Cat vs. panel heater: which is better? | Hacker News Reader

Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

oneroof.co.nz

233 pointssillybilly156 comments

I was once desperately poor. Too poor to turn on the heat. But I did have access to friendly cats, so I've been through this experiment in real life.

One cat stuffed under the blankets at night is a significant improvement. But as you add more and more cats, the improvement becomes only incremental.

I eventually learned that two cats was really the best one could hope for. Best positioning is between the legs, and with the blankets pulled up over my head with a little crack for breathing. After that, adding more cats doesn't help much.

If I was still cold after two cats, I had to break down and turn on the heat.

I can confirm this. Years back I had those (now deceased) two cats who liked to get under the blankets while we were sleeping, but apparently they liked me more than my girlfriend, so until they decided to leave I had those furry warmers lying down along my legs, one here and one there. A couple more cats along my arms and I could easily turn off the heater. House is small though, so max 2 cats at a time to avoid hygiene related issues. These days I have two different cats; one loves sleeping between my torso and the right arm keeping his head on my shoulder, pretty much like a baby, and the other one from time to time climbs on my belly to sleep there after asking permission with a soft meow. Luckily he isn't the fatter of the two:) Cats are incredible.

Have you tried just adding more blankets. I never run heating at night because I find that even at 0c outside I can just stack up 4 blankets and still be warm.

Having slept outdoors a lot in the past, I think many people underestimate the importance of the ground/floor/bed in keeping from freezing.

If you have excess blankets, it could make more difference to put them under you as opposed to above you. Even spruce branches or cardboard will lift you from the ground enough to make a difference in a pinch.

This is why homeless people are stereotyped as sleeping on cardboard with a newspaper as a blanket. Because they actually do, because even paper is a great insulator that you can scavenge easily.

I discovered this on my annual backpacking trip during a particularly cold winter. I sleep in a zero degree bag in a hammock, but my bag has most of the insulation on top so my back was freezing. Next year I brought a nice thick blanket to line the hammock and I’ve always been comfortable since.

Your weight compresses most of the insulation beneath you, and the hammock itself provides less than no insulation. If you aren't, you should put the blanket on the outside of the bottom of the hammock (suspended beneath it), so it has more volume and thus insulation.

Interesting, I wouldn't have thought of that. The blanket is pretty dense and relatively incompressible, but I'll have to try that and see if the difference is noticeable (if I can figure out how to attach it like that).

Yes, this is called an underquilt.

I agree - I packed an air mattress to sleep on during camping when it was cold on the ground. The air didn't insulate as well as I expected so I was freezing from below.

There are so many things around us that are such incredible achievements in comfort over not having them. It is a good experience living without some of them for a while to get appreciation for it:

- electricity - heating - beds - running water - showers - drains (sewer? I mean being able to pour out water in the kitchen, not having to carry it out) - washing machine - (etc)

I regularly go on multi night wilderness backpacking trips–they are a big part of my life and make me happy for many reasons, but the appreciation they bring for the comforts of modern life is big every time.

After several days in the backcountry the comforts come back bit by bit on the way home: a soft and supportive seat in the car, warm or cool air at the touch of a button, hot coffee and eggs brought to your table, fresh water from the tap, a hot shower with soap, clean soft sheets and a supportive bed. It’s really a visceral experience of all of the comforts we take for granted every day.

I’ve been going on trips like this my whole life, and I always love being out there, but the experience of coming back to comfort and convenience never gets old.

The problem with air mattresses in cold weather is that they conduct heat. The gas inside the mattress absorbs heat from your body and transmits it to the edge of the mattress and into the outside air. To be prevent this heat loss, cover the whole air mattress with a blanket or put an insulator between your body and the mattress.

I spent many years in the tropics without air conditioning. But I had a water bed. The waterbed works similarly to the air mattress, absorbing your body heat and emitting it over a large surface area. This is great when the weather is hot. The bed also has a large thermal capacity. Cover it with a blanket during the day and leave it uncovered at night. Then when you lie down at the beginning of the night, it will still be cool from the early morning.

How well would a waterbed work in a camping situation?

> I packed an air mattress to sleep on during camping when it was cold on the ground. The air didn't insulate as well as I expected so I was freezing from below.

