Insulation: First the body, then the home (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Insulation: First the body, then the home (2011)

lowtechmagazine.com

261 pointsoftenwrong305 comments

From the comments:

> 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.

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.

> That said, I recently moved to North America and have lived in Pakistan most of my life.

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 :)

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.

Is Pakistan winter humid and windy ? That does play a role on perceived cold. Variations in temperature as well I believe.

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.

> 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.

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.

>Is it your first winter? It's a special experience!

Why would it be? Pakistan has winters, and cold ones at that...

"The record coldest it's ever gotten in Lahore was an unfathomable –2.2 °C on January 17, 1935."

That's not a winter, that's a sudden mid-summer frost... :)

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.

I feel the same way about florida summers. My preferred room temperature is 30-40 with a fan.

Depends on the region you're from. Most of the Pakistan isn't that cold. This should give you a better idea of the climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Pakistan#/media/Fil...

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).

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.

Aluminum window frame is really awful. Why we use the material that used for heatsink to insulate?

Apparently Al frames have been improved over the years as well.

A friend said the same about South Africa. It's so rarely cold, that when it is cold, it's colder than London.

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.

The difference there is the humidity making you feel cold.

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.

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.

The humidity is still a big factor inside, and it's why you feel colder than in places with low humidity.

Odd you were downvoted down much for mentioning that humidity impacts how we feel temperatures..

Humid -40C air becomes very dry +20C air when it gets inside a heated house.

Saturated vapour density, the basis of relative humidity, about doubles every 10C.

How do you folks in the Yukon manage air humidity inside your houses during the winter?

I would think that by default, the indoor heated air would be so dry that it would cause havoc on your sinuses.

Many, many people struggle with dry and cracked skin (hands, face), blood noses, etc.

For me personally I do notice it whenever I leave and come back, though I seem to adjust OK. I use moisturizer a lot.

Not from there, but a humidifier?

My grandma always had a little thing filled with water hanging on the radiator during winter.

Agree. Humidity and altitude play a huge role in how cold it feels (and in how effective the cold is - specific heat).

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.

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.

Strange, I never heard of any place where the renter doesn't pay for the heating. Doesn't seem fair to make the landlord pay for it.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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 read about poor insulation a lot but is insulation practical or worth it in areas like South Asia where the humidity is on average 40-80% RH.

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.

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.

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 :)

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).

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.

Had to laugh at your comment about Scotland because people in Maine do the same thing.

Heat is either blasting or turned off. Very poor insulation.

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!

Found it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/the-curio...

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

> It was not uncommon to see apartments with open windows in January to help regulate the heat produced by the radiator.

Known as the Brooklyn Thermostat.

This blew my mind more than anything else when we moved to New York.

These days I have the same problem because the downtown Brooklyn PTACs all have the thermostat sensor right next to the window.

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.

I am from Siberia. I no longer live there, but I cannot tolerate the temperature at home lower than 23 degrees C. For the same exact reason.

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.

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!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotatsu

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.

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.)

It is a British. Our family friend, who has British husband complains about constant freezing during their stay there.

> 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).

I think that sentence alone ...

And (thanks to climate change) my flat also get hot enough to kill me

>I do not buy it because the Japanese live the way you suggest in the winter, and it is miserable

Yeah, so? Eating properly is also "miserable" compared to eating junk food. It's also better for you and for society.

Being able to be comfortable in our homes while being minimally clothed in the winter is one of those "luxuries" of the fossil fuel age that we take for granted.

The constellation of technologies needed to achieve this efficiently (with far less fossil fuels) and healthily (with healthy internal air quality) exists: heat pumps, heat-recovery-ventilators, airtight but vapor permeable house sealing materials - the standard equipment of passive houses. However, as the article mentions, today it is not available at low cost.

None of this technology is exotic (as in requiring exotic materials or manufacturing processes). It doesn't need to be expensive. Even the labor for installing it in isn't uncommon - air sealing is a DIY project if one is OK with a bit of hard work.

In the US at least, many industries providing these building measures have however reached a kind of equilibrium where they mostly sell it to people of higher means, which makes the global impact of home energy efficiency minimal. Other developed countries - mostly in N Europe - have started putting these into their building codes.

To have any impact, home energy efficiency needs to reach critical mass in the public consciousness, and for that, the public need to start looking at their homes the way that many have started to look at their low MPG ICE vehicles, and demanding higher efficiency both from the private home building market and from regulatory institutions.

