Wool. A wool undershirt, thick wool sweater and wind-proof, water-proof jacket has kept me comfortable down to about -15C. You can pickup some really nice gear on the cheap from army surplus sales in Norway at least, but I think it's the same in most NATO countries.
Ditto, I am also interested on any input from others who have dabbled in the field that OP mentions. Being from the Northeastern United States, I have always just picked up base layers of various thickness from L.L. Bean, like this: https://global.llbean.com/shop/Long-Underwear-Base-Layers/51...
I don't think of this as a technology or expensive, though. They are somewhat pricey, but can be worn for many winters and thus have good value.
I'd also recommend Mountain Hardware. Some of the North Face's more expensive stuff is good too: my sleeping bag comes from them.
Look for companies that are long standing and have good warranties. These companies have good reputations to protect, and are aware that buyers of outdoor gear tend to be very loyal to companies that treat them well. My family personally swore off Columbia after two of their coats failed us catastrophically, for example.
The suggestions by the sibling comments are great.
I'm also in Berlin and I use Uniqlo's HeatTech undershirt and long johns under jeans/shirt. They're pretty cheap (€10 each) and it makes a lot of difference. I never feel cold. A good jacket is also essential. Downfeather Jackets are my favourite.
Other than that it's just a hoodie between shirt and jacket, scarfs and "hand-shoes". The Coronavirus mask also helps during windy days.
High quality merino wool doesn't itch (at least not for most people), is naturally odor-resistant and can be super comfortable. I mostly use Icebreaker, but Smartwool and Aclima make good stuff too.
+1 for Icebreaker. Their fabrics are a blend of wool with synthetic materials, and they are the best shirts I've ever had. Unlike other wool fabrics they are very easy to take care of. I wash them just like cotton, no special detergents needed. Not even high spin cycles seem to harm them. (But I've never put them in the dryer, so I don't know if they would survive that).
They may be odor resistant, but for me they still get smelly after two or three days. A lot better than cotton, but not odor free.
The downsides are that even their lightest fabrics are too warm for summer, and the fabric is a lot less mechanically sturdy as cotton. It seems to tear easily. Most of my older icebreaker shirts have a few holes, even though the fabric still looks like new.
If you want to dip a toe into this without spending much, 32degrees has a a pretty good sale right now. In the men's baselayers section you'll find shirts for $7, leggings for $9). I think they're one of those Costco brands. I've heard that some of their stuff pills up after a few washes, but that's not really a big deal for me at this price.
I would recommend having a look at https://varusteleka.com, they're the biggest outdoor/surplus store in Europe, and they ship just about anywhere. Their wool flannel shirts and field shirts are the best I've ever owned, as are their worker wool pants, and they have enough merino clothing to layer for any weather.
Aside from the own brands, they often get very good surplus winter gear in, like thick Swiss knitted wool sweaters, Czech parkas, Finnish wool pants and so on.
My current winter outerwear workhorses are a Czech parka and a pair of Finnish M65 wool pants, total cost less than €50. With long johns and a woolen sweater underneath, I have yet to encounter winter weather that would make me uncomfortable.
It can be costly but it doesn't have to. You pay extra for comfort, looks, low weight and obviously the branding.
Warmth itself is cheap if you accept clothes that are a bit heavier and maybe not ultra-breathable. Adding a pair of cotton long johns and a cotton long sleeve turtleneck underneath whatever you are wearing can easily keep you warm, it's just not super comfortable and not super fashionable.
Cotton underwear doesn't work that well if your activity varies. Wear enough cotton to be warm while sitting for hours, and you're certain to be sweaty after five minutes of physical activity. And moist cotton underwear makes you cold.
I tend to wear wool long johns from December to March. Decades of experience with cotton, too. Wool is much, much better.
However, the post is suggesting people in comfortable status quos change their behavior - the OP is explaining that yes, it's totally achievable to be comfortably warm in all activities indoors and out, but it costs money.
Totally disagree with the layers philosophy. Way too much fuss. In mid-winter London I wear a t-shirt and a jacket. Perfectly warm. Just get a good jacket. Easy on, off, no ceremony.
2 things:
* this Patagonia down jacket is a killer jacket, it's a-ma-zing. Of course it gets the job done.
* bike rides require less clothing than walking, because your body heat keeps you warm. Plus, if you're not a heavy sweater, you're blessed (as am I).
there's certainly a tradeoff to be made here. putting on three extra layers just to go to the store is a pain. I do find that layers are much more versatile if you're going to be spending a lot of time outside or going in and out of spaces at a wide range of temperatures. with only a winter jacket and a t-shirt, I am likely choosing between being way too hot or way too cold. my winter coat is pretty bulky, so if I'm not wearing it, I'm carrying it.
when I'm going out for a while in the winter, I like to wear a cotton shirt, a wool sweater, insulated vest, a medium-weight windproof jacket, and a mostly empty backpack. if I get too warm, the vest and possibly the sweater can just go in the backpack. with this setup, I can be comfortable at any temperature from 30F to 60F without having to hold onto anything I'm not wearing. on really cold days, I swap in my heavy winter coat.
Living in Finland. For city life I have never needed extra clothing. Short sleeved shirt and proper jacket. Change the jacket depending if it's +15C or 0C or -15C...
London, sure. If you live somewhere with -25C winters, you either need layers or a set of different jackets, because a heavy down coat rated for -30C will be hot and sweaty if you so much as fast-walk at -5C. I find it more economical to own just a light synthetic jacket and wear extra layers than having an expensive down jacket just for the few weeks at -20C and below.
Layers are also a must if you do outdoor winter activities. You want to remove layers when you're active so you don't get all sweaty, and put them back on when you rest. Because sweat + cold wind is a really nasty combo.
Having said that, as far as I can tell most people in the city here don't do much winter sports and just own like 3 different coats for different weather.
I thought so too, until I spent 2019 Thanksgiving in Banff, Alberta.
-20°F (-30°C) is a real change in perspective of what cold is. You absolutely need layering, as the equipment you need to be comfortable outside is way more than a jacket.
Berlin is a good 5°C colder than London in the winter.
In London I had one jacket, mostly to protect against rain, but it was also an extra layer.
In Copenhagen, which has similar winter temperatures to Berlin, I had to buy a thicker jacket for the winter. I've worn the new jacket on trips to London and felt hot.
You can put together an array of warm layers on the cheap at Uniqlo - their ultralight down and heattech lines are very warm, well-made, and inexpensive.
Study that measured cold resistance among Finnish population found out that city dwellers in the south (Helsinki) had better cold resistance than people living in the north (Lappi).
People in the cities wear thin city clothes even during winters, and freeze their ass off, while people living in much colder rural regions dress sensibly and stay warm.
I found the same when I worked in UK. I'm from Poland and in the winter everybody wear winter clothes even if it's 5C. Homes are well insulated and heated.
People in UK by default wear much colder clothes so they are more used to cold. The end effect was that me and my friend were going everywhere in coats while everybody else was in their shirts :)
What's funny is that people that moved to Poland from Siberia had similar experience. They were cold in our houses because it's "just" 18C while they are used to 25-30C inside because of constant heating.
This was one thing that stood out to me when I visited Ireland and the UK. I'm from continental Europe and I was way overdressed (jacket, ...) than majority of people I would see. I explained it away that it was a rare week where the sun was shining so people went out of their way to wear less clothing but it looked so strange to me.
True - I was out changing my car battery in shorts and a t-shirt the other day when it was 5c out. As someone else pointed out, they take it to extremes in the north-east - I was in a park one christmas in Newcastle and despite being -1 and snowing, there were people in shorts and t-shirts.
Also, being close to the sea, wind and humidity. Vs inland dry air and much less wind.
Even though the "feels like" algorithm must be written by a dev in California (it's +5C, brr, feels like -3C), I guess there's something to having the "feels like" temps consistently 5 to 10 degrees below the actual air temperature.
This lines up with my experience - my Russian immigrant girlfriend has very little tolerance for cold, which surprised me considering how low temperatures get in Moscow. She explained that bundling up during the winter is taken so seriously that babies and young children wear thick insulating hats pretty much 24/7 during every non summer month. The idea that being cold causes colds (infections generally) is taken for granted by Russians. Oddly, taking a dip in ice cold water is considered good for your health.
This is all cool ideas but sadly keeping home cool is not that easy due to problems with humidity and consequently mold. Old houses were much less airtight than modern ones. So sadly I think it’s a trade off: either modern energy efficient house with mechanical ventilation or older, rather windy and cold house.
Modernising older Homes to be energy effective appears to be a lost cause. If you make them airtight there isn’t enough air movement and if you Don’t heat them, they develop condensation problems. Maybe full refitting of insulation, doors and windows, and whole HVAC system would help but this is rather unrealistic for most owners of older homes.
The air movement problem in a tightly sealed house is dealt with an HRV (or ERV) which brings in filtered fresh air, but tempers it with the exhausted stale air:
In some regions with strict insulation building codes, balanced ventilation with a heat exchanger for recovery is mandatory. Well, almost mandatory, it can get complicated.
Old houses tend to pull moisture into and out of the insulation between summer and winter, which can become a problem above and beyond the high heat bills that they create. Matt Risinger had a great video where they were rebuilding a 1930s house and you could see where all the moisture had built up and wept back out of the insulation, staining the wood behind the plaster.
My understanding is the problem with making old buildings airtight is the lack of proper vapor barriers under the house, especially if it was built on a slab. For homes built on crawlspaces, you can "encapsulate" them, which reduces energy losses and improves air quality. Typically encapsulated crawlspaces are ventilated and/or dehumidified, which is supposed to stop moisture ingress into the living space.