No sleeping bag?

No, for some reason I decided to use a regular duvet. With a sleeping bag it would probably have been less of an issue.

I was going to say, I never really understood why sleeping bags seem to be the default for camping but I get it now.

They're warmer, more comfortable, easier to carry...

yup, I go camping in the Canadian winter and have been overnight many nights at below -35C, might have hit a balmy -40C before.. not sure..

Below, is super important.. I use closed-cell mats designed for winter camping and carrying in the backpack.

Somehow I don't think the cats would work so well under the sleeping bags..

Interesting bit of trivia: at -40 it's not necessary to specify C or F, that's the point where they're both the same.

When I was a kid in the boy scouts, they had an award they gave out when the total low (with wind chill) on the days you camped added up to -100F. I got the award one weekend - one day was -60, the other was -40.

It is necessary to specify it because what happens if someone tells you it was -40 and then it got 1 degree warmer. How cold is it now?

Obviously it's -39, and since -39C and -39F are different you'd now be required to specify. If you knew which scale the 1 degree was from it wouldn't be difficult.

It's -40 and it got -1 degree F colder. How cold is it now?

It's now -41F. It's not really rocket science, unless you're trying to trick me with a double negative.

I spent a full winter sleeping on a second story screened porch (it was a private porch off my very small bedroom and I figured that since I didn't mind sleeping in the cold, I might as well save the floor space in my bedroom and move the bed to the porch).

On the very coldest nights I would get out my 10˚F mummy bag, and use a couple blankets on top of that, but I was never uncomfortable, even well below zero (Fahrenheit).

Getting _out_ of bed was pretty miserable at times, but it was only a few steps to the door into the house.

0C? That's pretty warm. I sleep naked under a goose down duvet with the window open in an unheated bedroom even when the outside is -15 C. Now I'm on my own it does get a bit cooler than before but when there were two of us under the duvet it was plenty warm enough.

I'm guessing you're in a dry climate. 0c can feel colder than -5c~10c if it's humid enough.

Yes, eastern Norway. And as it gets colder the humidity goes down. It's typically less than 50% here in the winter.

I can recommend hot-water bottles, plus a kettle for quick assembly. It's a lot less cozy though, I suppose.

But also a lot less hairy I imagine

Less catbutt on your pillow.

Electric blankets were pretty awesome for this circumstance. Incredibly cheap to operate, extremely effective.

(I always had trouble washing them properly though)

Electric blankets used to be awesome. The ones nowadays don't seem as strong as the ones I remember from 40 years or so ago. I think they got nerfed.

(40 years ago they also used to burn houses down)

I remember having one... It had no ground wire... Thinking about it now, I'm really surprised I never got electrocuted or that it didn't catch on fire, it was really flimsy.

Electric blankets aren't intended to be used while you are in the bed. Your own body heat can keep the bed warm and they're dangerous to run while sleeping. Their intended purpose is to warm the bed before your own body is in there to do the work. It avoids the first few minutes of sheet shock when jumping into a cold bed before your body heat catches up to the task.

There are different types of electric blanket.

eg this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Morphy-Richards-Washable-Underblank...

All night use

NOTE: Blankets are perfectly safe to be used all night. However we recommend using the heat setting below.

•Move the heat setting on the control switch to heat level 1or 2.

These settings will provide safe and comfortable heat to sleep on all night.

These settings can be used to air the bed.

WARNING: Always ensure that the slider switch is moved to the OFF position when you get up the next day, or after airing the bed.

I can't really tell if this is truth or fiction but either way your comment warmed my day.

But how many such comments would you need to read per day to replace panel heaters would you say?

An interesting study, but spatially non-uniform dynamic thermal location and local partial biomass availability seem like factors here. While direct heaters, ground source heat pumps in particular, can be exceptionally efficient and functional year round, they ultimately have fixed exchange locations and must bring the whole house volume to temperature. Whereas a cat heater is dynamic: for example while I am sleeping the cat is liable to apply all 15 watts directly to my face. I can anecdotally report a significant insulation effect as well. Or while I'm desperately trying to complete a final sprint the cat may decide that my keyboard is the ideal radiative location. A proper heating model probably needs to take this into account albeit with a lot of chaos and quantum theory mixed in as the cat may or may not be providing heat until observed. And cats in general are equipped with local biomass harvesting and conversion capabilities that may further alter supplemental fuel costs.

