clothing options. It does not hide your body shape and can maintain sex-appeal, a common concern for both men and women
If this is not your concern, consider that there is no problem with putting on loose clothes. It will work fine because the trapped air itself acts as an insulator. The pumping coefficient only materially significant for things like dresses.
There is not a single sustainable winter clothing manufacturer as far as I can tell. Rayon, hemp, and linen are sustainable but I have not found any warm clothing made of them. (Cotton requires a lot of water and organic cotton even more so because the yield is lower)
What's your definition of "sustainable"? Is wool okay? There are a couple of companies selling "sustainable" wool products. For example https://nordwolle.com/gb/
Wood also breaks down naturally in water and soil and yet there are wood buildings that are hundreds of years old. If you dry your woolen clothes before fungi and bacteria populations explode they'll be fine. Loss of fiber through abrasion will ruin the clothing long before it is eaten.
I have decades old wool sweaters. And my oldest wool base layers must be 10 years old. It's not a problem. If you dig it down in the ground or dump it in a lake it will break down with time.
Wooly jumpers, especially when made of fragile merino wool, remain usable for much longer when they are made of a mix that includes plastic fibers (maybe 75% merino, 25% polyester).
The sweaters are 100% wool, but are the thick knitted type. Think a classic fisherman sweater or the Icelandic lopapeysa. These are not merino. Base layer is merino, might be a polyester/wool mix.
I mean, it's not going to dissolve like cotton-candy under water either. It's essentially like hair. I imagine you'd need to keep it in a place with ample microbial activity like in soil or swampish water for a few weeks to see the degradation.
I do think it needs more care than fabrics like cotton or polyester. I wash wool separately on delicate and air dry. The centrifugal drying by the washing machine gets rid of nearly all the water, leaving them moist rather than damp.
Unfortunately that's probably not true (and I say that as someone who has some much-loved merino clothes).
The problem with animals like sheep is that they take up a huge amount of land, both directly grazing and for any additional feed that they require. The more intensively you farm them, the more ecosystem damage they do, but of course less intensive grazing either requires more land or reduces production and increases prices.
I couldn't quickly find any numbers to compare to other materials like cotton, but at least for food production, grazing animals are an order of magnitude worse on this metric than any plant-based crops (e.g. [1]).
The reason that land usage is bad is because it's zero sum: land that's being used for farming is likely to be less good at trapping carbon than other possible uses of the same land (e.g. reforestation), and is typically not very good habitat for wildlife (sheep in particular selectively graze on the tastiest plants and so tend to leave behind a monoculture of rough grasses which are their least favourite food).
If you have to buy new clothes today, I don't really know what the best option is. Plastic-based fibres obviously require oil (although many are based on recycled plastics) and end up creating microplastic pollution and waste products that won't biodegrade. Cotton is very land intensive to produce, but I suspect wool is even worse. Maybe destroying land in the tropics is worse for biodiversity than grazing sheep in temperate regions (similar to palm oil being land efficient, but damaging to rainforests in particular)? In any case I don't know of a simple way to weigh these tradeoffs.
The only thing that seems unambiguously like a win is buying fewer clothes and making them last longer.
Sustainability is a subjective thing. If we consider the actual direction we are going: i.e. ever increasing world population, nothing is really sustainable in the long term anyway.
But yes I agree that our worst enemy is fashion and the trend towards replacing perfectly working things with newer ones just for the sake of it.
Here in UK most sheeps are in places where they have been for hundred if not thousand years. I agree its bad to deforest new areas for sheep grazing but that is not happening here.
>The most significant factor influencing thermal comfort - even more important than air temperature and clothing - is human activity or body heat production (the metabolic rate). For instance, while it takes 12 clo-units to keep a resting person warm at an extremely low temperature of minus 40° C, this comes down to only 4 clo when this person is walking, and to only 1.25 clo when this person is running at 16 km/h. One of the most obvious reasons why our forefathers could bear lower indoor temperatures, was that they were more physically active than many of us.
To use that to one's advantage:
A little colder environment (e.g 18C/64F) than your comfort zone (e.g. 22C/72F) at normal humidity reminds you taking little breaks and be active during the day, it doesn't take much ("active recovery": 40-70% of your heart max; depending on your fitness status) and it goes a long way.
If you include the cognitive benefits/enhancement you get from deliberate short breaks instead of grinding hours away sitting in front of a screen, I struggle to really see a need to hack our biological design for a little colder environment. (sitting in a loose T and shorts outfit through trial and error I found out that I begin to feel noticeable uncomfortable at about 14-16C depending on my activity level throughout the day; I set my thermostat usually 1-2 degree above that (16C-18C) in accordance to the indoor humidity levels.)
Our bodies are extremely efficient [0] at regulating body temperature if one is cognizant of the instruction manual inherited through our evolution history.
Incorporating some High-Intensity/Resistance training gives an additional metabolic boost/afterburn which - no surprise here - synergistically couples itself with low-intensity/active recovery mode.
