7 ms·

I definitely sleep less well in the hot, humid, summer than in winter. When it's cold you can add layers. When it's hot you reach a limit of zero layers of clot

by dsq 4y ago

I definitely sleep less well in the hot, humid, summer than in winter. When it's cold you can add layers. When it's hot you reach a limit of zero layers of clothing/coverings and then have to move the heat and humidity elsewhere artificially via A/C. I also think (this is my subjective opinion, I have no proof) that cold reduces swelling and inflammation, thus making for easier breathing during sleep.

FooBarWidget 4y ago
Just having a regular fan helps a lot. Very little energy usage, very cheap. I bought a new fan a few weeks ago, one that is nearly soundless in its lowest setting. Even the slight breeze made by the lowest setting already makes a huge difference compared to stale hot air. It also uses an order of magnitude less energy than an A/C, and costs an order of magnitude less to purchase+install (100 EUR vs 3000 EUR).
- dsq 4y ago
  Oh, absolutely. I use a fan from April through May. Come summer with 35-40 degrees and 80-90 percent humidity, as is the case for six to eight months of the year in many places, no fan will help, only true-blue A/C. Moving air also helps against mosquitoes, I have read!
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    I have also noticed that whenever I turn on a fan, there's less chance that I end up with a mosquito bite next morning.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    Mosquitoes identify us by our CO2 emissions. So getting rid of the CO2 bubble coming out of our noses does a good job of masking us from the mosquitoes.
- samatman 4y ago
  Do you have a heat pump for heating? If you do, you get A/C for 'free', and if you don't, you're wasting so much energy in the winter that you can never make up for it by 'making do' with a fan rather than proper air conditioning. Signed, some guy who was in Belgium for the heat wave in 2018 and thinks Europeans should just suck it up and put in heat pumps. Sweltering in the summer and burning gas directly in the winter isn't virtuous.
  - eru 4y ago
    > If you do, you get A/C for 'free', and if you don't, you're wasting so much energy in the winter that you can never make up for it by 'making do' with a fan rather than proper air conditioning. Eh, depends on what you are heating with in winter. A friend of mine lives in a rural area and basically gets firewood for free. Even the best heat pump can't beat that. (Heat pumps are still great in general. And much better than using electricity directly to heat.)
    - samatman 4y ago
      If your labor has no value, sure. There's something satisfying about trading labor directly for something like heat that you normally have to buy. Exercise is good for you, sustainability and resilience are virtues, and so on. But heating even a modest space with wood is a Lot of Work. Also, it's still quite energetically inefficient, but that's a technicality here I feel, energy isn't completely fungible (it does salvage my sentence, which was about energy). The carbon accounting would be interesting to spitball but fiendishly hard to do fairly.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    I have been researching heat pumps, in my case air-to-water, so I could get very cold water “cheaply” in the summer, but it’s still a massive project to turn that into AC. I probably can’t make it work, because I need a bit too high water circulation temps to meet the heating load at 12°F/-11°C and the up-front economics are significantly worse due to not enough experienced installers/general lack of competition in the air-to-water space. (Our gas prices are low enough and electricity high enough that the payback period is lengthy.) If I had existing ducts, air-to-air heat pumps would make a lot of sense (and would give AC automatically), but hydronic distribution doesn’t afford “free” AC.
- Brybry 4y ago
  When it's very hot fans actually make you hotter[1][2] though the science isn't yet settled on what exact conditions fans are not appropriate for[3]. [1] https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/6594/ https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/6594/ [2] https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/faq.html [3] https://sci-hub.st/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31382270/ https://sci-hub.st/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31382270/
- eru 4y ago
  If you live in a place like London, where it gets hot in summer but many places still don't have A/C, a fan can work wonders. Here's the magic trick to cool your home down quickly: During the day your house heats up. In the evening your home is likely warmer than the night air. Many people try to open the window and put the fan close to the window to blow cold air in. What works much better is pointing the fan out of the window!
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    I'd love to open the windows in summer nights. Unfortunately anti-social people love to ride reaaaally loud motorbikes in the middle of the night.
    - eru 4y ago
      With this technique you can quickly cool your house down and then close the windows again perhaps an hour later.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        I installed a whole house fan in my previous place. Automatic louvers in the attic and a massive blower that I could open downstairs windows, turn the fan on and it would pull air in from the windows, push it into the attic, and out the louvers. Not only did it quickly replace the indoor air with cooler outside air, it would also ventilate the attic, preventing it from quickly reheating the upstairs. I could run it for 5 minutes and get the desired effect, maybe 10 minutes in an unusually hot spell.
      - masklinn 4y ago
        > With this technique you can quickly cool your house down and then close the windows again perhaps an hour later. Not unless you wake at 3AM to implement it. In summer, by the time most people go to bed the temperature has not dropped significantly yet.
        eru 4y ago
- Qem 4y ago
  Fans work fine for hot, dry climates, by increasing your sweat evaporation rate. When coupled to evaporative cooling (fans that pump a little water to evaporate into the wind), they work even better. But in hot, _humid_ climates, they are worthless. Climate change is increasing both average temperatures and humidity in many places. Heat and humidity are a killer combo.
  - aitchnyu 4y ago
    I'm in a coastal city in India and I really appreciate fans when the clouds trap the sunlight and its hottest just before it rains.
starkd 4y ago
My guess is very few people are willing to go back to pre-A/C days. Especially in automobiles. And any attempt to persuade people to give them up is going to be met with forceful pushback. It's now a luxury few will be willing to give up.
citrin_ru 4y ago
> When it's cold you can add layers Not being able to heat a room above 16°C is a better problem to have than not being able to cool below 30°C but cold takes it's tool too. At night you can use a thick comforter or a couple and the problem is solved, but working behind a desk in a cold room is trying. Many layers of closing helps but it is not an ultimate answer - while being in a cold room in warm clothing I become tired more quickly than in a room at 20°C—25°C.