Never the less I certainly look forward to continued research on this topic!

Are you aware of Nathan W. Pyle?

His Strange Planet comic is written a bit like this

Sorry to be the downer on this article, but if you head to oneroof's "news" page [0] you'll see their entire raison d'être is to push out articles for NZ's media outlets to reproduce in the hopes of encouraging the continued misallocation of capital into residential real estate. So them making light of the house heating situation is in extremely poor taste considering such issues as NZ being the only developed country in the world with significant instances of rheumatic fever [1] and a quarter of South Island renters being stuck with cold and mouldy accommodation [2] (which they couldn't leave for weeks due to the pandemic).

[0] https://www.oneroof.co.nz/news/latest-news

[1] https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/122260447/we-have-to...

[2] https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/queenstown/warmth-issue-25-ren...

Can you connect the last dot for me and explain why "(mis)allocation of capital into residential real estate" is bad for warmth, affordability, and fighting rheumatic fever?

The NZ renting experience can best be described as punitive, and for foreigners coming here can be quite a shock at what it entails (no pets [0], no hanging pictures, short-notice no-fault eviction, good luck getting plumbing and electric fixed, etc. etc.). But relevant to this discussion is the extremely poor state of the housing stock. It is woeful beyond belief.

The house I rent is in a town with median household (i.e. avg of 1.5 earners) income of US$44,000, and my rent is US$1,100/month. One of the inclusions in that cost is what I call the "mould room", which is not just uninhabitable but I don't dare even enter it without a mask [1]. I run a dehumidifier in my kids room for 14hrs/day or they would cough all night in bed - it sucks about 4L moisture per day. But I put up with that because my landlord hasn't put up rent too much (is about 15% behind market at the moment) and the alternatives that come on the market are scarcely any better.

Lest you think I'm being dramatic or that my situation isn't generalisable, I suggest you read this recent reddit thread of NZ renters detailing how cold their houses are [2]. Particularly funny are comments from Norwegian, Swedish, Canadian migrants saying they've never felt as cold in their life as in a New Zealand bedroom.

The only way out of this situation is to buy your own house. That's it. There is no incentive whatsoever for landlords to improve their capital once someone is paying off their mortgage, and covid slowdown notwithstanding, that is guaranteed to be the case due to extreme supply shortage.

Perhaps you were confused by my use of the phrase "capital into real estate" - that doesn't mean building more and certainly never means improving existing stock - it just means buying the same existing houses for more and more money each year. The effect of this, of course, is that people renting these houses have to save more each year for a deposit if they ever hope to own. In this town, in the last 12 months, if you saved anything less than US$12,000 towards your deposit you are now further away from owning a bottom quartile house than last August. It is now estimated that for those born after 1990 (everyone < 30 yrs old) ~60% will never own, because their disposable income will never cover a deposit. So those people will be putting up with cold, expensive, diseased housing for life.

OneRoof, being a real estate advertising company, makes its money on listings priced based on the value of property, and so want to see both higher prices and/or higher turnover. Against typical microecon thinking, these factors are correlated in NZ, so in short all they want to see is higher prices. In other words they make more money the harder it is for renters to escape the cold, and thus put out an endless stream of PR guff about rags-to-riches stories of people flipping houses, hoping (and often succeeding) that 'serious' news outlets like the NZ Herald run the stories uncritically.

That is why "cats are warm lol" is so offensive coming from them.

[0] Adding further insult in the context of this article

[1] If you're wondering why I haven't put in a solution for this - it's a hilly town and this room is embedded in the Earth up to about half way, a not uncommon feature around here. Since it wasn't waterproofed properly, it's about as moist as a rainforest in there, and the only fix would be knocking two walls down and rebuilding that whole section of house.

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/i9h2r1/i_just_w...