New homes are much better insulated. An interesting aspect of a "Green New Deal" would be to subsidize electrifying the HVAC & insulating our older buildings. It puts people to work, saves them money for the occupants, and reduces emissions.

> An interesting aspect of a "Green New Deal" would be to subsidize electrifying the HVAC & insulating our older buildings.

This is the great part of the Green New Deal that was shouted down when much of the political establishment mocked it - it would put scores of people to work in jobs in the trades.

Unfortunately insulating a building after the fact is extremely difficult, expensive, and depending on climate can approach the level of near tear down. I think it many cases it may ultimately be more environmentally friendly and cost effective to add things like solar and just brute force the heating/cooling.

The reason for this is that buildings not designed for insulation and air sealing can suffer from dramatically worse durability (mold etc) when just adding insulation. It is not necessarily wise to just add fiberglass batts to wall cavities.

The addition of insulation to our homes is a modern thing, and there have been significant issues even currently (the mold crisis).

The issue is that to build a building properly, it is necessary to address heat flow, vapor flow, air flow, condensation, drying, and water barriers. This means you often have to address the entire envelope of the building, which is very expensive, difficult, and means replacing a lot of material. Basically remove all cladding and sheathing and upgrade it.

Realistically most of these concepts are not well understood in the construction industry, and the expense is high so most corners would be cut leading to huge issues with mold and wood destroying pests down the road.

> Basically remove all cladding and upgrade it.

This is not extremely difficult nor expensive on every building. It's certainly more of a job than cutting holes in the wall on the inside and blowing in insulation. By insulating from the exterior you can address vapor issues. There are benefits: you can avoid having to patch holes (2 per stud bay... ie a lot) and repaint the inside. There's opportunity to upgrade electrical or fix any issues. Siding also has a limited lifetime. Wood siding can be reused.

With some/many buildings it is certainly too hard and expensive, but for many this is not. We shouldn't write off the whole idea because it doesn't apply to all buildings.

Fortunately, at least in the U.S., our building codes for new and renovated buildings help ensure that, over time, most of our buildings will be well-insulated.

But, I don't know how well current codes ensure that all aspects of IAQ are reasonably safe, particularly in residences. I'd need to check, but not sure they seriously address prolonged, elevated exposure to VOCs. I fear that decades from now, we'll learn we harmed a lot of people via prolonged exposure.

I think you forget how people make choices. One of the big issues is that if people are given the choice between an extra 3rd or 4th bathroom (that they use twice a year) and good insulation, most people will choose the 4th bathroom. That is because the bathrooms are considered status symbols while insulation is not. Now the rational thing to do when building a house, is to choose the most energy efficient solution over any other options (e.g. a better kitchen), because more energy efficiency will allow you to afford the other upgrades sooner. However, few people make their choices like that.

> One of the big issues is that if people are given the choice between an extra 3rd or 4th bathroom (that they use twice a year) and good insulation, most people will choose the 4th bathroom.

US luxuries. I don't think any person I know in Europe lives in a house/apartment with more than 4 bathrooms. I imagine 90% live in one with at most 2 bathrooms.

> Being able to be comfortable in our homes while being minimally clothed in the winter is one of those "luxuries" of the fossil fuel age that we take for granted.

Did you know that the Romans had under-floor heating.

Considering the number of slaves you'd need to operate your own hypocaust system, I would classify that securely in the luxury category for antiquity.

Wealthy Romans in palaces yes. But when I wrote "our" I meant it in the more universal sense.

Conversely, some impoverished people in the US today have very inadequate heating systems in their houses, and resort to things like propane heaters, or running their stoves and ovens to heat the house, which can cause carbon monoxide poisoning indoors.

That’s based on low population densities, and inequality in terms of commanding labour (getting slaves to cut down trees and keep the heating system for a large house running) and in accessing natural resources (a house having enough acreage of land to grow enough wood to keep the heating system going).

It’s something which is a luxury in the absence of fossil fuels, or the rollout of new technologies they mention.

> 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.

It's because you're sitting all day. Get a small foot heater.

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.

Yes, especially an infrared heater, that allows much more efficient "spot heating" than a more traditional convection heater.

Or a blanket over the legs (I'm at home at my desk in New England and I have a blanket over them right now).

Or if your floor is colder than the rest of the room, put something insulating under your desk to keep your feet off it. I use an old couch cushion.

Wool socks

Maybe this is too extreme, but starting barefoot running and/or taking cold showers will greatly increase one's cold tolerance.

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.

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.

I'm interested in the idea of running barefoot, could you share a reference or two?

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.)

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...

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.