Even old draughty homes suffer really badly from damp and mold due to condensation once you get down below a certain temperature for sustained periods. I grew up without central heating (Im 40 and this isn't that unusual for a lot of the UK) and later lived in older unheated houses a couple of times and damp was always a huge issue despite their draughtiness. 13° sounds about right for average indoor temp in unheated parts of the home in winter in the house I grew up in, but it's worth noting that a) you spend most of your time in the bit of your home that you do heat, be that the kitchen or the living room, and b) when you wake up in an unheated bedroom in the middle of winter your walls are damp and if it's got below zero you will have ice on the inside of the windows because the temperature will have dropped a lot lower than 13°. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, miserable and if you want to control the damp you then have to open the windows to air out your room, so it never gets warm. Having said that 18° which is the temperature I keep my house at in winter is perfectly pleasant as long as you wear a jumper and is warm enough that I've never had issues with damp or mold.
It doesn't need to be at the dew point inside, if it's a few degrees lower we already win a ton. The 21°C is really just comfort, buildings will be fine at 15°C just as well.
We recently got a dehumidifier for a room that we aren't using most of the time. Better put some greenwashed kWh into taking moisture out of there than burning gas with the conventional heating system to keep the room hot (and it would still be too wet).
My wife and I just moved from LA (my birthplace) to Detroit (my wifes birthplace, I have lived here previously) and it sure has been a struggle to keep my office environment 'good'. I have a hyperhidrosis issue (excessively sweaty hands) that compounds the situation.
I feel like homes and offices do not breath. My anecdotal napkin math would say like 10% of buildings are designed with proper ventilation, blending of outdoor/indoor air, etc... and the rest are just boxes that are slowly killing us.
The furnace is below me which is good and bad in that it warms my office quick but sorta too much. I am constantly battling too hot or too cold and of course the humidity. Lots of trial/error of opening various windows to get a cross flow without letting too much hot air out.
That is just temperature. I have a CO2 monitor that has been interesting. I try to keep my CO2 ppm below 800 foor good measure. For a while I was feeling like dogshit in here and I assume it is due to being literally directly above a gas furnace in an older single family home - in hindsight I wish I had a monitor that detected more gases.
Anyway, still figuring out the secret to this. If anyone has tips for a glove that would work to keep my hands warm while typing I would love a recommendation. The article focuses on wearing clothing that will keep your trunk and limbs warm but I find that my hands are always an issue.
> I feel like homes and offices do not breath. My anecdotal napkin math would say like 10% of buildings are designed with proper ventilation, blending of outdoor/indoor air, etc... and the rest are just boxes that are slowly killing us.
First off, you do not want buildings to "breathe" through air leakage. It is desirable for a 'seal tight and vent right':
Also, air temperature is only one component of feeling comfortable in a room. How warm/cool the walls are, and having good double- (or triple-) pane windows also contributes:
Modern building codes in colder climate zones mandate a layer of exterior insulation to deal with this bridging.
> I try to keep my CO2 ppm below 800 foor good measure. For a while I was feeling like dogshit in here and I assume it is due to being literally directly above a gas furnace in an older single family home - in hindsight I wish I had a monitor that detected more gases.
You may wish to look into an HRV (or ERV) and get some filtered fresh air:
Try open hand warmers designed to warm the blood on the top of your hand as it flows into your fingers. In my experience, these work great at keeping my hands warm while not reducing dexterity.
Fingerless gloves should help. I also have some thermasilk glove liners that I love, keep hands warm and also breathable. They are quite thin, but I had to cut the fingertips off the middle fingers for typing and touch screens.
> Sorry, I am not buying it. Not because you haven't done good work on the article: you have. Also not because N.American homes are overheated, and the residents under-dressed: they are. I do not buy it because the Japanese live the way you suggest in the winter, and it is miserable
I have a mother in Scotland and I have a mother-in-law in Canada. Worst it ever gets near my mother seems to be -5C, but I am perpetually cold there as people play games with turning their heating off at certain hours and living in 150-year-old converted barns and so on. Meanwhile, in Winnipeg it seems to get to -30C on the reg and I spend all of my time there warm and cosy because if the heating goes off or the house is improperly insulated then you die.
We had a problem with this in older Chicago apartments, usually 2 flats and quads. These buildings usually had radiator heat fired by a common boiler in the basement and city mandated turn-on dates and minimum daily/nightly temperatures.
In theory each radiator has a regulator valve that allows you to moderate the amount of steam flowing through it. In reality these valves are all painted over/corroded/never worked in the first place, and all radiators run at full blast. It was not uncommon to see apartments with open windows in January to help regulate the heat produced by the radiator. Tenants didn't care because they didn't pay for the gas directly, although it was obviously built into the rents, and the land lords never wanted to spend the money to upgrade these old buildings, since the excessive usage of gas was built into everyone's rent and the upgrades were not.
Then again, given the age of those windows there probably was very little difference between them being open and closed anyways.
This problem was fixed when I moved into a new construction apartment which had a minisplit to heat/cool the living space. Until I found out that mini-splits have the same issue heating as ACs occasionally have in very hot summers; they can't provide any heat once the ambient temperature gets colder than the exterior coils (since it's literally an AC running backwards). That was a bad surprise.
There was an article the other day that basically said these steam boilers became popular during the 1918 flu pandemic, and they thought increased air circulation would help people not catch the flu (turns out they were right). So the boilers were tuned to run extra hot, as they were intended to be run with the windows open!
As I suspected before clicking, that article cites that explanation as being given by steam heating system expert Dan Holohan. He has a talk up on YouTube that I came across a few years ago. It is interesting on a number of levels, and I recommend giving it a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQB0KK2rxcw
I live that way right now in a 1950s building in NYC. The heaters only have two settings: off and thermonuclear. And the controls are centralized, ie there's no thermostat in my home. So, yeah, we control the temp by opening the windows sometimes. All that being said, living in an apartment building is automatically far more efficient than a house. We don't need to insulate three of our walls because they directly abut other heated residences and not open air. We have one big boiler for 120 or so residents.
Given a similar level of insulation, yes. But I wouldn’t discount how efficient modern homes can be compared to older apartment blocks.
My 1980s home went through 99 therms of gas last month in Idaho, and that’s with us hand washing dishes (broken dishwasher) using gas hot water. After fixing the dishwasher and replacing some caulk that had failed, I think we’ll probably go through 75-80 therms per month, fewer if I went with tankless hot water. You would be very hard pressed to go through that few therms in an older apartment, especially when you’re literally heating the outside.
Newer apartment buildings absolutely crush that figure though, for all the reasons you listed. The only advantage that individual homes have over taller apartment buildings energy wise is that you can pack more solar panels on top of shorter buildings.
I spent a winter in Moscow many moons ago, they had 2 sets of windows creating with a significant corridor in between them. Where I was, heating was centrally controlled by the city so if it got hot, open the first window. Still hot? Open the second for extra fresh air. Quite a good system I thought and awfully romantic for me: watching the snow fall through open windows with the heating on full blast.
Yeah, I find that people spend the least amount of money on insulation/heat that they can. I’m from Edmonton, and the coldest I’ve ever been was the winter when I lived in London, UK, as their insulation sucks and their heating sucks. In Edmonton, that’s not possible, because you have a few days of -40C weather annually, so your pipes will freeze without proper insulation (and you’ll die).
Now, it’s not comfortable living through -40C weather, but it’s as cold inside as -5C in the UK (outside it’s way, way worse, of course).
The comment isn’t about the temps outside, it’s inside the house. The point was that in really cold places people have to have good heating and insulation so the house feels better than places with more mild winters.
Have you ever experienced Humid -40C air? It doesn't happen.
I've had very humid -25C air in Alaska, and wearing literally everything I own (which is perfect at -48C), I was freezing cold for the entire day, even when running, snowboarding, jumping up and down and beating my chest.
I don't think it is, unless temperature stays constant or there is incoming source of water vapor. It reaches 100% when it is coldest in the night and all water deposits down as frost (to provide exercise to people parking outside), then it warms up and the air is dryer. Bigger the temp swings drier the air outside.
Applies to continental climate though, when you are near sea you probably have air constantly replaced with humid air.
> Have you ever experienced Humid -40C air? It doesn't happen.
> I've had very humid -25C air in Alaska
You haven't had very humid -25C air, in an absolute sense. Take a look at a vapour pressure calculator (https://www.omnicalculator.com/chemistry/vapour-pressure-of-...): the vapour pressure of water at -25C is about 63 Pa, but about 13 Pascals at -40C. The difference of 50 Pa is trivial compared to the ~100,000 Pa pressure of air at sea level. Once you're below 0C, there just isn't enough water around in a vapour (or suspended) phase to have much impact.
A Globe and Mail article from 2016 discussed this phenomenon (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/fitn...). Its conclusions were still tentative, but the strongest correlate of the effect seemed to be cloud cover, where bright sunlight felt warmer despite colder air temperatures.
I guess most people's experience of living in London is because they lived in shitty rented accommodation. Most houses in London were built before the 1970s. Being rented would mean they they would be less likely to have double-glazing retro-fitted or insulation improved because the landlord wouldn't give a shit.
There are two kinds of accommodation in London. As you say, shitty rented accommodation. And then accommodation that's really property-turned-bank deposit for the rich. No one lives in those.
I think it's that most rented accommodation in areas desirable for people like software developers or foreigners new to the city is as you describe.