Presumably, high rates of investment drive up prices (since supply is somewhat constrained). High prices reduce the ability for people to purchase, so they have to rent, but then higher purchase price means the investors have to increase rent too. This means there is a lot of demand at the low end of the housing market, where houses aren't as well maintained/insulated/upgraded

Investing in housing should lead to building more housing, which will lower prices for everyone. Is the investment only used to renovate existing housing?

Buying a house (in NZ) is a liquid investment with better returns than the stock market and no captial gains tax. Building involves much more risk, nimbyisn, geographic constraints. The cost of building is more closely related to the cost of labour than it is materials, so even at higher prices margins aren't nessecarily better.

Usually it's used to re-sell and re-mortgage the same run-down Victorian houses over and over again with no improvement at all. As a student tenant I had my fair share of renting horror houses that were lethally dangerous

The first time I took my cat camping it was much colder than expected. At bed time I filled a bottle with hot water and wrapped my cat up in a blanket with it. Being a cat, he immediately squirmed his way out of it and started walking around the freezing tent.

I was starting to get worried until the little guy realized he could just barely squeeze into my zipped up sleeping bag.

It was a big mess of fur and limbs all night, but we both managed to stay warm enough.

You took your cat camping?

'take' would appear to be the correct tense – this is apparently just about the first time. i recently discovered that cats can actually be trained, to a certain extent (mostly behavioural tricks as opposed to commands). i wonder if it's possible to guide certain cat traits for your own benefit. imagine Cat goes out hunting and returns, leaving a rabbit at your feet, while you are preparing the campfire. my guess is that it would be possible to encourage, though not so to choose your dinner.

I actually did train this same cat in a lot of the classic dog commands. He'll sit, shake, lay down, and roll over on command. It's certainly harder to train a cat on commands but it ended up being a little easier than I thought it would be going in.

I think it helps to have a cat that's highly food motivated. While following orders comes naturally to a lot of dogs, training a cat feels more like a bartering system. He'll put up with my silly requests in exchange for treats that he likes. If the treats stopped coming I doubt he would keep following instructions for long.

Yep, I did regularly for a number of years. He's getting older now though and the car rides are too stressful, so he's a homebody now.

Bertha's Kitty Boutique was already on this in 2005...

> Bertha's Kitty Boutique reminds you that heating bills are going to be high this winter and on these cold winter nights, there's nothing more comforting than a warm cat. (PURRING) And if one cat can warm you up, think of what 6, or 10 of 'em could do. These are skinny designer cats, these are big heater cats (MEOW) who use tuna for fuel and produce enough BTUs to heat up your whole bed and your bedroom too. And we have them in all styles to go with your bedroom decor -- tabby cats, angora, Siamese, orange cats, black cats -- anywhere from 30 pounders up to the family size. Heater cats from Bertha's (MEOW) Hurry in while supplies last.

https://www.prairiehome.org/story/2005/10/01/berthas-kitty-b...

“ A 3kg cat has a heat output of 14.8 watts, or 129.65 kilowatt-hours...”

Playing fast and loose here. That’s 129.65 kilowatt hours per year. 14.8 watts is 0.0148 kilowatts of course. Kilowatt hours are a measure of total energy output over a given time not instantaneous output.

Also that's kWh summed up over the year. Cats have constant output, but for house heating you'd want to concentrate it to just ~3-4 months. So we're closer to 50-60 cats at that point.

http://www.c60design.co.uk/many-cats-take-heat-passive-house...

They just took this content here, inflated it a little bit with filler sentences and published it as an article.

"In summary then, cats are expensive… and wasteful."

That line kept me from reading the article. I'm not even interested in what follows after that, and yes they only omitted "per year".

You would be surprised how often this error is made. Even in quality newspapers journalists tend to use kWh as a unit of power instead of energy. That probably happens because of the 'hour' part in kWh.

People have no problem understanding that km is distance, and km/h is speed.

With energy and power the units read less intuitively: energy is J (Joule) and power is really just J/s (Joules per second), but we call that W (Watt) and for purposes of energy consumption the unit is kWh, which is really just a fancy compact way of saying 3.6 MJ (Megajoules).

So we have journalists writing about new dams that produce x TWh and cats that produce 129.65 kWh. (Per what? Day? Month? Year? Lifespan of the dam?)