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.

sheepskin slippers/booties. best thing I've bought in a while.

https://www.sheepskin.co.uk/product/sheepland-luxury-sheepsk...

I’m sure you’re already aware - but be mindful of what’s under your feet. A folded blanket can do wonders to insulate your feet from the floor.

In this case, the heating's coming up from the floor, so that would be counterproductive. :-D

A small blanket is great when working at home. Would get weird looks in the office, though.

I expect people on HN to have already figured out the obvious:

It takes much less energy to heat the area under your clothes, using existing heat, than to heat a room or building with artificially generated heat. Your body is 37 deg C. Wearing low-insulation clothing and letting that heat float away, and then heating the entire room or building to warm you up again, is absurd if you understand basic physics and think for a moment.

Wear a sweater, wear shoes (that's where the cold air is). Keep the thermostat at the lowest comfortable temperature - experiment a bit and test what you become accustomed to, and you'll know for the rest of your life. Do that and you lose nothing. Maybe go a step further and wear long underwear and maybe even a hat; why not?

Another way to look at it: Only use the energy that you need. Heating a building when you aren't there is silly. [0] Heating rooms you aren't in is a similar waste - if and when you can, get a heating system that segregates areas. Heating the entire room when you are in one place, and already generating heat, is also a waste. Just put on some insulation and trap the heat that's already there.

All heating is local. (Edit, because people are omitting the obvious implications: The consequences, climate change, are global.)

[0] You'll be fine waiting for it to heat when you need it, or just use a thermostat with a timer or remote control.

> Maybe go a step further and wear long underwear and maybe even a hat; why not?

Some reasons why not:

you may live with other people who have different basal temperatures from yours, aren't comfortable at 16 degrees or whatever you settle on, and didn't consent to participating in your wacky experiment;

other people may come over to visit your house without realizing in advance that they need to wear long underwear;

and low indoor temperatures promote mold growth.

> other people may come over to visit your house without realizing in advance that they need to wear long underwear;

Not a problem in Covid times. But it's possible to turn the heat up when you have guests, no? Or run a space heater in the living room when they're around?

> and low indoor temperatures promote mold growth.

I'm mystified by this. I thought moisture promoted mold growth. The solution to that is good ventilation. If anything low temp should inhibit growth, as it does for most microorganisms.

Low temp leads to higher relative humidity and slower drying of surfaces, that's why it's increasing the risk for mold.

There is a related problem when insulating your house more. If it's badly insulated, walls are cold and any dampness happens on the inside surface of the wall. You turn up your heater and ventilation and it evaporates.

Now you add more insulation. Your walls on the inside are warmer. But the absolute humidity in the air is still the same, so it goes into the wall too. There is a temperature gradient inside the wall. When it's cold outside, there is a point in the wall where the relative humidity hits saturation, so the wall gets moist there. The better insulation, the deeper this is in the wall. No level of ventilation will save you here and if you don't do anything about it, you get mold inside the wall. Which you would not get without this extra insulation.

The solution is vapour barriers. They need to be close to the inside of your walls to work. This is a tricky subject and part of the reason why adding insulation after the fact is hard.

> Not a problem in Covid times.

Covid times are just† ~2 years, not the lifetime of a person or a house.

†Knock on wood.

> Not a problem in Covid times. But it's possible to turn the heat up when you have guests, no? Or run a space heater in the living room when they're around?

Sure, if you're considerate enough to do that! My dad wasn't!

You wear long underwear, the 'hot' person can wear a t-shirt

I think his argument was that the person that controls the temperature is the "hot" person. In that case... you just let the others freeze? :-p

> Some reasons why not:

> you may live with other people who have different basal temperatures from yours, aren't comfortable at 16 degrees or whatever you settle on, and didn't consent to participating in your wacky experiment;

> other people may come over to visit your house without realizing in advance that they need to wear long underwear;

C'mon. We can't figure out the solutions to these problems, in a moment? :) If you can't, I'm not hiring you to wash dishes. (I.e., I believe you can.)

Edit: I think there's an assumption that this is some dogmatic straw-argument. It's not; it's practical. The argument is: Be practical.

No thank you. I grew up in a house with a dad who fully bought into the "wear a sweater" philosophy. He'd make us go around all winter wearing two sweaters, a hat, and shoes indoors, and I still froze. My nose ran constantly and my hands got so cold I couldn't use my computer.

Now I'm an adult and I've learned that the extra cost to heat my condo to 23 degrees all winter is basically the same as my Netflix subscription, I recognize that philosophy for the idiocy that it is. If it's too expensive to heat your house correctly, then you have a problem with your insulation and you need to fix it.