A bonus would be to expose yourself deliberately to extreme cold for a very short period of time (working your way slowly up). I personally don't go for numbers here but rather for the regular experience of real cold hitting your body and shifting some powerful gears (similar to an appreciation of "hunger" after a fast).
> This has resulted in a very diverse and fashionable line of lightweight clothes with high clo-values. A great deal of this progress is due to the use of new, synthetic materials
... which are endocrine disruptors turn produce microplastics. memo: plastics are bad.
Plastics are inert, with no sense of morality. They have many uses, many of which have negative externalities. Some negative externalities are worth it though because the alternative would be far worse.
Ultimately your existence is going to create externalities. Unless you're proposing to commit Hari Kiri what ever option you choose will create externalities. So at some point you're going to have to accept that you are leaving a mark on the world.
I personally believe a few grams of microplastics is acceptable in view of the tonnes of co2 not emitted.
Bisphenol A is certainly not inert. It's partly used as an antioxidant, so its very purpose in this application is to be oxidised, not inert. It's also a xenoestrogen.
Note: in chemistry, inert describes a substance that is not reactive.
I really want a label that says this product is safe and free of all the bad things like forever chemicals and phthalates. Think vegan or halal. Unfortunately the plastics industry loves to pedal the BPA-free meme while they are free two swap out BPA for very similar chemicals.
Outside of food and drugs, chemicals that are given a free pass until we find out it's been affecting peoples' health. That needs to change too as it's quite clear we cannot trust DuPont or 3M to do the right thing.
How does that work in preventing mold in dwellings, though? Moist air (byproduct of living things in enclosed spaces) likes settling on cool walls, so heating has other benefits than just keeping a comfortable living temperature.
I stayed overnight in an old castle. The owners didn't have enough money to keep it for a while in the water damage it caused was ridiculous. Castles are dependent on fires in every room to drive the leaking water out.
You can probably not avoid heating your home completely (unless you constantly have a window open), but you can lower the temperature by a couple of degrees without having mold problems if you also keep an eye on humidity.
Total game changer. Pouring out a tank full of water that otherwise would have gone into your walls is still a delight.
And the waste heat warms the room up too.
That is what I have in my shed. It doesn't work because the water freezes to the coils. Once this starts it keeps getting worse until you thaw the coils. Sure if you live where the temperature is never below freezing they are an option, but when the temperature gets colder they are not an option.
Not to mention I need heat to keep my plumbing from freezing.
If you mean because gloves prevent you from doing a lot of stuff while you have them on, I've found fingerless wool gloves to be great at keeping my hands warm while letting me e.g. type on a keyboard, grab stuff from my pockets, from my wallet, etc.
It's also rather unpleasant to wear clothing in general.
If there's an opportunity to reduce it to the minimum, I'd rather use it.
That's why I like my commieblocks with central heating.
> That's why I like my commieblocks with central heating.
As long as they had proper insulation from construction or a retrofit they're great. The one i grew up (built by Construction Troops in a hurry) had terrible insulation, with newspapers used to fill gaps between the windows and the walls during construction, but after the (government-sponsored) renewal of the exterior it's pretty damn good.
If you sweat, you wear too much clothes or the wrong kind.
Wool is nice and merino wool is the best.
Some synthetic stuff might also work, but is not so nice on the skin and some fiber just acts like a plastic sheet, meaning trapping all moisture inside.
But to repeat, we climbers and winter campers use merino wool. It is a bit more expensive, but worth it.
Not true. My body tends to 'run hot' and I overheat very easily. Even when I'm in shape (and years ago in high school), I can just be cleaning up at home just in a thin pair of shorts and be sweating. Some bodies are just different. I'd love to try out a wool shirt though, cotton does get very cold.
Different parts of your body can feel hotter or colder, because the sensation of temperature is not about your internal body temp, but the heat transfer at the skin.
Hands with a pair of gloves on will feel colder than e.g. armpits under 3 layers of clothing. It's absolutely possible to sweat and still feel somewhat cold.
Check transpiration friendly clothing (I am missing the terminology right now) - the underware (and apparel) that you would wear while doing intensive sport. There exists fabric that attempts retention of heat and avoidance of sweating (and its cooling effect).
(By the way: as I tried searching for better terms, three instances, I met the following results, one per instance: 'transgender clothing'; 'see-through clothing'; 'the sexualization of women in sports'. The search engines algorithms are getting some fixation?)
It is easy to get electrical blanket, heated shoe insoles etc. (use 12V/"car plug" versions if you don't trust the electrical isolation)
However, I want "cool people, not spaces" for summer, and it seems rather difficult to find such products - e.g. some kind of blanket and jacket with tubes, and some small compressor-based chiller (Peltier cells are solid-state, but the efficiency is terrible). Any suggestions?