I was put off by the following sentence:

> ... 14.8 watts, or 129.65 kilowatt-hours - the metric commonly used by power companies ...

It should say 129.65 kilowatt-hours PER YEAR. Without the time, it's like saying "a car goes at 50mph or 1000 miles". It's just nonsense.

I briefly found myself thinking that the cat was the metric commonly used by power companies.

Now you're talking sense

Reminds me of the story of how Three Dog Night got their name.

Apparently it referred to Australian Aborigines using three dingos to sleep with on very cold nights.

Since getting a dog I’ve learned dogs and cats both run a degree or two hotter than we do — 38-39 C as against our 37. Noticeably adds to the comfort level, even if there’s only one under the covers.

Not sure where they got their cost estimate from, but I spend a lot more than $250/year on each of my two cats (and 250 NZD is only ~160 USD). Still, fun article :)

I recently had to choose between these two options:

  1. Removal of splinter from pet cat's eyeball: $1,650
  2. Removal of cat's eyeball: $1,400

Blew out my pet budget for a long while. I have the photo that the vet ophthalmologist took - they were cool enough to send it to us.

Apologies if it's insensitive, but I'm curious what the financial cost of "putting cat down and acquiring new cat" would be; mere intellectual curiosity.

$50 to get a vet to put a cat down. And roughly the same amount to get a desexed, flea-treated moggy from a shelter.

Oh wow. I’m sorry for you and your cat, that seriously sucks.

Despite adding a month to the mortgage, it was a good news story. Cat full recovered within a day or two, and the joy my kids get from this gosh darn cat makes it worth the expense. (just as long as it doesn't make a habit of getting eyeball splinters - freaking gross).

Very thankful to have the means that enable a spur-of-the-moment $1,650 expense not affecting too much of the future.

I'll have to write the story of this cat one day.

Good to hear that everything worked out ok!

You should account for the externalities of cat ownership, above and beyond them being a space heater: companionship, responsibility, pride, etc.

"pride"

I see what you did there.

Huge variation in cat food costs. Cheapest food can be under $100/year, most expensive can be 10x that.

Well, just to put it in perspective, I've spent more than their budget on vet bills alone over the past few months, nevermind cat food, flea/worm tablets, toys etc. They must have cats that don't need anything but the minimum amount of cheap food, never get sick...

Ya, one of my cats has had nothing wrong with him. The other got into some pills I left on the counter and had $8k in vet fees to treat poisoning, thank god for pet insurance.

can you share the name of the insurance?

trupanion

It's cheaper to just replace the heat source than attempt to fix it starts malfunctioning.

And you can just leave your old equipment by the side of the road and the state will take care of its destruction.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/07/25/n...

Well, yes, but if you had gas heating you might have to spend that on a plumber, instead.

Clearly this is more of a cogeneration situation.

Definitely noticed a difference in getting a cat on heating requirements in Seattle. I got two cats now, and my heat is turned off year round.

The ideal number of cats per home in New Zealand is zero. Cats prey on local wildlife, much of which is near extinction as it is because of introduced predators including humans. Those who advocate for banning cats in New Zealand have a pretty strong case.

Is there an argument against indoor cats? That is now the recommendation in the US, as far as I know.

I live in NZ and my partner has an indoor-only cat. It's considered a bit weird here, we've had friends politely suggest that keeping a cat indoors is cruel. In principle indoor cats are just as good for bird life as no cats, but either is a tough sell.

we've had friends politely suggest that keeping a cat indoors is cruel

Lord, no wonder there's a bird mortality problem.

Considering longer lifespan, better health, and seemingly equivalent happiness, it's arguable that not keeping a cat indoors is cruel.

Just like how it's arguably cruel to not move all wildlife into zoos and cages.

Assuming we're agreeing to use QALYs, I think that's unlikely, but don't let my skepticism stop you from arguing it. :)

Loose an outdoor cat in a horrible, easily preventable way, and you'll quickly become an indoor-only cat owner.

Umwhat? If your cat is running away when you set it loose, you're not doing it right.

I suspect OP misspelled 'lose'.

My wife's first cat died trying to beat a car across the road in front of their house.

Outdoor cats meet similar fates regularly.

Yes, I mean "lose", typeo.