Further out, or in less trendy areas, there may well be a different mix of old/new council/private-built buildings. I lived in a wonderful 1930s apartment block (good double glazing, shared building heating system etc) and a decent 1970s council-built house.
I also lived in a crappy 1960s council flat (single glazed aluminium framed windows) and an 1900-ish house-illegally-turned-into-flats (single glazed, wooden sash windows).
I don't know what the rules are in London, but in Chicago landlords are responsible for paying for heating. An interesting side effect is that even crappy old buildings have triple paned windows and super efficient heaters.
It's probably not fair, but the side effect of it is that people don't freeze in their homes, and heating can be more efficient because they can use whole building systems.
And at the end of the day, the tenants basically pay for it anyway as part of their rent. It's just spread out more.
yes, but people's preferences can vary. e.g. I can't stand it being less than 77 F inside, while others will be happy with 64 F. I know my electricity/heat bill is always significantly higher than others in the Winter.
Coldest winter of my life was near London. Heater was wired to cheap middle of the night electricity so you had to plan a day ahead to have hot water or heat. Friends had to go to hardware store to get tokens to feed their rental heaters. Ran out at night? Put on a extra blanket and get there early the next day.
Oh, definitely. I lived in university accommodations that were awful. The residents the year after me sued the university as the residence wasn’t inhabitable (black mold).
I find it cooler indoors in New Zealand during the winter than I did in the UK for this reason. NZ pretends it’s always warm and has little home insulation, or none in my house, except the ceiling which I did. New Zealand has very poor housing.
I found a week-long business trip to South Island in the winter terribly cold.
Going from 30°C weather to 12°C isn't a great start, but then the otherwise-decent hotel had single glazed windows, which the maid would open every morning. The only heater in the room was an electric resistance one attached to the wall.
In offices, most of the foreigners on the trip were wearing coats and other extra layers.
Young people walking around seemed to be happy in shorts and t-shirt. My conclusion was that New Zealanders are tough, outdoors people, and haven't upgraded their building insulation regulations from whatever they inherited from Britain.
We're not that tough. Any house built in the past 15 years must meet the newer regulations of double-glazing and roof,wall,floor insulation. There are plenty of older properties without any of these standards and these are terrible and are also probably the most likely to be Holiday homes or AirBnBs, but any houses that are tenanted now need to be upgraded to meet minimum standards.
Most private houses also have efficient heat-pumps in at least one room, I could never work out why we still use aluminum window frames though over normal uPVC, which are still not even an option in most new builds.
Personally I would ban resistive heating, they are generally in lower cost rentals, student properties etc and cost a lot for the tenant to use especially as these tenants are generally at the poorer side of the fence.
Stayed in some really cold crappy holiday homes in the south island one we had to leave the electric stove/oven on full to get it to bearable!
>Personally I would ban resistive heating, they are generally in lower cost rentals, student properties etc and cost a lot for the tenant to use especially as these tenants are generally at the poorer side of the fence.
You mean the radiant / bar heater type ones? I cannot agree with this, while I agree that they're expensive to run and inefficient for heating rooms / whole house, they do work well if you use them to directly heat only the part of the room you're in.
I've lived in old houses where the ceilings are too high to effectively heat via convection (e.g. a modern 5x5x2.4 room is 60m^3 volume, while an old house with the same width and length but 3.6 metre ceilings is 90m^3 of volume to heat - combine that with inferior ceiling insulation common in old houses and the fact that hot air rises, the space often cools faster than the convection heater can keep up) and there was no natural gas service, so we just had to sit in front of radiant heaters.
As someone who grew up in South Africa I can confirm it. I grew up in the north of the country where in winter it can dip to just below freezing during the night and early morning. It would be back up to 16 degrees at lunchtime though.
I now live in the U.K. and although house quality and insulation is appalling compared to other places it is still infinitely warmer here in the middle of winter than in South Africa.
Coldest I have ever been was going back to visit family during winter there. My wife, who is from Germany and used to -5 to -10 in winter, would take a lot of persuading to visit South Africa in the middle of winter again.
Was in South Africa in Winter. Your friend is right. Some AirBnBs were so cold, you just wanted to stay in bed and never get up. But the people were amazing, and the food, and the nature.
Oh my, London was OK, but my SF appartement was freezing cold during the winter and horribly hot during the summer. And of course no AC and a shitty heater.
SF exists, for better or worse, in a Goldilocks zone where mediocre housing and clothing will still suffice for the climate. It gets cold, but rarely deadly cold. It gets hot, but rarely deadly hot. It gets wet, but mostly via fog. It gets windy, but not to hurricane force. Visitors regularly get faked out by the advertised mild weather and get the experience of a windy, cold grey SF summer in shorts - which is survivable but unpleasant. You can't last the entire year that way - rough sleepers do die from exposure in the harshest weeks - but it's "enough" to have some enclosure and warm socks in the winter and some ventilation for the fall heat waves.
And the constant backdrop of humidity can't be overemphasized in why it's unpleasant. Extreme dry temperatures kill you, mild wet ones make you feel dead.
This may also explain the age and quality of its housing stock, which is often a combination of moldy and drafty. There isn't an incentive pushing regulation further, so the landowners have their pick of NIMBY policies that keep old stock in the mix.
I was born and raised in Poland. Granted, Polish winters are not as bad as Siberian (-32°C is the lowest I experienced).
My friends and colleagues from the south (or even US) always ask me, why I dislike winter -- "I should already be used to it".
I doubt you can ever get used to it, but we've insulated our houses well and have good heating system (especially in dense cities). And you'd usually try to escape the cold as often as possible, mostly spending winter inside.
On the other hand, an additional negative of winters (or late autumn) is the heating makes the indoor air "thick" and unpleasant. You need to ventilate the room every hour or so. It's really tedious. During summer, you'd just leave your windows open whole day and have a nice air exchange.
Interestingly the same can be seen in Japan despite it being a common example: Honshu (the main island) generally has poor insulation and heating. Hokkaido, however, generally has good insulation and central heating.
Unsurprisingly, while nowhere near as bad as Winnipeg winter in Hokkaido is much longer and deeper than in most of Honshu. Although it likely helps that Hokkaido is much drier, especially in summer, meaning house rot is less of an issue.
Because Japanese house is traditionally built to be able to pass winds for natural wind cooling in summer. It was fine for summer but bad for winter, so we love Kotatsu.
Now, we can't live with natural wind cooling in summer (A/C is the only option), it's bad in both summer and winter.
Seconded. I've lived in high-rises in NYC and cute houses in the bay area. Despite it staying much warmer outside in the bay area, my house (and others', apparently) is so poorly insulated that I feel much colder indoors in the winter in the bay area compared to in NYC.
>I feel much colder indoors in the winter in the bay area compared to in NYC.
NYC is uh, special. Due to the prevalence of steam heat most apartments I've been in usually open the windows when it gets too hot in the winter. Having a thermostat in such an apartment is a status symbol.
In short, combination of humidity plus tons of waste heat means you generally don't get cold there (unless something broke or you don't live somewhere with steam).
This is my experience as well (going to mild places in Europe and many houses without central heating being at almost the same ~ 10C - 15C temperature as outside on the streets.)
I concur. My account is just as anecdotal and also limited to a specific region. That said, I recently moved to North America and have lived in Pakistan my entire life. A combination of poorly insulated building materials, old houses, an energy crisis, and a low GDP per capita leads most individuals to people conserving body-heat in the winter. It isn't fun, and you're never warm enough.
It was bizarre for me to lounge around in a T-shirt and jeans while it was snowing outside this month. The average coldest in winter for Lahore is 5.9 °C (42.6 °F). When the weather turns, you pack your summer clothes and unpack your trunk of winter clothes. You're wearing many layers and a heavy jacket indoors with your gas-heater burning a flame for extra measure. Oh, and your blankets are much heavier in the winter.
The record coldest it's ever gotten in Lahore was an unfathomable –2.2 °C on January 17, 1935. It's never been that cold in my lifetime.
And yet, winter feels infinitely colder in Pakistan than it does in Canada.
I appreciate the thought and agree in most situations the solution is to dress better, but when it’s -40 actual temperature and hitting -70F with the windchill I’d still call it “bad weather”.
At that point you can get frostbite in under a minute. Dressing appropriately starts to feel more like putting on a hazmat suit than getting dressed to go out as any bit of exposed skin is at risk.
Even many cold-weather accessories you might have start to feel insufficient. A knit scarf or toque is great in many situations, but the cold wind will cut through it like a knife.
I remember being sent outside at recess as a kid at those kinds of temperatures. I mean, I still go outside when I have to but I don’t exactly look for excuses to leave the house.
Fun fact -40C == -40F. The nice thing about those days it it is typically too cold to snow up here in Minnesota.
A thin wool hat is really nice around the house if SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED keeps things on the colder side. Same deal for camping - if you trap the body heat that escapes your head, you will feel much warmer - be it the keyboard or a hammock. Same goes for a good pair of socks too.
More fun at -40 (the one time Canada agrees with the US): the snow on the ground squeaks when you step on it - and there's rarely any wind. And your car better have a tank-heater - plugged in at least 2 hours before you plan to leave.
I'm now in a milder climate, but still wear the thin hat all winter (e.g.right now). Alas, the thick wool lumberjack socks are missing from the stores.
A missing fact here is that winters are foggy in Lahore. I live in CO now where winters are fairly dry, and I can go out in 20 degree F in shorts and a t shirt for a while, as long as I have a hat on. Whereas going outside in Portland in January when it is 40 degrees would be hell for me.