My parents finally insulated their attic and bought a heat pump this year, and for the first time in a decade I can visit them in the winter and be comfortable the whole time.

> you have a problem with your insulation and you need to fix it.

Amen! But imagine the savings if you have good insulation and keep the heat down! <trollface>

I bought an older house built in the era of coal heating. Popped open an exterior wall to fix some water damage and discover it was completely un-insulated.

Better than finding the walls stuffed full of asbestos, I guess, but man, how was I the first person in a century to think of insulating?

You didn't think of it, just like the previous residents didn't think of it. You discovered it, when maybe the previous residents didn't. Before you discovered it, you were assuming it was insulated right? Perhaps the previous people also assumed that.

As I get older, I'm finding my extremities are not maintaining circulation/warmth. While I can wear socks no problem, I don't really want to wear gloves indoors. Heating the house more makes it feel cozy and nice, so I can see why some people would make that choice.

I now have chilblains. I wear gloves even while sleeping. I also have to regularly rewarm my hands, using an electric pad.

I hate hats, gloves, scarves, masks, etc. But I got used to it.

Generally agree, though fingerless gloves are nice compromise.

None of this keeps my hands warm.

Or makes me feel comfortable.

After growing up in a house with no insulation and being miserable all winter long, now for an extra ~$50 a month during the winter I get to keep my house at a nice toasty 74-76 degrees F and I'm comfortable year round.

> None of this keeps my hands warm.

> Or makes me feel comfortable.

I wrote, 'Keep the thermostat at the lowest comfortable temperature', not an uncomfortable one. Don't lump me in with strawpeople who tell you to be uncomfortable.

> for an extra ~$50 a month during the winter I get to keep my house at a nice toasty 74-76 degrees F

I agree that you can do what you want with your $50. But there are other costs too: Our choices creates climate change for others.

> But there are other costs too: Our choices creates climate change for others.

Optimising your personal heating choices has a maximum benefit of $50 per month of fuel saved in the fight against climate change, then.

That rounds to zero compared to industrial-level decisions, and requires perhaps similar mental thinking time.

I don't see climate change being fought this way, not even if engaged people make themselves feel uncomfortably cold in the winter to the point of risking hypothermia (which is already a significant risk especially in the older population).

I don't see it being fought any other way, either. You think we can tell the big polluters to take it down to zero and just continue by ourselves? Not only is that incongruous, we wouldn't be reaching 1.5°C either. Unless perhaps you pay for scrubbing of your CO2, which would be fine by me (I currently pay for Climeworks, not because I can reach net zero that way (yet) but because it helps them fund the way there, they just need enough customers; something tells me we'll need scrubbing tech and capacity in addition to cutting emissions, seeing as the person above... let me just stop there).

Keeping your core warmer, especially with the thermal underwear discussed at length in the article, will also keep your hands warmer.

There's an entire section of the article titled "Hands and feet". You could read it instead of dismissing the whole idea out of hand.

> Keeping your core warmer, especially with the thermal underwear discussed at length in the article, will also keep your hands warmer.

That works on the general case, but not always.

I've worked in buildings where I can be sweating in my coat and still have cold hands.

I can easily wear extra thick socks, have my feet swimming in my shoes, and still have my ears be cold.

Theory is great until it runs into reality.

(If theory worked so well, there wouldn't be an active market for desk heaters to warm up hands!)

edit:

Example from the article

>> But of course, the permeability index is not of any importance for indoor couch potatoes: they don't sweat.

Which is complete BS. I am sitting here in a t-shirt right now and the part of my back that is up against my chair is rather sweaty.

Likewise, feet sweat in shoes.

> However, it is important to note that if the body as a whole is kept warm enough, hands and feet will not be greatly affected by lower indoor temperatures.

Again, not true in my experience.

> While insulating your neck and feet will greatly improve your thermal comfort, there is no need to wear gloves or caps indoors.

If the indoor temp is below 65f I am not going to be typing anything for very long. For that matter at around 68f I'm starting to get uncomfortable.

Truth of it is, I've worked in more than one office where I was stuck wearing a cap indoors.

> Keeping your core warmer, especially with the thermal underwear discussed at length in the article, will also keep your hands warmer.

That's a lesson of wilderness camping in cold weather - if your hands are cold, put on another layer.

> experiment a bit and test what you become accustomed to, and you'll know for the rest of your life.

Probably worth pointing out that people's metabolisms and body shapes do change throughout their life, so expect that you will have to tweak this periodically.