Raccoons, coyotes, dogs, mean kids, cars, etc. There are many ways for an outdoor cat to meet a premature death - usually in gruesome ways.

It's simply not safe to let cats roam outdoors anymore - particularly in urban neighborhoods.

Is there evidence that cats are actually a problem for local wildlife in NZ? Which species are under threat?

I've found this belief is common, and it may well be true in some places (including NZ), but it's not true in many, too. In the UK for example there's no evidence to suggest cats are a problem for bird populations[1]. There is a lot of wild extrapolation going on with this subject.

Often I see people quoting statistics such as an absolute number of bird deaths caused by cats, not really understanding that you can't tell from just that statistic whether or not the species are under threat.

[1] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-...

Perhaps you can keep your cat indoors?

Or in an outside enclosure. They're not very hard to install around your fence.

I will say cats are crazy escape artists. We had to confine ours after a move to make sure they didn't make a mess or escape while we reassembled our house but the room didn't have any doors so we piled up boxes and they just got better and better at escaping. This escalated to one of our cats jumping up and slamming a box off the top to make his escape.

I had a couple of cats. I went on holiday, and left them at a cattery for a couple of weeks. The older one managed to open the cat-room door by pushing down on the handle, then ran up and down the long corridor until noticed by the cattery owner. Then the younger cat died, and I got a new younger cat. I went on holiday again, by which time the older cat's back legs were knackered and he couldn't jump up. But I warned the (different) cattery owner that he was an escape artist. This time, he taught the younger cat how to push down on the handle, and again they ended up running up and down the long corridor. Cats are escape artists.

I was rearranging a bedroom once, and flipped the mattress vertically, long-ways, against the wall to make room to move everything else around. Literally as I was lifting the mattress a cat started climbing up it to reach the new, higher vantage point in the room.

We try and encourage our cat to go outdoors - this, of course, makes him stay indoors.

And they will save you a fortune on vet bills compared to allowing your cat to roam free outside.

Any sufficiently popular indoor pet that can survive outdoors will end up with a feral population.

So it's a bit like saying "instead of ROHS can't we just mandate recycling, but if the cheap kids toys people dump indescribably could breed.

It's pretty easy, just ensure that all cats sold for anything apart from breeding are desexed, and have significant penalties for allowing unregested animals to breed.

Unless they are fixed.

Charge a high pet licensing fee if they are not.

PAWS in Seattle will give you a cat and it comes for a coupon for a free spay or neuter (often kittens are too young at adoption time). Of course the fee for adoption is higher than the cost of the surgery, so you are paying for it whether you use it or not.

There are often very cheap city/county options too: where I live its less than $30 for a spay/neuter + rabies vacc (significantly less than a private vet would charge).

I mean, you can very easily keep your cat indoors.

the GP is saying that across a sufficiently large population... you will have cats escaping (some subset of the population), and thus a feral population will eventually form.

It does not necessarily need to be your cat that kicks this off.

One trustworthy indoor cat steward can get away with it; a large enough population will naturally contain some careless people, or even surprises (hit by a bus)

Same problem in Australia.

As a side note, my friend has a cat that had one of its front legs amputated after being attacked by a dog. After that it was much better - couldn't kill as much wildlife, couldn't escape so easily, much better for snuggles.

wouldn't it be more efficient to ban humans?

Not unless you extirpated the cats first.

At which point, why ban the humans?

In the Anthropocene around 90% of all macro-organisms will go extinct. Banning cats does not change this overall figure. Even for New Zealand cats are a lesser problem compared to the rats and possums brought there by humans and those are just a drop in a barrel compared to the overall effect of humanity. For example, New Zealands best solution to the rat and possum problem is bio-chemical warfare¹.

The whole "ban cats" movement is nothing but humanity shifting blame towards one of their oldest allies. New Zealands native birds are not endangered by cats, but because someone removed almost all of their forest homes during the last two centuries².