Hello, and thank you! It is :) I've been trying out Tim Hortons as well, it's quite nice.
> Until you go outside and try to walk in the street :)
I feel like I lucked out and bought the right winter coat early on. Or maybe just stepping from one heated building to another doesn't feel that bad. Maybe it's a combination of the two. Either way, I haven't felt cold on the street yet. And It's already colder than my coldest winter experience in Pakistan.
It is incredibly humid in Lahore, but much less consistently windy than Toronto. That said, we experience the effects of Monsoon season so it gets super windy the few times it does.
I lived in Cyprus one winter. It would only go down to about 5-7C at night. I was freezing. Actually, I got sores on my toes because the tile floors were so cold in the apartment and I needed to start wearing my sandals in the house.
It was a small one bedroom apartment. During the day it was fine, I had the windows open. At night, I'd run the two wall heaters, I'd wear a hoodie, and I'd be cold unless I was under the heater. To warm up the bedroom before going to bed I'd close the bedroom door, turn the heater on high, and leave it for at least 30 minutes. If I then went in the room and turned the heater off, within 20 minutes it would be cold again.
In Canada it can be -10C outside and I've always been perfectly cozy indoors. In my Canadian apartment now, I don't even run the heat at night and it's fine, and I only partly cover myself with the duvet. In Cyprus I was using multiple blankets and was uncomfortably cold in bed, even with the heat running.
I can only imagine people in Cyprus and other countries with poorly insulated homes hearing about the weather and Canada and fearing for their life. Meanwhile, it's December in Canada and I'm literally wearing shorts in my house now.
I think there's a specifically British thing about accepting being cold and not complaining about it - I've lived in Scotland or London for most of my life, and no one will turn on their heating before November and most houses are 150-400 years old and are not insulated. I can literally feel the breeze inside as I type this.
I tip my hat to you sir. It is very true. My Irish neighbours were always surprised at how warm our flat was since they ran heating at 18 degrees in winter. Me having not grown up in the U.K. still run it at 23 to this day.
Two of the places I lived had beautiful old sash Windows. Only problem was you could see the curtains move as the breeze came through them in winter.
British housing often seems neglected. Especially the windows. I once had an apartment in Glasgow that had such terrible windows that wasps were getting in during summer while windows were closed. When I complained to the landlord he stuck some cotton balls in the bigger holes. That was the "repair" undertaken.
I lived in Kyoto for a year. To me it seemed that the houses there prioritized being comfortable during the oppressive summer heat they have there -- lots of windows, very drafty, shaded outdoor porches, etc. I wouldn't call the winters miserable -- I had a space heater, a warm robe and thick blankets. Kyoto does have fairly mild winters, though.
Kotatsus[1] are also wonderful inventions. You can turn down (or turn off) the heat in the room and crank up the kotatsu and be very cozy.
It’s not the most practical source of heating since it doesn’t follow you around to different rooms like warm clothing does. But it’s good if you know you’re going to be in one place for a while (e.g. watching TV). The feeling to me is almost like taking a bath, where your lower body is at a warmer temperature than your upper body, and your circulation keeps your whole body warm. Definitely not miserable!
When I moved to the UK and I was looking for a property to rent I was surprised to read advertisements bragging about "double glazing". I don't really remember seeing single glazing in my home country (even pre-second-word-war had double, just not two pieces of glass in a single window frame, but two separately openable single glazed windows). But it doesn't get that cold (outside) in winter in the UK, while the strongest winter i remember was getting down to -30 degrees celsius. However houses are definitely cooler inside in winter in the UK.
Nowadays there are increased requirements for thermal insulation in new houses and many new buildings where I come from have triple glazed windows, some people get recuperation (warm air having house warms up newly coming air) and some even heat pumps (winters got milder recently, so even air source heat pumps are sufficient most of the years)
Talking about Canada, when I was an exchange student in Halifax, New Scotia, one day when the snow fell (not even a particularly big amount in my opinion) the uni cancelled the classes; we were some of not many people who arrived to the uni building so we went sledging on a small hill nearby. It was the only time in my life that school/uni was cancelled due to weather! So Halifax didn't live up to the stereotype and my expectations about Canada, but maybe it's because it's not really a hardcore part of the country :)
> Of course, clothes can also be washed in a pedal-powered washing machine, and the hot water could come from a solar boiler, eliminating fossil energy use altogether (and keeping you more than warm enough while doing the laundry).
This is probably more of a factor of humidity than insulation. I've felt colder in -1C in Dublin where humidity was over 90% than at -20C in Luleå and 10%.
Insulated clothing is less effective in higher humidity as moisture in the fibers wicks the heat away from the body faster.
One thing that has resulted from COVID is that people purchased lots of bandannas, and I did too. Recently I realized I could just wear one around my neck even inside my home to stay warmer, which is something I'd somehow never considered before. It's more comfortable than a turtle neck imo.
I think a lot of people had this same idea, and you see bandannas being worn around a lot. In public people will just think it's your 'backup COVID mask' if you have a bandanna around your neck, so it doesn't look like an oddball style choice.
Scarves are also a mainstream style choice for keeping necks warm, inside and out. Dropping the style, Neck Gaiters, Buffs, and Balaclavas are my go-tos for real cold.
Most neck warming gear is too uncomfortable (imo) to wear indoors all day, but I discovered I love bandannas specifically because 1) 100% cotton and 2) you can adjust the tightness to whatever you want, and for outdoors you can even go with 'double layer' of bandanna for even more warmth.
You can have a comfortable temperature 21C/72F, but a too-high RH, and since the temperature is correct, the AC won't kick in. Having an hygrometer helps with this.
Whole-house dehumidifiers are more popular in humid climate zones, which also tend to be hot/not-cold. Though there are places that are both, at times cold and hot/humid:
However, the general point stands in mostly-cold zones: it is possible to control humidity independently of temperature.
Also, most people want good indoor air quality, so bringing in filtered outside air, and tempering it with exhausted stale air is becoming more common (and is part of the building code in many regions):
>The relationship between thermal comfort and clothing weight explains why we tend to prefer a higher air temperature to adding more clothing. [...] This clothing layer (which is actually worn in combination with briefs) has the largest potential to substitute a heating system. [...] Because it fits tightly around the body, long underwear has an optimal "pumping coefficient".
When I was a child, we used to go skiing and then hang around in our long underwear. It is warm and flexible, but it's also tightly woven and form-fitting, which traps moisture inside. There's more to comfort than weight: even in a cold room, sitting with your back against the couch can accumulate sticky sweat.
>Synthetic thermal underwear should be washed regularly - a process that consumes energy. This is less an issue for indoor use than for outdoor sports, because couch potatoes don't produce sweat.
Anyone who's ever reworn a pair of sweatpants for a week inside knows intimately the rancid depths of this falsehood.
I'm sorry you feel that way. Some friends of mine get winter depression and it's a real shit thing. I can't understand, I love winter much more than summer (you can dress for it and turn on lights; try turning off the sun or take off your underwear when you're still too warm and need to go to work in summer...), but I know it is a thing :/
Costco started carrying these ultra thin, stretchable crewneck short sleeves shirts. The brand I have is called "32 degrees cool", but I think they have other brands now like Bench, that sell this same blend of material, black or white color.
Compared to an a cotton undershirt the difference in comfort is amazing. Basically you don't feel any of the stitches, or anything pressing on your armpits. And its super light weight. You can sleep in it, its so comfortable.
If my wall thermometer is accurate, which it probably isn't, 18C is about right for me and 20C is "uncomfortably warm, I should have turned the heating off half an hour ago".
We do adapt to these things. My grandmother never had central heating, she lit a coal fire in the grate every day well into her 80s. Then spend the next decade with electric heaters and the decade after that in a nursing home.
Doing precision work with your hands (such as writing or typing) is decidedly harder in colder homes. You can wear certain kinds of gloves, but it just isn't as pleasant.
The muscles that actuate your fingers are largely located in your forearms. Keep your core out to your wrists properly bundled, and you'll be fine without gloves.
Playing games, I can't say that I've found this to be true. I notice I lose from people that I otherwise wouldn't lose from when I:
- am tired,
- have very cold hands,
- or just used gross motor skills (cycling for example).
The effect of each of these is similar to not playing for a few months. You don't unlearn it so you're not like a newb, but your playing is hampered in some way. If my hands were unaffected by cold then this shouldn't have an effect.
First, insulation works both way, so if you have hot summers and use A/C insulation will help you here.
Second, I spent some time in mostly unheated house, indoors tempeature around 5C. And yes, with proper clothing, that's fine, but getting to the shower is not particularly comfortable...
For sleeping, I had a heated blanket which I put between the sheets and a regular blanket. Probably not recommended for safety but it worked amazingly well for the ~50W it used... until it is time to wake up.
So yes, good clothing is great at keeping you warm, that should be obvious. But a well heated home is an important element of comfort.
Mold is more of an issue due to the breathability / air exchange of the house, than it is due to insulation. Insulation doesn't have to eliminate air exchange.
I've stopped using heating altogether since I moved out of my hometown (it was -20c or less in winter). When I'm cold I just add an extra layer of cloth or do a few squats or push/pull ups, heating XXX cubic meters of air is a pure waste of energy if you're healthy
That being said your flat/home insulation plays a huge role. I'm living in Germany for a few years now, when it's 0c outside it's still 18c+ indoor even without any heating in my flat. When I was in California if it was 13 outside it would be 14 indoor, you could feel the air going through the doors'/windows' joints.
edit: to all the people saying I can thanks my neighbours, I pay my share of the heating since it's averaged. I only have one shared wall so I doubt it changes much
Of course if you _have to_ heat then do it, as I said when I was going through -20c degrees winter you can't really escape it. I'd argue most people can live perfectly fine without heating. (not living up north / at high altitude / in cold micro climate).