> Heating a building when you aren't there is silly. [0]

If I don’t heat my home when I’m not there in the winter, the water supply lines will freeze and burst causing thousands or tens of thousands in damage. I think I’ll heat my home when I’m not there, thanks.

I'm pretty sure the OC means "don't heat your home to a comfortable habitation level when you aren't there." Obviously turning the heat off entirely with a risk of pipes breaking is a bad idea. However, setting your thermostat to 50ºF is sufficient for that.

If you live in a climate where pipes are a factor in your heat decision, then you should have enough insulation that the difference in energy isn't all that much.

Also, there's this concept of thermal mass - once you heat up you walls, floors, furniture, etc, they retain it. If you keep on letting your house cool down and then heating it up again, you basically lose that stored heat and need to pay for it again. It's cheaper to just maintain the same temperature all the time.

And, as a PNW resident I really need to emphasize this: MOLD. It's a thing.

This seems to be a common misconception, but not true. Letting the apartment cool down will always use less energy than keeping temperature up.

I would think this is just very obvious. Keeping the temperature up will lead to more heat loss. I can try to find some supporting material if you wish though as I've heard this same claim before.

Not sure of the total outcome but the heat source might not be as efficient at pumping out heat for it to get warm quickly enough than it would at a constant rate. I cannot find a source now but I believe this is even the case for new refrigerators that they run in a much more continuous mode than the jagged cool/off mode.

I suppose that's possible with some special cases, I wouldn't really know. This type of energy loss would be quite different from the claim parent mentioned about "stored heat" though.

Isn't mold handled most effectively with a dehumidifier, rather than a heater?

So add a second appliance rather than using one that you already have for both comfort and mold prevention?

Well things are not quite so easy, for one you can insulate your house much better than your body. Passive houses for example can keep your house at a comfortable 20 deg all year using only heat from the bodies of the inhabitants and the water heating system. One reason is, that the temperature differential between your body and the surrounding is much larger than between the house and it's surroundings, another that you have to have exchange heat (i.e. need to breath).

Also how hot or cold you feel is highly dependent on what activity you do, i.e. you are likely to be much colder working on your computer than e.g. cooking. So if you adjust your temperature to the minimum for most of your activities will automatically lead to you freezing at some activities.

> Well things are not quite so easy ...

It's not easy to put on and take off warm clothes to manage your personal temperature?

> Heating a building when you aren't there is silly.

Is this true? I've thought about it for a while but can't quite wrap my head around an answer that feels obviously correct. It takes a lot of energy to raise the temperature of a house - more than to maintain a given temperature. Allowing for changing temperatures during the day, and concrete slabs and walls and the ground as heat stores, is it always the case that it uses less energy to have a lower set point while you're out and raise it when you get home than to just keep it at the comfortable level the whole time?

> It takes a lot of energy to raise the temperature of a house - more than to maintain a given temperature

is this true? the house is constantly bleeding off its heat at a rate proportional to the temperature difference between interior and exterior. it should always cost more energy to maintain the higher temperature gradient than to just let the heat bleed off (which it was always going to do) and add in more heat once the building is occupied.

Yes, because when the inside of the house is close to outside temperature the temperature difference is lower (obvious). Heat loss depends on temperature differential so there will be less energy lose.

The real question you should ask isn't is it true - it is. The real question is it significant enough to worry about. If you are going to be gone for several days it is.

If you are only talking about a part of a day though things are different, and get complex.

If you heat with electric (including heat pumps!), keeping the house a consistent temperature makes you use an even amount of heat all day, and so your house can be better supplied by renewable energy. If many people turn the heat up when (or just before) they get home at 5pm - the renewable power available isn't enough and the power company will have to turn on fossil fuel plants to make up the difference. Thus you might use more energy but use a better type of energy by keeping the house warm.

For many houses solar heating (from windows) is nearly enough to keep the house warm all day even on the coldest days, so it doesn't matter as the heating system isn't working anyway.

Note that the previous two paragraphs contradict each other. I don't know how to work that out (for cooling it is a big deal), so you will need to ask questions - be prepared for different answers at different times.

If your house is well insulated you shouldn't see much a change in temperature indoors, and as such there is only a tiny amount of energy save with setbacks. So why not just enjoy a comfortable temperature for the rare exceptions to your schedule? If your house is not well insulated, fixing that should be your priority.

There are probably other factors I can't think of.