I've been eyeing a normal electrically infra-red heating panel below my computer desk, I figured if it can warm my legs when I'm seated then that's enough comfort for me
I really need a good infra-red heater for my hands. I can wear warm socks, but I don't like typing in gloves. My home office is in the basement where it is a bit colder than I would like.
I have such a setup, see my comment elsewhere on this page. Takes 5 minutes to install and makes a huge difference. Sometimes I wrap a blanket around me like a poncho, helps keep the heat in.
Sounds like a great way to introduce mold problems into your home.
Also insulating the body is great and all, but then all your surfaces are cold. Every time you open a door, your hand gets freezing. Your sofa is cold. Your chair is cold. Your floor is cold. It's just not a comfortable way to live. It's unpleasant.
Then, any bits of your flesh exposed to the cold air in your house also feel cold.
Not to mention how much more uncomfortable it is to have to layer up at home, rather than just being able to wear a set of pyjamas.
> When discussing space heating, we overlook the fact that our own bodies are heating appliances too
...The dreaded sociologistic '«we»' ("We have killed Julius Caesar!" No sorry, I was elsewhere).
The "heating power" of the human body is estimated by some computers (maybe 'crunchers', for reduced chance of misunderstanding?) to be around 100W, based on typically intaken calories.
So imagine a house, imagine the rising temperature above it, a gradient, like a chimney.
Wouldnt a set of vertical heat pump modules right in the chimney be optimal? Like - do not put it hidden on the side for heat, but like a swarm of antenna right at the center of the chimney..
You know what is called when you dress warmer indoors because heating is too expensive, and when you don't shower so often to save even more energy?
Poverty. It is what we did when the world was much poorer.
Just because a behaviour is associated with poverty doesn't make it incorrect, nor does it make the opposite behaviour correct.
For example eating less is also associated with poverty. But people in more economically developed countries eat a massive excess of food causing epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Just because eating less is associated with poverty doesn't change the fact that eating less would hugely benefit the health of most people in wealthier countries.
Sometimes affluence results in excesses with significant negative consequences. And our excessive diets and energy consumption both have significant negative consequences.
Another benefit of pants and ligh sweater is that around 20C it's much easier to maintain 50% humidity in cold weather reagions. And I'm talking about European A+ house with Mechanical ventilation with Heat Recovery. Above 0C I don't need run humidifier even, CO2 is around 650ppm. Below 0C humidifier keeps around 45%RH, dropping to 40%RH on -15C days. But set room to 23C and you need to run humidifier much much harder.
Debating if heating the house or wearing a sweater comes first is privileged country talk
If you come from a place where isolation and HVAC/heating are not common then you're going to wear thicker clothes at home because there is no other way
Sure, you might have a bathroom heater or something but that's pretty much it
So, yeah. Wear that sweatshirt at home because that's extra comfy
Debating the environmental aspects of whether to wear a jumper may be 'privileged' country talk.
Debating whether to wear a jumper has been long discussed in times and countries poorer than our own. You see energy costs, money generally, and the thing that the less privileged tend to have less of is money, so they have to decide more carefully where to spend it.
I don't know why you made this an issue, should we just put on heaters out of respect for the plebs? Self flagellation? What's your solution to this wokian conundrum?
Isn't that privileged by lack of hard winters country talk? The nordics (southern hemisphere doesn't have much land in the "barely habitable zone") can afford heating because readiness for winter is literally the first thing on their mind if they are not, on all levels from individual to state. Sure, you don't see much of that happening these days because they just are, but that's no accident.
It really goes to fundamental designs of buildings. Like for example location of fireplace. In Nordic country it would never be on the outer wall. That is just wasteful.
Reading through the comments here, apparently I'm the only person that likes to feel a little cold. It makes me feel more alert. So, I keep my house around 62F and around 60F while sleeping.
Surely there's a startup somewhere working on ceiling mounted AI targeted infrared radiant heaters? It could work like those pixel LED headlights on cars to accommodate different body shapes.
Go with even thinner materials. I have thicker t-shirts for spring and fall and super thin t-shirts for summer. I also have super thin underwear and for summer. But, also consider using a ceiling fan. The long blades of a ceiling fan move a lot of air and barely generate any noise.
I have a question to all that agree to the title: are you married with a usual (in statistical terms) wife? Because, when I try to lower the house temp half a degree and start to put so something on, she starts the common nagging...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotatsu?wprov=sfla1
We use it in place of a coffee table and also use it as a dining table. My wife has trouble keeping warm, and she adores this table!
Only downside is that most kotatsu futon are designed for the traditional low table, so finding new covers/blankets is going to be difficult.
But I'm completely sold on the kotatsu concept. Highly recommended for toasty spouses!
Oh, and another cold spouse tip: Bedjet. It's like having your bed sheet made like a hot air balloon! A heater and fan pushes warm (or cold) air into the bag-like sheet. It works much, much faster than a heated blanket and doesn't have wires throughout the sheet that break. Again wins the cold spouse seal of approval.