People don't heat their flats/offices to 25c in Berlin or London to avoid frozen pipes. Unless you live in a 1800s house there is no way your pipe would freeze here
I read somewhere that the *gulf stream (orig jet stream, thanks!) makes similar latitudes more temperate in Britain/Europe than Canada/America. whether it's attributable to the jet stream or other effects, it seems to be true for many locations. Much of the UK lines up with Hudson bay in Canada, or Scandinavia vs northern Canada/mid Alaska. It's telling that most European colonizers moved south as they crossed the Atlantic.
It's due to the Gulf Stream, not the jetstream :-) as the sibling comment says. Basically the Gulf Stream sucks all the heat from the West side of the Atlantic and brings it to Europe.
Bucharest, Romania is at the same latitude as Montreal, Canada but I'm quite sure it doesn't get as much snow as Montreal :-)
The story that you mentioned is very typical in Balkans cities where I am from. It leads to huge fights between the neighbors and typically the apartment building ends up not using the central heating at all and residents resort to using far less efficient electrical space heaters or even fireplaces. So everyone ends up miserable.
When I lived in Berlin, on the second floor, the pipes for the Radiators were not insulated. Never turned up the heat in kitchen or bathroom.
But on the yearly utilities bill you usually pay 50:50 or 70:30 usage : area. So all of the energy cost of the house is taken and even if your neighbors heat for you, you pay for it.
Talking about warm clothing.. recently I've seen battery powered heated jackets. And then carbon fiber sticker that can act as resistive heating elements.. but I'm not sure of the safety side (betting on the 'not safe at all' right now). Anybody ever made their own usb gloves ?
There is one reason this doesn't work for everyone: humidity. Lived like this for a few months until we discovered mold from damp air ruined some of our clothes and papers. We immediately started using our HVAC.
> Because vasoconstriction only occurs when the core body temperature falls, it won't happen if you're dressed warmly enough. While insulating your neck and feet will greatly improve your thermal comfort, there is no need to wear gloves or caps indoors. In fact, it doesn't matter very much which parts of your body you choose to insulate - the important thing is to limit total heat loss so that the body core temperature remains stable
This may be true for many people, but I haven't found it true for me.
My wife and I reverse the stereotype of married couples and thermostats: she was raised in an area of the world that never got below 10C in Winter, and thus no buildings ever had heat. In the Winter you just put on more clothing. I was raised near the Canadian border; so our houses were always reasonably warm. She'd prefer the thermostat at 15C. We had sort of negotiated to keep it at 19C.
When I started working from home due to the lockdown, however, I had no choice but to turn up the temperature in the room I was working in: At 19C, sitting still all day, even wearing long underwear, woolen socks, and a very warm top, my feet got cold enough to get numb, in spite of my torso being almost hot enough to sweat.
Maybe if I found the right clothing, my legs would keep my feet warm again. But the "torso warm therefore extremities warm" is definitely not true for me.
EDIT: Just to be clear, my goal was to contradict the specific claim that I quoted, not to contradict the general idea of wearing more clothes. I've tried a couple of different solutions with the equipment at hand (like hot water bottles and thick socks) and not found them effective. The heat is already controlled on a per-room basis, so an additional electric heater would probably be a lot more wasteful than just turning up the temperature by one degree. I've been looking at woolen "boot slippers" online and looser-fitting garments. I'm sure I'll find a solution -- but all of these additional measures prove that "just keep your torso warm" is not always enough.
I try to make it a point to get up at least once an hour for light exercise (pushups, bodyweight rows, squats, dips, maybe some jumping jacks) just to keep the blood flowing. Seems to be effective for me (my feet have a tendency to get very cold when sitting for too long). Plus it's better for my health (definitely improved muscle tone, even though I still cheat on the dips).
Takes less than 5 minutes every hour. Pair it with walking to the kitchen to top off the glass of water and staying hydrated, and my focus (when I get back) is generally much better than if I just sat at the desk all day with frozen feet.
I have the same issue, and I sometimes wonder if cooling the face and/or ears is sufficient to cause vasoconstriction. Even with well-insulated clothing, I can feel cold to the core immediately on stepping outside on a cold day.
I spent my time from age 32-37 exercising outdoors year round regardless of the temperature (in that area, down to 25F for January/February). My body quickly adapted to the colder weather as the seasons changed, and my only change in attire was to go from a short sleeve t-shirt to a long sleeve t-shirt. This year, I've spent almost no time outside since the summer (injury ended my running for a bit) and the winter temperatures are cutting through me (also it's colder here than my previous home, but not so cold as to fully explain the change in my comfort with it). When I wasn't exercising, I found that light (but long sleeve/long pants) clothing was sufficient nearly any time I was outdoors in the winter, even when traveling to much colder places (like the mountains for my friends' annual ski trip).
Being indoors in consistent temperatures eats away (or does for me) our ability to adapt to temperature changes. I'm planning to start doing some walks to try and get myself adapted better to these temperatures, and next year plan to spend more time outdoors through the fall (in particular) so that my body properly adapts to the next winter.
I'm actually more of a cold turkey experimenter. I started running barefoot more consistently only this September (discovered it accidentally on my own a few years ago). But I can state that it has done good to my ruined knees and I'm definitely a lot more resistant to catching colds.
I have, however, somehow always loved really cold weather (I'm in Estonia, so winters around -20C are nothing too special here; this year, however, it has not gone below -7C yet. No snow yet, either.)
Honestly, I think that's part of the cause of my problem. For 9 years I spent one weekend outside every month, summer or winter, rain or shine. (Military reserves.) My feet spent a lot of time hovering just above frostbite level. I think the speed with which my body cuts circulation to my feet is probably a learned adaptation from that time period.
I know nothing about our body's long-term adaption (maybe you just need another 9 years mostly indoors to re-adapt? :), so this is very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
my feet can be cold even under a proper winter blanket. in my case, it's a symptom of iron deficiency anemia. it can also be bad blood circulation for other reasons.
anyone living in cold countries know most of the heat is lost through the hat.
Those folks think they know. What they don't know is the "X% of heat lost through your head" myth is based on a poorly-run U. S. Army study from the 50s. I'd provide a link, but it's trivial to search for one from a source of your choosing.
> It may sound strange to promote the use of synthetic clothing on a blog like Low-tech Magazine. However, both natural and synthetic materials have their advantages and drawbacks, and both can be a sustainable choice - even though synthetic clothes are made from fossil fuels. This is especially true when the clothing is used as a substitute for a heating system; the energy saved by lowering the thermostat is much larger than the energy required to manufacture the garments. Indeed, these high-insulating garments demonstrate how valuable fossil fuels are as a material, and how foolish we are to simply burn them.
I love it when a writer anticipates my questions and immediately addresses it in the text.
It is so obvious what he states. It is kind of (obviously) right (and also kind of wrong).
Reminds me of Timnit Gebru on (the ethics of) AI. She tackles an obviously important (academic) topic, that you can't dispute how important it is, but though ... it is so shallow that with every sentence passing you say "yes (and no)".
Still, I would choose merino wool long johns over synthetic ones in just about every situation. The amount of heat that can be conserved with such a thin layer of wool is impressive.
What's the problem with "fossil fuel clothing" though? They don't burn the fuel to make the clothing, rather the opposite: this can now no longer be burned and turned into CO2 because it's on your body.
Is it somehow pollutive to make oil products even if you don't burn them? And I mean more so than the alternative of course, because I get that so much as pumping up the oil costs energy.
If it's just about the irony of wearing the biggest problem we're facing as a garment and not a real question then I see the point.
I have never lived in a cold climate, but this sounds sensible to me. Much of the FIRE, "Mr Moneymustache"-esque advice around saving money contains this suggestion.
I like this line: "Indeed, these high-insulating garments demonstrate how valuable fossil fuels are as a material, and how foolish we are to simply burn them." Thanks for sharing.
Foolishness in the opposite direction applies in a warm climate. It is not unusual for cooling systems to be applied excessively, forcing occupants to compensate by wearing warmer clothing.
In some places, there are laws against excessive heating and cooling.
I’m 43 and my dad is 75; my grandfather would be 111 if still alive (though he did live to 97). We all grew up in the northeastern US, which has cold, snowy winters.
My grandfather spoke of needing to go outside, retrieve a bucket of coal, and use it to start heating the house in the morning.
My dad speaks of having a pile of blankets on his bed and being able to see his breath in his room in the morning.
I grew up wearing footed pajamas to bed and my dad frequently wearing a ski-type hat around the house to regulate temperature.
Even today, I wear a hat at my desk in the winter, though I’ve typically lived in older, draftier houses. I wear a flannel shirt unless I’m very active in the house. I now live in a temperate climate, but still: old house. We turn the heat down significantly at night and use wool blankets.
I can certainly afford to set the heater higher at all times, but it just seems like a waste when I could so easily throw on a layer, versus spending more money, fossil fuels (even with carbon offsets), and wear and tear on the HVAC system by pushing a button instead.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 321 ms ] threadThe difference in comfort is such that I barely feel any kind of fatigue or depression that the cold temperatures used to put on me.