If you want to prevent the Kōkako and other native birds from going extinct, instead of protesting against other peoples pets, go and fund some breeding program or forest preserve.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080_usage_in_New_Zealand 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_New_Zealand

As for the title itself (and probably my understanding of NZ english), for me “panel heater” means one of the modern electric powered planar sources of IR radiation and after living for few months in flat heated by only such things I’ve found that only reasonable way to use such electric heaters is that these things somehow warm up your cats and nothing much else in the room ;)

I had to dry out my boots once with a panel heater, after a passing driver decided to enliven my rainy-day walking commute by driving through an overflowing gutter and drenching me from head to toe.

I wouldn't have liked to try it with a cat instead...

Use enough duct tape and a cat would be fine for this

Wow, for real? What a fucked-up thing to say.

There is a thing called sarcasm you may want to look into.

I mean, I get that it's trying to be a joke. But it's not trying very hard.

> as cats cannot be used for cooling, you would also have to introduce an alternative cooling system such as lizards or other cold-blooded animals

Even cold blooded animals produce more heat than they consume.

It was a joke.

> A 3kg cat has a heat output of 14.8 watts, or 129.65 kilowatt-hours

I don't get it, how is 14.8 watts equal to 129.65 kilowatt-hours?

They forgot to specify per year.

(129650 WHr/14.8 W)/24 hr = 365 days

Probably the total yearly heat output of a house cat.

  >>> 14.8*24*365 / 1000
  129.64800000000002

Unfortunately, in my experience, cats are endothermic. Give a cat a heat source – a sunny patch, a heated blanket, or a warm belly – and they will cling to it until all the heat is absorbed out of it. Cats need heat sources to thrive, so they will be very unhappy if operated as a heat source.

Some cats recognize that the benefit is mutual. I have 4 cats, and 1 of the 4 will lay with me in a way that we provide a warm surface for each other.

Tough to say. All I saw was a blank white page with no text or images. After jumping through some hoops I saw all that javascript was for a couple paragraphs of text. So I'll just mirror it here for others.

As an aside about the actual content: cats come with vet bills you have to be able to pay if you want to ethically own one. That's a huge expense.

    Cat v panel heater: Which is better?
    6:34 AM, 24 Aug 2020 James Powers

    Cats are affectionate, panel heaters are not.
    How many cats do you need to heat an energy-efficient home?
    It’s the question on everybody's lips. Well, maybe not everyone's lips, and it's possible this is a niche topic, but it is relevant.
    A 3kg cat has a heat output of 14.8 watts, or 129.65 kilowatt-hours - the metric commonly used by power companies to show you how much energy you're using.
    These numbers are important when it comes to the design and building of energy-efficient homes, as the heat output of random things like cats can lead to overheating.
    For example, to be certified Passive House, a building must have an annual heating demand of less than 15kWh per square metre to maintain a comfortable temperature.
    For a typical Kiwi house of 150sqm, the annual energy demand would be 2250kWh. The number of cats required, therefore, would be 17.35, but let's avoid chopping cats and round up to 18 whole cats.
    This equates to 1 cat per 8.33sqm.
    Easy as. Let’s bulk order a cat litter.
    Cats cost about $250 per year to ‘operate’ which equates to a total running cost of $4,300 per year*. This is a bit more than $475 for gas or $675 for electric, although the installation cost is less for cats.
    * The calculations have used an average heat load. In reality, the heat load will vary considerably throughout the year. You will need significantly more cats in colder weather and less during mild weather.
    In hot weather, you can, of course, let the cats out, but this represents a significant waste of resources if you continue to feed them. And as cats cannot be used for cooling, you would also have to introduce an alternative cooling system such as lizards or other cold-blooded animals.

In addition to vet bills there is grief at their passing. Nobody talks years later about that wonderful heater they had back in 1998 and how despite the furnace repair bills, they’d do it all over again just because of how it made the most pleasing sound when it ran, almost like a cats purr.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone does reminisce about such a thing!

Bizarrely I was thinking recently about an extremely lamentable performance of a storage heater 20years back. It wasn't even my heater!

There's also picture of this critter:

https://s.oneroof.co.nz/image/7e/8d/7e8d982a89e64210f2502689...

Thank you very much

This surely should give some credit to the venerable old Solar Cat Book:

https://www.amazon.com/Solar-Cat-Book-Jim-Augustyn/dp/089815...

(Which would evidently make me an alarming amount of money if I could find my old copy of it...)