> If you heat with electric (including heat pumps!), keeping the house a consistent temperature makes you use an even amount of heat all day, and so your house can be better supplied by renewable energy. If many people turn the heat up when (or just before) they get home at 5pm - the renewable power available isn't enough and the power company will have to turn on fossil fuel plants to make up the difference.

It also depends on what kind of renewable. A lot of people set their thermostat lower at night, which aligns well with solar power, which is only available during the day. But turning it down during the day and turning it up in the evening doesn't align as well (especially in the winter when the sun goes down early).

The answer is complicated. For the same amount of insulation, the amount of heat lost is also dependent on temperature. Leaving the house at a lower temperature (but still heated, not off!) while you are absent for long periods of time _usually_ is a better approach. Because you are losing heat anyway, the question is just how much.

Sure, if you have really amazing insulation(outside of specially engineered buildings you probably don't), the difference may not be significant and you would be right.

> 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.

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.

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.

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)".

After 5 winters of Berlin, I have decided to treat myself proper heat tech clothing.

The 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".

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.

Especially merino wool. That stuff is fantastic.

It's a well known thing among mountain walkers/climbers. Cotton kills.

That's obviously true. If you wear cotton, you need to be prepared to add or remove layers of clothes as needed.

This is a "technically correct" post.

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.

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.

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.

er,London is not cold.

Berlin neither, all you need is a tshirt and a down sweater/light jacket like this: https://www.rei.com/product/871413/patagonia-down-sweater-me... (or 4 time cheaper at other brands).

I know because that's what I use regularly for long walks and even bike trips

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).

Agreed that the jacket is great. Point is, as a Canadian I consider it a layering piece, not a winter jacket. :)

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...

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.

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.

Any specific suggestions on brand/tech/material?

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.

Living in the Canadian Rockies, we regularly see temperatures in the -20c (-4f) and colder range. I'd highly recommend looking at:

[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!

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.

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 have access to Uniqlo where you are, they make a nice range of decent-quality thermals. Durable and tidy without being too pricey.

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.

"Hand-shoes" Read "gloves".

I smiled reading that literal translation of "handschuhe" <3

Hah, is that what you call footgloves? "Shoes"? Interesting.

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.

As others have already suggested, wool is king.

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.

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.

In addition to what's already been answered, Odlo and Ice breaker are on the higher price point, but definitely worth the price.

If you have Decathlon nearby, start with them and ramp up as needed.

Icebreaker makes extremely good thermal wear. It’s comfortable, warm, breathable and looks great. Be prepared to spend though.

I usually wear Uniqlo heattech sweater and when it gets very cold, Uniqlo heattech undershirts.

I don't like puffy winter jackets so I wear a long wool coat instead.

Winters in Berlin are particularly annoying because they're very humid. The cold seems to be penetrating deep into your bones.

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.

Interesting. Could you share a list of products you have bought?

Sibling comments say it all ;)

What did you go for?,- I live in Northern Europe too.

Sibling comments are packed with great recommendations.

tl;dr; long sleeve undershirts and under jeans all day, every day. A sweater. Down jacket. Wind-proof jacket.

I can tolerate pretty cold environments, but why should I have to? The outdoors are the reason we invented the indoors.

“The potential energy savings are huge; the costs are almost nil.”

This is a complete fantasy. What’s actually happening here is, faced with a hard problem (heating indoor spaces in a sustainable way), they have decided to solve a much harder one (changing the behaviour and physiology of everyone on Earth) in the guise of a simple one (if only we all wore more clothing). What sounds like a simple solution is therefore actually nearly impossible, and of little use to us unless we’re facing extreme circumstances.

The whole point of civilisation is that life does not have to be a survival exercise. If we can’t come up with anything better than this line of reasoning, then we are done for.

This kind of comment gets posted on everything from low tech magazine.

I think the authors intention is not to give practical ideas that could be widely deployed to the world but instead to give ideas to people who find enjoyment out of maximising efficiency as a hobby.

The author is a person who turns most of the lights off so they can run their office on a solar panel hanging out their apartment window.

Well, live and let live :)

I think it’s pretty cool tbh. I just don’t review the proposals as things to do practically and more for fun to learn about energy

Yes, I think what you’re saying makes sense.