It has changed my perception of winter and I couldn't have spent my money any better.
This is a costly investment though, be warned.
For the curious, the keyword that started it all: "layered clothing" and "layering".
I don't think of this as a technology or expensive, though. They are somewhat pricey, but can be worn for many winters and thus have good value.
[1] - Outdoor Research - https://outdoorresearch.com [2] - Patagonia - https://patagonia.com [3] - Arc'teryx - https://arcteryx.com
And as others have mentioned, it's all about layering!
Look for companies that are long standing and have good warranties. These companies have good reputations to protect, and are aware that buyers of outdoor gear tend to be very loyal to companies that treat them well. My family personally swore off Columbia after two of their coats failed us catastrophically, for example.
I'm also in Berlin and I use Uniqlo's HeatTech undershirt and long johns under jeans/shirt. They're pretty cheap (€10 each) and it makes a lot of difference. I never feel cold. A good jacket is also essential. Downfeather Jackets are my favourite.
Other than that it's just a hoodie between shirt and jacket, scarfs and "hand-shoes". The Coronavirus mask also helps during windy days.
I smiled reading that literal translation of "handschuhe" <3
They may be odor resistant, but for me they still get smelly after two or three days. A lot better than cotton, but not odor free.
The downsides are that even their lightest fabrics are too warm for summer, and the fabric is a lot less mechanically sturdy as cotton. It seems to tear easily. Most of my older icebreaker shirts have a few holes, even though the fabric still looks like new.
If you have Decathlon nearby, start with them and ramp up as needed.
I don't like puffy winter jackets so I wear a long wool coat instead.
I would recommend having a look at https://varusteleka.com, they're the biggest outdoor/surplus store in Europe, and they ship just about anywhere. Their wool flannel shirts and field shirts are the best I've ever owned, as are their worker wool pants, and they have enough merino clothing to layer for any weather.
Aside from the own brands, they often get very good surplus winter gear in, like thick Swiss knitted wool sweaters, Czech parkas, Finnish wool pants and so on.
My current winter outerwear workhorses are a Czech parka and a pair of Finnish M65 wool pants, total cost less than €50. With long johns and a woolen sweater underneath, I have yet to encounter winter weather that would make me uncomfortable.
Warmth itself is cheap if you accept clothes that are a bit heavier and maybe not ultra-breathable. Adding a pair of cotton long johns and a cotton long sleeve turtleneck underneath whatever you are wearing can easily keep you warm, it's just not super comfortable and not super fashionable.
I tend to wear wool long johns from December to March. Decades of experience with cotton, too. Wool is much, much better.
It's a well known thing among mountain walkers/climbers. Cotton kills.
However, the post is suggesting people in comfortable status quos change their behavior - the OP is explaining that yes, it's totally achievable to be comfortably warm in all activities indoors and out, but it costs money.
I know because that's what I use regularly for long walks and even bike trips
when I'm going out for a while in the winter, I like to wear a cotton shirt, a wool sweater, insulated vest, a medium-weight windproof jacket, and a mostly empty backpack. if I get too warm, the vest and possibly the sweater can just go in the backpack. with this setup, I can be comfortable at any temperature from 30F to 60F without having to hold onto anything I'm not wearing. on really cold days, I swap in my heavy winter coat.
Layers are also a must if you do outdoor winter activities. You want to remove layers when you're active so you don't get all sweaty, and put them back on when you rest. Because sweat + cold wind is a really nasty combo.
Having said that, as far as I can tell most people in the city here don't do much winter sports and just own like 3 different coats for different weather.
-20°F (-30°C) is a real change in perspective of what cold is. You absolutely need layering, as the equipment you need to be comfortable outside is way more than a jacket.
In London I had one jacket, mostly to protect against rain, but it was also an extra layer.
In Copenhagen, which has similar winter temperatures to Berlin, I had to buy a thicker jacket for the winter. I've worn the new jacket on trips to London and felt hot.
tl;dr; long sleeve undershirts and under jeans all day, every day. A sweater. Down jacket. Wind-proof jacket.
People in the cities wear thin city clothes even during winters, and freeze their ass off, while people living in much colder rural regions dress sensibly and stay warm.
People in UK by default wear much colder clothes so they are more used to cold. The end effect was that me and my friend were going everywhere in coats while everybody else was in their shirts :)
What's funny is that people that moved to Poland from Siberia had similar experience. They were cold in our houses because it's "just" 18C while they are used to 25-30C inside because of constant heating.
https://newsthump.com/2009/02/22/geordie-man-buys-coat/
Even though the "feels like" algorithm must be written by a dev in California (it's +5C, brr, feels like -3C), I guess there's something to having the "feels like" temps consistently 5 to 10 degrees below the actual air temperature.
Modernising older Homes to be energy effective appears to be a lost cause. If you make them airtight there isn’t enough air movement and if you Don’t heat them, they develop condensation problems. Maybe full refitting of insulation, doors and windows, and whole HVAC system would help but this is rather unrealistic for most owners of older homes.
* https://www.santa-fe-products.com/product-category/dehumidif...
The air movement problem in a tightly sealed house is dealt with an HRV (or ERV) which brings in filtered fresh air, but tempers it with the exhausted stale air:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_recovery_ventilation
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_recovery_ventilation
These are solved problems, it's 'just' a matter of budget and mechanical constraints in fitting the equipment (existing ducting can be re-used).
My understanding is the problem with making old buildings airtight is the lack of proper vapor barriers under the house, especially if it was built on a slab. For homes built on crawlspaces, you can "encapsulate" them, which reduces energy losses and improves air quality. Typically encapsulated crawlspaces are ventilated and/or dehumidified, which is supposed to stop moisture ingress into the living space.
We recently got a dehumidifier for a room that we aren't using most of the time. Better put some greenwashed kWh into taking moisture out of there than burning gas with the conventional heating system to keep the room hot (and it would still be too wet).
Low tech magazine runs a solar powered website:
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com
I feel like homes and offices do not breath. My anecdotal napkin math would say like 10% of buildings are designed with proper ventilation, blending of outdoor/indoor air, etc... and the rest are just boxes that are slowly killing us.
The furnace is below me which is good and bad in that it warms my office quick but sorta too much. I am constantly battling too hot or too cold and of course the humidity. Lots of trial/error of opening various windows to get a cross flow without letting too much hot air out.
That is just temperature. I have a CO2 monitor that has been interesting. I try to keep my CO2 ppm below 800 foor good measure. For a while I was feeling like dogshit in here and I assume it is due to being literally directly above a gas furnace in an older single family home - in hindsight I wish I had a monitor that detected more gases.
Anyway, still figuring out the secret to this. If anyone has tips for a glove that would work to keep my hands warm while typing I would love a recommendation. The article focuses on wearing clothing that will keep your trunk and limbs warm but I find that my hands are always an issue.
First off, you do not want buildings to "breathe" through air leakage. It is desirable for a 'seal tight and vent right':
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIcrXut_EFA
There are standards for the amount buildings should exchange the air, e.g., ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62.1:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_changes_per_hour
Also, air temperature is only one component of feeling comfortable in a room. How warm/cool the walls are, and having good double- (or triple-) pane windows also contributes:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_radiant_temperature
While you no doubt have insulation in your external wall cavities, the wooden stud has a very low value (R-1/inch) and so introduces thermal bridging:
* https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/what-is-thermal...
Modern building codes in colder climate zones mandate a layer of exterior insulation to deal with this bridging.
> I try to keep my CO2 ppm below 800 foor good measure. For a while I was feeling like dogshit in here and I assume it is due to being literally directly above a gas furnace in an older single family home - in hindsight I wish I had a monitor that detected more gases.
You may wish to look into an HRV (or ERV) and get some filtered fresh air:
* https://www.venmar.ca/22-detail-advice-hrv-and-erv-why-choos...
I like to work outdoors even when it is fairly cold, and cold hands are the main limitation. It is difficult to type with gloves.
https://images.app.goo.gl/DZofccEmDPGdSKvGA
> Sorry, I am not buying it. Not because you haven't done good work on the article: you have. Also not because N.American homes are overheated, and the residents under-dressed: they are. I do not buy it because the Japanese live the way you suggest in the winter, and it is miserable
I have a mother in Scotland and I have a mother-in-law in Canada. Worst it ever gets near my mother seems to be -5C, but I am perpetually cold there as people play games with turning their heating off at certain hours and living in 150-year-old converted barns and so on. Meanwhile, in Winnipeg it seems to get to -30C on the reg and I spend all of my time there warm and cosy because if the heating goes off or the house is improperly insulated then you die.
Heat is either blasting or turned off. Very poor insulation.
In theory each radiator has a regulator valve that allows you to moderate the amount of steam flowing through it. In reality these valves are all painted over/corroded/never worked in the first place, and all radiators run at full blast. It was not uncommon to see apartments with open windows in January to help regulate the heat produced by the radiator. Tenants didn't care because they didn't pay for the gas directly, although it was obviously built into the rents, and the land lords never wanted to spend the money to upgrade these old buildings, since the excessive usage of gas was built into everyone's rent and the upgrades were not.
Then again, given the age of those windows there probably was very little difference between them being open and closed anyways.
This problem was fixed when I moved into a new construction apartment which had a minisplit to heat/cool the living space. Until I found out that mini-splits have the same issue heating as ACs occasionally have in very hot summers; they can't provide any heat once the ambient temperature gets colder than the exterior coils (since it's literally an AC running backwards). That was a bad surprise.
Known as the Brooklyn Thermostat.