by dsq 4y ago

FooBarWidget 4y ago

Just having a regular fan helps a lot. Very little energy usage, very cheap. I bought a new fan a few weeks ago, one that is nearly soundless in its lowest setting. Even the slight breeze made by the lowest setting already makes a huge difference compared to stale hot air. It also uses an order of magnitude less energy than an A/C, and costs an order of magnitude less to purchase+install (100 EUR vs 3000 EUR).

dsq 4y ago
Oh, absolutely. I use a fan from April through May. Come summer with 35-40 degrees and 80-90 percent humidity, as is the case for six to eight months of the year in many places, no fan will help, only true-blue A/C. Moving air also helps against mosquitoes, I have read!
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  I have also noticed that whenever I turn on a fan, there's less chance that I end up with a mosquito bite next morning.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  Mosquitoes identify us by our CO2 emissions. So getting rid of the CO2 bubble coming out of our noses does a good job of masking us from the mosquitoes.
samatman 4y ago
Do you have a heat pump for heating? If you do, you get A/C for 'free', and if you don't, you're wasting so much energy in the winter that you can never make up for it by 'making do' with a fan rather than proper air conditioning. Signed, some guy who was in Belgium for the heat wave in 2018 and thinks Europeans should just suck it up and put in heat pumps. Sweltering in the summer and burning gas directly in the winter isn't virtuous.
- eru 4y ago
  > If you do, you get A/C for 'free', and if you don't, you're wasting so much energy in the winter that you can never make up for it by 'making do' with a fan rather than proper air conditioning. Eh, depends on what you are heating with in winter. A friend of mine lives in a rural area and basically gets firewood for free. Even the best heat pump can't beat that. (Heat pumps are still great in general. And much better than using electricity directly to heat.)
  - samatman 4y ago
    If your labor has no value, sure. There's something satisfying about trading labor directly for something like heat that you normally have to buy. Exercise is good for you, sustainability and resilience are virtues, and so on. But heating even a modest space with wood is a Lot of Work. Also, it's still quite energetically inefficient, but that's a technicality here I feel, energy isn't completely fungible (it does salvage my sentence, which was about energy). The carbon accounting would be interesting to spitball but fiendishly hard to do fairly.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I have been researching heat pumps, in my case air-to-water, so I could get very cold water “cheaply” in the summer, but it’s still a massive project to turn that into AC. I probably can’t make it work, because I need a bit too high water circulation temps to meet the heating load at 12°F/-11°C and the up-front economics are significantly worse due to not enough experienced installers/general lack of competition in the air-to-water space. (Our gas prices are low enough and electricity high enough that the payback period is lengthy.) If I had existing ducts, air-to-air heat pumps would make a lot of sense (and would give AC automatically), but hydronic distribution doesn’t afford “free” AC.
Brybry 4y ago
When it's very hot fans actually make you hotter[1][2] though the science isn't yet settled on what exact conditions fans are not appropriate for[3]. [1] https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/6594/ https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/6594/ [2] https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/faq.html [3] https://sci-hub.st/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31382270/ https://sci-hub.st/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31382270/
eru 4y ago
If you live in a place like London, where it gets hot in summer but many places still don't have A/C, a fan can work wonders. Here's the magic trick to cool your home down quickly: During the day your house heats up. In the evening your home is likely warmer than the night air. Many people try to open the window and put the fan close to the window to blow cold air in. What works much better is pointing the fan out of the window!
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  I'd love to open the windows in summer nights. Unfortunately anti-social people love to ride reaaaally loud motorbikes in the middle of the night.
  - eru 4y ago
    With this technique you can quickly cool your house down and then close the windows again perhaps an hour later.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      I installed a whole house fan in my previous place. Automatic louvers in the attic and a massive blower that I could open downstairs windows, turn the fan on and it would pull air in from the windows, push it into the attic, and out the louvers. Not only did it quickly replace the indoor air with cooler outside air, it would also ventilate the attic, preventing it from quickly reheating the upstairs. I could run it for 5 minutes and get the desired effect, maybe 10 minutes in an unusually hot spell.
    - masklinn 4y ago
      > With this technique you can quickly cool your house down and then close the windows again perhaps an hour later. Not unless you wake at 3AM to implement it. In summer, by the time most people go to bed the temperature has not dropped significantly yet.
      - eru 4y ago
Qem 4y ago
Fans work fine for hot, dry climates, by increasing your sweat evaporation rate. When coupled to evaporative cooling (fans that pump a little water to evaporate into the wind), they work even better. But in hot, _humid_ climates, they are worthless. Climate change is increasing both average temperatures and humidity in many places. Heat and humidity are a killer combo.
- aitchnyu 4y ago
  I'm in a coastal city in India and I really appreciate fans when the clouds trap the sunlight and its hottest just before it rains.

starkd 4y ago

My guess is very few people are willing to go back to pre-A/C days. Especially in automobiles. And any attempt to persuade people to give them up is going to be met with forceful pushback. It's now a luxury few will be willing to give up.

citrin_ru 4y ago

> When it's cold you can add layers Not being able to heat a room above 16°C is a better problem to have than not being able to cool below 30°C but cold takes it's tool too. At night you can use a thick comforter or a couple and the problem is solved, but working behind a desk in a cold room is trying. Many layers of closing helps but it is not an ultimate answer - while being in a cold room in warm clothing I become tired more quickly than in a room at 20°C—25°C.