17 ms·
Insulation: First the body, then the home (2011)
- NovaPenguin 4y agoHeat people not spaces has been a mantra of mine for decades. It may not be AS comfortable but it is far from unpleasant.
- nradov 4y agoIt's rather unpleasant to have cold hands all the time.
- jolmg 4y agoIf 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.
- petrochenkov 4y agoIt'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.
- sofixa 4y ago> 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.
- ygra 4y agoHow 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.
- hutzlibu 4y agoThis is a real problem and ventilating often helps, but depending on the air humidity and walls you have to heat above a certain temperature, yes.
- xupybd 4y agoI lived for years too poor to heat. Mold is a real issue. No amount of cleaning and ventilation makes up for not heating your home. In my last year of study I was writing up my honours project and I had to stop to wipe the condensation off of my monitor. Mind you, it was about 2am.
- piyh 4y agoI 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.
- adrianN 4y agoYou 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.
- OJFord 4y agoDehumidifying & ventilating will be more effective anyway.
- hackernewds 4y agodehumidifier. no need to heat
- lynx23 4y agoNot for everyone. The more clothes I have to wear, the more I sweat. And that is unpleasant.
- hutzlibu 4y agoIf 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.
- lynx23 4y agoExactly. If I sweat, I wear too much clothes. So the "islotate yourself" mantra does not work for me.
- adrianN 4y agoI don't understand. Do you sweat and still feel cold?
- lynx23 4y agoAlmost. I typically sweat due to too much clothing, which results in me feeling cold.
- danwee 4y agoWhat's weird about that? My armpits could be sweating (e.g., wearning a t-shirt + sweater) but my hands (no gloves) could be freezing.
- bearmode 4y agoDifferent 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.
- Jenda_ 4y agoIt 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?
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI 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.
- mrweasel 4y agoThat 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.
- wiz21c 4y agoThat'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...
- proto_lambda 4y ago> 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.
- Scandiravian 4y agoI 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?
- wetpaws 4y agoI like walking naked in my house.
- wffurr 4y agoIf your energy costs correctly reflected the externalities of heating to make that comfortable, that would be perfectly fine. Pigovian taxes are the correct solution here, rather than moralizing over preferences.
- tmtvl 4y agoAs long as you pump 0 carbon into the atmosphere (which you have to share with the rest of the planet) through heating, that's perfectly fine.
- jl6 4y agoI 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.
- dogma1138 4y agoNice our own personal Stillsuits…
- John23832 4y agoExactly what I thought. This dude wants us to become Fremen.
- 4ggr0 4y agoIt 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)
- usrusr 4y agoI 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?
- HPsquared 4y agoSome sort of wicking layer might help with condensation.
- drewm1980 4y agoThere 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)
- prmoustache 4y agoI am using merino wool. That is the closest thing to sustainable I could think of as the same sheeps will produce it every year.
- jgraham 4y agoUnfortunately 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. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore
- a1371 4y agoI 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.
- berjin 4y ago> 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.
- benj111 4y agoPlastics 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.
- tpm 4y agoBisphenol 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.
- berjin 4y agoI 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.
- sebmellen 4y agoMerino wool undergarments are much more expensive but work really well and are not endocrine disruptors.
- jojobas 4y agoIt'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.
- raverbashing 4y agoDebating 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
- mdp2021 4y agoAwareness is duty, well before luxury.
- usrusr 4y agoIsn'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.
- Ekaros 4y agoIt 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.
- benj111 4y agoWhat? 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?
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- mihaaly 4y agoCannot 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.
- wahern 4y agoOlder 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.)
- citrin_ru 4y agoHeat 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.
- mdp2021 4y ago> 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. (...We had checked.)
- tdubhro1 4y agoNitpick 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.
- mdp2021 4y agoIt could be just rhetoric. 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.
- culi 4y agoA 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
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoSo 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..
- occz 4y agoUnderfloor heating works a bit on this principle, with more even heat distribution from the heat source.
- alkonaut 4y agoIf 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.
- dublidu 4y agoThat’s a luxury that many people in this world can’t afford.
- alkonaut 4y agoIndeed - 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.
- keyanp 4y agoWhat are you heating with specifically? 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.
- OJFord 4y ago> 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.
- trabant00 4y agoFirst 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.
- rambambram 4y agoThermal underclothing was the best 25 euros that I ever spent. Also, don't forget to take a cup of warm tea now and then. Or do some pushups, jumping jacks and squats when feeling cold at home.