Then there was the couple who got a kitten. The first night it woke up down around the husband's ankles. It started to walk forward until it found its path blocked. It then dug into his thighs to climb out, and found itself launched from the bed along with husband and blankets.

(Source: the ex-wife. I don't think the kitten contributed to the breakup of the marriage, though.)

Panel heaters don't spew up on my laptop or piss on my £1500 TV, so I'd say pannel heaters are.

A bullmastiff easily puts off as much heat as another human (maybe two) and doubles as an alarm clock.

Our cat acts as an alarm clock. Pretty close to 5:30 every day. The problem is that no one in the house needs to get up at 5:30 (except the person that doesn't want the cat to shit inside).

We have litter boxes that operate 24/7. The problem is when the cats run out of food at 5:30.

Our cat gets me up at about 6:30 just because he can.

I wonder... if you feed a cat more, it will become bigger, and so it will produce more heat.

Assume a spherical cat. As the cat gets bigger, the surface to volume ratio goes down, so the cat gets hotter. This will lower its metabolism, which means that the food calories increasingly go toward storage, which makes the cat get even larger. Asymptotically speaking, the cat tends to become a furry blob of melted lard.

Can you come to my farm? I have a problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow

Cats, definitely.

Friendlier then a panel heater, and contrary to popular opinion they are social animals.

> Friendlier then a panel heater

Depends on the cat, no?

But what happens if there's an unlimited supply of mice?

Smaller animals produce more heat per unit volume, and meat isn't a very efficient form of energy transfer, so you're probably better off filling the house with mice.

Cat lady was on to something.

I assume you are referencing The Simpsons. If so, you shouldn't be down voted.

$675 for 2250kWh of electricity? They're doing something wrong.

That's 30 cents per kwh of heat. Even if you just use resistive heating you beat that in every state, and probably most of the rest of the world.

But it's better than that, because that's heat not electricity. 4 watts of heat transfer for 1 watt of electricity is reasonable with a heat pump, so it's $1.20, or if you consider that co-efficient of performance (COP) is typically measured for cooling and we should be counting the electrical waste heat here a COP of 5, which makes their number $1.50 per kwh.

>Even if you just use resistive heating you beat that in every state, and probably most of the rest of the world.

New Zealand does not have states. You are likely also confusing NZD with USD. The price listed seems entirely reasonable when you understand this.

Ah, good point. I just assumed that unqualified dollars on the internet meant "USD"...

NZD $0.30 = USD$0.20

However, even that can't be compared, because in NZ, electricity charges include all distribution costs. Americans typically only look at the generator charge per kwh, ignoring transmission, lines and any daily charges.

The breakdown works out approximately [1]:

30% - generator 10% - national transmission network 26% - local lines operator 20% - retailer 13% - sales tax

New Zealand has split transmission, generation, retail, and the local lines operator into separate companies. There are generators without retail and at one time there were retailers without generation (I think they were all killed by the wholesale market). The government runs long-distance transmission (through a crown corporation) while local lines operators can be private.

The amazing thing is that in a country of <5 million people, there are 22 retailers.

[1] https://www.ena.org.nz/news-and-events/news/your-power-bill-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market...

> The amazing thing is that in a country of <5 million people, there are 22 retailers.

On one hand it's amazing bit on the other it shows a certain level of inefficiency. In my view one of NZ's biggest problems when it comes to productivity is the need to duplicate effort in so many areas.

> 30 cents per kwh

That is about right. Note in NZ includes 15% sales tax.

https://www.canstarblue.co.nz/energy/electricity-providers/a...

Gosh it's almost like different places in the world have different costs of living.

They do, but cost of electricity is relatively consistent because cost of production is (or at least upper bounded, some places have particularly cheap electricity because of geography). In this case the trick is that 30nzd=20usd and they didn't feel the need to clarify the currency.

It's a New Zealand website on a New Zealand TLD that specifically qualifies, "for a typical Kiwi house", but you thought it wasn't clear that they would be dealing with NZ dollars?

To be honest:

I didn't look at the domain name.

I didn't look at the about us page or anything else to indicate the location.

I assumed kiwi house was a style of architecture and didn't make the link with nz.

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