It is just the opposite of fantasy: Wearing warm clothing indoors is a technology that exists now and is a completely viable way to reduce energy needs. Clothing is more affordable now than at any other point in history. Heating all buildings to a comfortable temperature at all times in a sustainable way is, as you said, a hard problem - one for which there is currently no solution. Switching the world over to sustainable energy sources for heating and cooling is not simpler than convincing people to adjust their thermostats and wardrobe.

convincing people to adjust their thermostats and wardrobe

That’s the missing chasm in the plan: how are we going to convince people to abandon luxury (real or perceived), comfort, and status in the name of efficiency? Especially when we’re talking about something so fundamental as warmth, as expressed as clause two in the phrase safe and warm when describing basic necessities. The image of someone turning down their thermostat and wearing thermals at home evokes images of hardship that will be difficult to dislodge (not to mention all the impracticalities and flat out dangerous aspects others have pointed out).

By comparison (in a technologically advanced capitalist society with a mature consumer culture) the challenges of developing and scaling renewable technology that fulfils people’s wants and needs are child’s play.

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.

It’s a long-standing joke in the North East.

https://newsthump.com/2009/02/22/geordie-man-buys-coat/

Reminded me of Geordie Jumpers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOJzPXzcF_g

Thanks for the laugh!

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.

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':

* 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 recall reading a blog post in which a heat lamp was used to warm the hands while working at a desk.

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.

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.

https://images.app.goo.gl/DZofccEmDPGdSKvGA

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.

Living in cold home isn't particularly hard.

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.

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.

And if you would like to read the solar-powered version of this article: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/02/body-insulation-th...

Wow, this is the first time I've ever heard of something like this. Are there others? I searched and didn't find any, but did find this cool writeup about LTM's setup: https://hackaday.com/2018/10/08/perfecting-the-solar-powered...

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.

There are whole-house dehumidiers that operate separately than your heating/cooling system. Set a relative humidity (RH) range and let it work; e.g.:

* 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).

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.

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.

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.

Love to see a Matt Risinger comment here!

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).

We've done exactly the same. I find the air 'feels cleaner' as well.

Why not both?

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.

Another consideration if you live in a damp climate is the risk of mold if you don’t heat your house to keep it dry.

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

> it's still 18c+ indoor even without any heating in my flat

You can thank your neighbours.

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.

> I've stopped using heating altogether

> 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.

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 just looked up the yearly average high / lows for Berlin and London. I never realized they were both so temperate.

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.

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 :-)

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.

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.

As my Siberian parents taught me growing up:

There's no such thing as bad weather; there's just being incorrectly dressed for it.

As someone from Southern California, we have a similar phrase: "There is no such thing as bad weather"

That's it. That's the whole phrase.

I'm German, studied in Auckland (NZ), worked in Sydney and Melbourne and am now living in Sweden. The coldest I've ever felt is Auckland and Sydney (probably Sydney slightly colder). Sydney houses are so poorly insulated, there's cm-wide gaps under some doors and windows and the only heaters are typically a small plugin resistive heater. Auckland was typically a bit better, except that the heaters were indoor gas heaters with a LPG bottle (welcome to dampness and condensation on all windows).

During the day in Sydney winter it is often 18-22 degrees, so you can walk around in t-shirt quite comfortably, but as soon as the sun goes down it drops down to 8-12 and it's as cold inside as outside. Try to work on a computer when it's 12 degrees in your room (or maybe 15 if you have your electric heater on full blast).

Melbourne gets much colder and insulation is only marginally better. However, apartments/houses typically have some sort of proper heating (heat-pump or centralised gas heater). You still largely heat the outside though (one of our houses was so badly insulated, that when it was windstill the house could be easily heated to ~20 deg even with ~1 deg outside, when windy that indoor temperature dropped to >10.

Now in Sweden, I can easily sit in t-shirt and be comfortable. In fact my office can be heated just using my moderate desktop PC (~450 W power supply), because you don't loose the heat to the outside immediately.

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.

Ah, yes, because winter isn't miserable enough.

>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.

> because winter isn't miserable enough.

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 :/

I live in a 150 years old farm in the middle of a forest that have no heating, it's my third winter here and the temperature goes down to 5C inside for a few months (oceanic climate, it's rarely below 0C outside), especially on cloudy days when the sun can't warm up the stones of the walls.

The first winter I didn't have proper clothing and it was really hard. But now I have all the right gear and it feels very comfortable and natural. It's interesting. Also when Spring arrive I really get to enjoy it, the connection to the nature around is strong.

The only issue is finding the right gloves for typing on the computer, I haven't found any good ones yet.

Oh and in the morning I have to remember to quickly warm up my macbook pro otherwise the cold make it shut down. If it wasn't the work laptop I would use something else, the metal case is not pleasant when it's really cold.

> The only issue is finding the right gloves for typing on the computer, I haven't found any good ones yet.