- Nitrolo 4y agoAny particular brand you'd recommend? I don't need anything fancy but the higher range stuff (Helly Hansen, Arcteryx, Patagonia, etc.) is easily triple that.
- rambambram 4y agoI 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.
- klondike_klive 4y agoI 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.
- leethargo 4y agoI 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.
- kekebo 4y agoI 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.
- Nitrolo 4y agoFunny 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.
- wodenokoto 4y agoI don't understand HN obsession with this. I want to walk around in boxers and a T-shirt when at home.
- LatteLazy 4y agoExactly.
- danwee 4y agoExactly. 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.
- bluGill 4y agoIf 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.
- schiffern 4y agoWhen 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.
- bearmode 4y agoSounds 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.
- drdec 4y agoMy Dad was all over this but more succinctly: "If you're cold, put on a sweater!"
- ianpurton 4y agoThanks. Just tried it. So far it appears to be working.
- bloopernova 4y agoI 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotatsu?wprov=sfla1 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.
- elric 4y agoKotatsu 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.
- zelos 4y agoSurely 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.
- alliao 4y agoI'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
- bluGill 4y agoI 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.
- PopAlongKid 4y agoIt's not bad typing with fingerless gloves. Per Wikipedia, "Cigarette smokers and church organists sometimes use fingerless gloves."
- elric 4y agoI 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.
- pard68 4y agoThe "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.
- profstasiak 4y agopeople 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.
- pard68 4y agoA 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.
- soperj 4y ago> almost 8 degrees Fahrenheit. 4.5C for those wondering.
- mrgoldenbrown 4y agoThe 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."
- batushka3 4y agoAnother 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.
- great_wubwub 4y agoThat's an awfully long-winded way to say "go put on a sweater before you turn up the heat".
- acyou 4y agoHot 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.
- green-salt 4y agoSelf expression through heatsink fin design
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dav_Oz 4y ago>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). [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_adipose_tissue#Function https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_adipose_tissue#Functio...
- tsoukase 4y agoI 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...
- erictd 4y agoOne of my favorite warming hacks is to put a towel or small blanket on my lap while I work at my desk.
- caxco93 4y agoIs this because of that one comment on the "what have you been doing wrong your entire life" post?
- ativzzz 4y agoGreat, now how do I insulate my body against the heat in the summer? I can only take off so many clothes
- hasbot 4y agoGo 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.
- ativzzz 4y agoI don't wear shirts at all in the summer - I work from home lol The fan definitely helps, but when it's over 100 degrees outside every day for weeks you gotta crank up the AC or it's rough
- Magi604 4y agoMy low-tech keep-warm solution this past winter was the mighty hot water bottle. It cost $5 from some knick-knack store and it does an excellent job of keeping my sheets warm until long after I've fallen asleep. It saved me from shelling out for an electric blanket.
- empiricus 4y agoYou know what is called when you dress warmer indoors because heating is too expensive, and when you don't shower so often to save even more energy? Poverty. It is what we did when the world was much poorer.
- DoughnutHole 4y agoJust because a behaviour is associated with poverty doesn't make it incorrect, nor does it make the opposite behaviour correct. For example eating less is also associated with poverty. But people in more economically developed countries eat a massive excess of food causing epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Just because eating less is associated with poverty doesn't change the fact that eating less would hugely benefit the health of most people in wealthier countries. Sometimes affluence results in excesses with significant negative consequences. And our excessive diets and energy consumption both have significant negative consequences.
- jpdaigle 4y agoI'm shocked and disappointed at how expensive retrofitting insulation into a minimally insulated 1930s Bay Area house actually is. I estimate gas heating costs at around 2500$ / 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)
- anon23anon 4y agoConstruction 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.
- mxuribe 4y ago@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!!
- artisanscribble 4y agoI'm always bewildered when someone links to the not-solar version of lowtechmagazine. Solar version here: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/02/body-insulation-thermal-underwear.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/02/body-insulation-th...
- hasbot 4y agoReading 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.
- Giorgi 4y agomeh, I like to be comfortable at home and not wear layers.
- dang 4y agoRelated: Insulation: First the body, then the home (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25418676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25418676 - Dec 2020 (305 comments)
- jl2718 4y agoModern HVAC and insulation has it all wrong by focusing on air temperature. You want warm floors with high thermal mass.