Found it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/the-curio...
My 1980s home went through 99 therms of gas last month in Idaho, and that’s with us hand washing dishes (broken dishwasher) using gas hot water. After fixing the dishwasher and replacing some caulk that had failed, I think we’ll probably go through 75-80 therms per month, fewer if I went with tankless hot water. You would be very hard pressed to go through that few therms in an older apartment, especially when you’re literally heating the outside.
Newer apartment buildings absolutely crush that figure though, for all the reasons you listed. The only advantage that individual homes have over taller apartment buildings energy wise is that you can pack more solar panels on top of shorter buildings.
Now, it’s not comfortable living through -40C weather, but it’s as cold inside as -5C in the UK (outside it’s way, way worse, of course).
I live in the Yukon where -40C is the standard daytime temp for months, and I'm perfectly happy/used to it.
I felt cold to my bones in the UK.
Saturated vapour density, the basis of relative humidity, about doubles every 10C.
I've had very humid -25C air in Alaska, and wearing literally everything I own (which is perfect at -48C), I was freezing cold for the entire day, even when running, snowboarding, jumping up and down and beating my chest.
Applies to continental climate though, when you are near sea you probably have air constantly replaced with humid air.
> I've had very humid -25C air in Alaska
You haven't had very humid -25C air, in an absolute sense. Take a look at a vapour pressure calculator (https://www.omnicalculator.com/chemistry/vapour-pressure-of-...): the vapour pressure of water at -25C is about 63 Pa, but about 13 Pascals at -40C. The difference of 50 Pa is trivial compared to the ~100,000 Pa pressure of air at sea level. Once you're below 0C, there just isn't enough water around in a vapour (or suspended) phase to have much impact.
A Globe and Mail article from 2016 discussed this phenomenon (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/fitn...). Its conclusions were still tentative, but the strongest correlate of the effect seemed to be cloud cover, where bright sunlight felt warmer despite colder air temperatures.
I would think that by default, the indoor heated air would be so dry that it would cause havoc on your sinuses.
My grandma always had a little thing filled with water hanging on the radiator during winter.
For me personally I do notice it whenever I leave and come back, though I seem to adjust OK. I use moisturizer a lot.
Further out, or in less trendy areas, there may well be a different mix of old/new council/private-built buildings. I lived in a wonderful 1930s apartment block (good double glazing, shared building heating system etc) and a decent 1970s council-built house.
I also lived in a crappy 1960s council flat (single glazed aluminium framed windows) and an 1900-ish house-illegally-turned-into-flats (single glazed, wooden sash windows).
And at the end of the day, the tenants basically pay for it anyway as part of their rent. It's just spread out more.
Going from 30°C weather to 12°C isn't a great start, but then the otherwise-decent hotel had single glazed windows, which the maid would open every morning. The only heater in the room was an electric resistance one attached to the wall.
In offices, most of the foreigners on the trip were wearing coats and other extra layers.
Young people walking around seemed to be happy in shorts and t-shirt. My conclusion was that New Zealanders are tough, outdoors people, and haven't upgraded their building insulation regulations from whatever they inherited from Britain.
Most private houses also have efficient heat-pumps in at least one room, I could never work out why we still use aluminum window frames though over normal uPVC, which are still not even an option in most new builds.
Personally I would ban resistive heating, they are generally in lower cost rentals, student properties etc and cost a lot for the tenant to use especially as these tenants are generally at the poorer side of the fence.
Stayed in some really cold crappy holiday homes in the south island one we had to leave the electric stove/oven on full to get it to bearable!
You mean the radiant / bar heater type ones? I cannot agree with this, while I agree that they're expensive to run and inefficient for heating rooms / whole house, they do work well if you use them to directly heat only the part of the room you're in.
I've lived in old houses where the ceilings are too high to effectively heat via convection (e.g. a modern 5x5x2.4 room is 60m^3 volume, while an old house with the same width and length but 3.6 metre ceilings is 90m^3 of volume to heat - combine that with inferior ceiling insulation common in old houses and the fact that hot air rises, the space often cools faster than the convection heater can keep up) and there was no natural gas service, so we just had to sit in front of radiant heaters.
I now live in the U.K. and although house quality and insulation is appalling compared to other places it is still infinitely warmer here in the middle of winter than in South Africa.
Coldest I have ever been was going back to visit family during winter there. My wife, who is from Germany and used to -5 to -10 in winter, would take a lot of persuading to visit South Africa in the middle of winter again.
And the constant backdrop of humidity can't be overemphasized in why it's unpleasant. Extreme dry temperatures kill you, mild wet ones make you feel dead.
This may also explain the age and quality of its housing stock, which is often a combination of moldy and drafty. There isn't an incentive pushing regulation further, so the landowners have their pick of NIMBY policies that keep old stock in the mix.
My friends and colleagues from the south (or even US) always ask me, why I dislike winter -- "I should already be used to it".
I doubt you can ever get used to it, but we've insulated our houses well and have good heating system (especially in dense cities). And you'd usually try to escape the cold as often as possible, mostly spending winter inside.
On the other hand, an additional negative of winters (or late autumn) is the heating makes the indoor air "thick" and unpleasant. You need to ventilate the room every hour or so. It's really tedious. During summer, you'd just leave your windows open whole day and have a nice air exchange.
Unsurprisingly, while nowhere near as bad as Winnipeg winter in Hokkaido is much longer and deeper than in most of Honshu. Although it likely helps that Hokkaido is much drier, especially in summer, meaning house rot is less of an issue.
Now, we can't live with natural wind cooling in summer (A/C is the only option), it's bad in both summer and winter.
NYC is uh, special. Due to the prevalence of steam heat most apartments I've been in usually open the windows when it gets too hot in the winter. Having a thermostat in such an apartment is a status symbol.
In short, combination of humidity plus tons of waste heat means you generally don't get cold there (unless something broke or you don't live somewhere with steam).
Unrelated (I think) https://www.aceee.org/portal/national-policy/international-s...
It was bizarre for me to lounge around in a T-shirt and jeans while it was snowing outside this month. The average coldest in winter for Lahore is 5.9 °C (42.6 °F). When the weather turns, you pack your summer clothes and unpack your trunk of winter clothes. You're wearing many layers and a heavy jacket indoors with your gas-heater burning a flame for extra measure. Oh, and your blankets are much heavier in the winter.
The record coldest it's ever gotten in Lahore was an unfathomable –2.2 °C on January 17, 1935. It's never been that cold in my lifetime.
And yet, winter feels infinitely colder in Pakistan than it does in Canada.
Welcome here! I hope you'll like it!
Is it your first winter? It's a special experience!
My favorite thing in the winter is a hot Tim Hortons drink - I rotate them, because they are all quite good!
> And yet, winter feels infinitely colder in Pakistan than it does in Canada.
Until you go outside and try to walk in the street :)
There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing. Dress appropriately when going out - every Canadian 5yo has mastered that skill.
At that point you can get frostbite in under a minute. Dressing appropriately starts to feel more like putting on a hazmat suit than getting dressed to go out as any bit of exposed skin is at risk.
Even many cold-weather accessories you might have start to feel insufficient. A knit scarf or toque is great in many situations, but the cold wind will cut through it like a knife.
I remember being sent outside at recess as a kid at those kinds of temperatures. I mean, I still go outside when I have to but I don’t exactly look for excuses to leave the house.
A thin wool hat is really nice around the house if SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED keeps things on the colder side. Same deal for camping - if you trap the body heat that escapes your head, you will feel much warmer - be it the keyboard or a hammock. Same goes for a good pair of socks too.
I'm now in a milder climate, but still wear the thin hat all winter (e.g.right now). Alas, the thick wool lumberjack socks are missing from the stores.
Why would it be? Pakistan has winters, and cold ones at that...
That's not a winter, that's a sudden mid-summer frost... :)
> Until you go outside and try to walk in the street :)
I feel like I lucked out and bought the right winter coat early on. Or maybe just stepping from one heated building to another doesn't feel that bad. Maybe it's a combination of the two. Either way, I haven't felt cold on the street yet. And It's already colder than my coldest winter experience in Pakistan.
It was a small one bedroom apartment. During the day it was fine, I had the windows open. At night, I'd run the two wall heaters, I'd wear a hoodie, and I'd be cold unless I was under the heater. To warm up the bedroom before going to bed I'd close the bedroom door, turn the heater on high, and leave it for at least 30 minutes. If I then went in the room and turned the heater off, within 20 minutes it would be cold again.
In Canada it can be -10C outside and I've always been perfectly cozy indoors. In my Canadian apartment now, I don't even run the heat at night and it's fine, and I only partly cover myself with the duvet. In Cyprus I was using multiple blankets and was uncomfortably cold in bed, even with the heat running.
I can only imagine people in Cyprus and other countries with poorly insulated homes hearing about the weather and Canada and fearing for their life. Meanwhile, it's December in Canada and I'm literally wearing shorts in my house now.
Two of the places I lived had beautiful old sash Windows. Only problem was you could see the curtains move as the breeze came through them in winter.
It’s not the most practical source of heating since it doesn’t follow you around to different rooms like warm clothing does. But it’s good if you know you’re going to be in one place for a while (e.g. watching TV). The feeling to me is almost like taking a bath, where your lower body is at a warmer temperature than your upper body, and your circulation keeps your whole body warm. Definitely not miserable!
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotatsu
Nowadays there are increased requirements for thermal insulation in new houses and many new buildings where I come from have triple glazed windows, some people get recuperation (warm air having house warms up newly coming air) and some even heat pumps (winters got milder recently, so even air source heat pumps are sufficient most of the years)
Talking about Canada, when I was an exchange student in Halifax, New Scotia, one day when the snow fell (not even a particularly big amount in my opinion) the uni cancelled the classes; we were some of not many people who arrived to the uni building so we went sledging on a small hill nearby. It was the only time in my life that school/uni was cancelled due to weather! So Halifax didn't live up to the stereotype and my expectations about Canada, but maybe it's because it's not really a hardcore part of the country :)
Yeah, so? Eating properly is also "miserable" compared to eating junk food. It's also better for you and for society.
I think that sentence alone ...
A thick wool blanket below you and one above you, along with standard cotton sheets will keep you quite cozy.
I think a lot of people had this same idea, and you see bandannas being worn around a lot. In public people will just think it's your 'backup COVID mask' if you have a bandanna around your neck, so it doesn't look like an oddball style choice.
* https://www.santa-fe-products.com/product-category/dehumidif...
You can have a comfortable temperature 21C/72F, but a too-high RH, and since the temperature is correct, the AC won't kick in. Having an hygrometer helps with this.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humid_continental_climate
However, the general point stands in mostly-cold zones: it is possible to control humidity independently of temperature.
Also, most people want good indoor air quality, so bringing in filtered outside air, and tempering it with exhausted stale air is becoming more common (and is part of the building code in many regions):
* https://www.ecohome.net/guides/2276/choosing-between-an-hrv-...
* https://www.venmar.ca/23-detail-faq-en-what-is-the-differenc...
And that venting could help control humidity as well.
>The relationship between thermal comfort and clothing weight explains why we tend to prefer a higher air temperature to adding more clothing. [...] This clothing layer (which is actually worn in combination with briefs) has the largest potential to substitute a heating system. [...] Because it fits tightly around the body, long underwear has an optimal "pumping coefficient".
When I was a child, we used to go skiing and then hang around in our long underwear. It is warm and flexible, but it's also tightly woven and form-fitting, which traps moisture inside. There's more to comfort than weight: even in a cold room, sitting with your back against the couch can accumulate sticky sweat.
>Synthetic thermal underwear should be washed regularly - a process that consumes energy. This is less an issue for indoor use than for outdoor sports, because couch potatoes don't produce sweat.
Anyone who's ever reworn a pair of sweatpants for a week inside knows intimately the rancid depths of this falsehood.
I'm sorry you feel that way. Some friends of mine get winter depression and it's a real shit thing. I can't understand, I love winter much more than summer (you can dress for it and turn on lights; try turning off the sun or take off your underwear when you're still too warm and need to go to work in summer...), but I know it is a thing :/
Compared to an a cotton undershirt the difference in comfort is amazing. Basically you don't feel any of the stitches, or anything pressing on your armpits. And its super light weight. You can sleep in it, its so comfortable.
And its also cheap, 3 or 4 pack for under $20.
We do adapt to these things. My grandmother never had central heating, she lit a coal fire in the grate every day well into her 80s. Then spend the next decade with electric heaters and the decade after that in a nursing home.
Doing precision work with your hands (such as writing or typing) is decidedly harder in colder homes. You can wear certain kinds of gloves, but it just isn't as pleasant.
- am tired,
- have very cold hands,
- or just used gross motor skills (cycling for example).
The effect of each of these is similar to not playing for a few months. You don't unlearn it so you're not like a newb, but your playing is hampered in some way. If my hands were unaffected by cold then this shouldn't have an effect.
First, insulation works both way, so if you have hot summers and use A/C insulation will help you here.
Second, I spent some time in mostly unheated house, indoors tempeature around 5C. And yes, with proper clothing, that's fine, but getting to the shower is not particularly comfortable...
For sleeping, I had a heated blanket which I put between the sheets and a regular blanket. Probably not recommended for safety but it worked amazingly well for the ~50W it used... until it is time to wake up.
So yes, good clothing is great at keeping you warm, that should be obvious. But a well heated home is an important element of comfort.
That being said your flat/home insulation plays a huge role. I'm living in Germany for a few years now, when it's 0c outside it's still 18c+ indoor even without any heating in my flat. When I was in California if it was 13 outside it would be 14 indoor, you could feel the air going through the doors'/windows' joints.
edit: to all the people saying I can thanks my neighbours, I pay my share of the heating since it's averaged. I only have one shared wall so I doubt it changes much
> heating XXX cubic meters of air is a pure waste of energy
Tell me how you feel about that when the water in your pipes freezes. Because that is sure as hell not a good time.
People don't heat their flats/offices to 25c in Berlin or London to avoid frozen pipes. Unless you live in a 1800s house there is no way your pipe would freeze here
They are both 10 degrees of latitude further North than me here in Iowa, yet they both look to rarely dip much below freezing.
I knew London's temperature was buffered by being so close to the ocean, but I always thought Berlin was far enough inland to not have that benefit.
And then on top of that they both have milder summers than here.
That's all very interesting to me.
Bucharest, Romania is at the same latitude as Montreal, Canada but I'm quite sure it doesn't get as much snow as Montreal :-)
The Balkans are quite far from Germany, and I'm originally from west of Germany actually. Not sure what you're trying to insinuate here
You can thank your neighbours.
But on the yearly utilities bill you usually pay 50:50 or 70:30 usage : area. So all of the energy cost of the house is taken and even if your neighbors heat for you, you pay for it.
This may be true for many people, but I haven't found it true for me.
My wife and I reverse the stereotype of married couples and thermostats: she was raised in an area of the world that never got below 10C in Winter, and thus no buildings ever had heat. In the Winter you just put on more clothing. I was raised near the Canadian border; so our houses were always reasonably warm. She'd prefer the thermostat at 15C. We had sort of negotiated to keep it at 19C.
When I started working from home due to the lockdown, however, I had no choice but to turn up the temperature in the room I was working in: At 19C, sitting still all day, even wearing long underwear, woolen socks, and a very warm top, my feet got cold enough to get numb, in spite of my torso being almost hot enough to sweat.
Maybe if I found the right clothing, my legs would keep my feet warm again. But the "torso warm therefore extremities warm" is definitely not true for me.
EDIT: Just to be clear, my goal was to contradict the specific claim that I quoted, not to contradict the general idea of wearing more clothes. I've tried a couple of different solutions with the equipment at hand (like hot water bottles and thick socks) and not found them effective. The heat is already controlled on a per-room basis, so an additional electric heater would probably be a lot more wasteful than just turning up the temperature by one degree. I've been looking at woolen "boot slippers" online and looser-fitting garments. I'm sure I'll find a solution -- but all of these additional measures prove that "just keep your torso warm" is not always enough.
Takes less than 5 minutes every hour. Pair it with walking to the kitchen to top off the glass of water and staying hydrated, and my focus (when I get back) is generally much better than if I just sat at the desk all day with frozen feet.
Being indoors in consistent temperatures eats away (or does for me) our ability to adapt to temperature changes. I'm planning to start doing some walks to try and get myself adapted better to these temperatures, and next year plan to spend more time outdoors through the fall (in particular) so that my body properly adapts to the next winter.
I have, however, somehow always loved really cold weather (I'm in Estonia, so winters around -20C are nothing too special here; this year, however, it has not gone below -7C yet. No snow yet, either.)
But I do find this guy really interesting: http://barefootrunner.org/winter/wbfr_article_110610.htm
Also, a random thread on frostbite: https://www.thebarefootrunners.org/threads/frostbite.1479/
And another on hookworms: https://old.reddit.com/r/BarefootRunning/comments/14s6m8/lea...
https://www.sheepskin.co.uk/product/sheepland-luxury-sheepsk...
There's no such thing as bad weather; there's just being incorrectly dressed for it.
That's it. That's the whole phrase.
and drafts! any draft will make you cold, even if you heat your home at a high 24C
Those folks think they know. What they don't know is the "X% of heat lost through your head" myth is based on a poorly-run U. S. Army study from the 50s. I'd provide a link, but it's trivial to search for one from a source of your choosing.
I love it when a writer anticipates my questions and immediately addresses it in the text.
Reminds me of Timnit Gebru on (the ethics of) AI. She tackles an obviously important (academic) topic, that you can't dispute how important it is, but though ... it is so shallow that with every sentence passing you say "yes (and no)".
Is it somehow pollutive to make oil products even if you don't burn them? And I mean more so than the alternative of course, because I get that so much as pumping up the oil costs energy.
If it's just about the irony of wearing the biggest problem we're facing as a garment and not a real question then I see the point.
I like this line: "Indeed, these high-insulating garments demonstrate how valuable fossil fuels are as a material, and how foolish we are to simply burn them." Thanks for sharing.
In some places, there are laws against excessive heating and cooling.
My grandfather spoke of needing to go outside, retrieve a bucket of coal, and use it to start heating the house in the morning.
My dad speaks of having a pile of blankets on his bed and being able to see his breath in his room in the morning.
I grew up wearing footed pajamas to bed and my dad frequently wearing a ski-type hat around the house to regulate temperature.
Even today, I wear a hat at my desk in the winter, though I’ve typically lived in older, draftier houses. I wear a flannel shirt unless I’m very active in the house. I now live in a temperate climate, but still: old house. We turn the heat down significantly at night and use wool blankets.
I can certainly afford to set the heater higher at all times, but it just seems like a waste when I could so easily throw on a layer, versus spending more money, fossil fuels (even with carbon offsets), and wear and tear on the HVAC system by pushing a button instead.