Have you tried fingerless gloves? During long winter backpacking trips or situations where I'll be living without heat for a while, I take some liner gloves and cut the fingers just past the first knuckle. The gloves stay clean even with prolonged use, and you can still use capacitive touch screens and do dexterous work like typing.

I only tried cutting regular gloves but I can't touch type efficiently with them. I could indeed try liner gloves, good idea thanks!

Smart and very true. But honestly, I'm lazy. I don't leave my house much. I like to keep it no lower then 72 or 73 in the day and 75 at night. I have my heating setup such that after 9 am it drops the house to 72 (naturally) then at 4 pm kicks it up to 73. 6 pm 74, and 8 at 75. Hold all night until 6 am when I have it kick down to 74.

I don't care about the cost. Sure I could spend less and yes, I use more then all of my neighbors, but I really, really don't care. Sure it might be environmentally less efficient, but I couldn't care less about my bill being $20 or $50 cheaper. I want to be comfortable. That $20 or $50 isn't going to change my life in any meaningful way, but being warm sure makes me a lot happier, every, single, second, of the day.

It's not about the cost for you. It's about the millions of premature deaths and impact on global warming due to pollution from gas heaters. I'm happy for you that you earn enough not to care about the money, same here, but please consider that there are also consequences for strangers as well as loved ones.

Why put the heat up overnight? That seems extremely counter-intuitive to me.

I live in South Africa which can get pretty chilly in the winters, but people generally don't understand insulation, so they just tend to put more clothes on, or just wear a kortbroek in the summer. Even if they did, a lot of people can't afford it.

It's catching on slowly though, for example things like double glazed windows. Also, building regulations have improved and insulation is now a mandatory for normal residential houses.

I'm in the process of changing all the windows in my house to double glazed, and installing better insulation above the ceiling. It makes a massive difference, and at least in my area (Cape Town) you don't need an air conditioner in summer, except perhaps a few extreme days in February :)

FYI kortbroek is shorts in English :) Afrikaans is 'n grappige taal als Nederlander! :D Fun fact: you have an easier time understanding Dutch than vice versa, I always felt weird that you guys seemed to be fine with Dutch but I couldn't understand sentences in Afrikaans but it seems that it's not just me. Let me know if you care about the reasoning, I didn't fully get it but can probably find the original video where I learned this.

Also sorry for the off topic but I figured two days after the thread mostly died (everything's so ephemeral here) it doesn't really matter.

Dutch is easy enough to read but listening in is a different story. Dutch people tend to have a strong accent in.. dutch ;-) I suspect I would get used to it if I ever moved to Holland but I have no intentions of doing that.

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.

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.

And its also cheap, 3 or 4 pack for under $20.

I don't necessarily disagree with the article but where I live I spend far more on cooling than heating.

I can walk around with minimal clothing but if it is 100F outside I am going to need to run the air conditioner. I spent $5000 on insulation upgrades and enclosing the crawlspace.

The house originally had 2 separate 2.0 ton SEER 8 units. They lasted 14 and 17 years. They were replaced with 2.5 ton SEER 18 variable speed compressors that can also use the heat pump for heating.

The house is so much more comfortable now. When it was 100F outside the old systems could only get the indoor temp down to 81F. Now they can get down to 70F if I want. The variable speed keeps the compressor running at a low rate to continue dehumidification without cooling too quickly.

I had multiple electric bills in July/August of $300 and since the upgrades my high is $180.

The crawl space enclosure with a tiny HVAC vent keeps the crawlspace at 60F in the winter which has the added benefit of keeping the water temperature reasonable and not having to wait 45 seconds to get warmer water to wash your hands.

My natural gas bills for heating used to be around $110 in the winter and now they have dropped to $50. The systems are set to to use the heat pump for heating until the outside temp drops below 40F and then switch to natural gas.

I realise I'm likely an outlier here, but I absolutely hate every single clothing piece shown in the article. This is because I dislike tight clothes in general and long sleeves in particular. It is also unclear how much actual savings can be achieved by lowering the temperature. I would love to see the curves ($ savings for lowering average temp by 1 degree) for modern buildings (good insulation) for different climate types.

I was homeless for a few years. That means I stayed warm at night in freezing temps by piling three people into a too-small tent (one designed for two people) and sharing "bio heat" as our only heat source.

I hate long sleeves and seldom wore them.

Tight clothing actually cuts off your circulation and makes you colder.

The right material -- flannel, wool, sometimes knitwear -- can keep you warm even when wet.

Being cleaner helps keep you warm.

Eating warm cheese, like a quesadilla, helps keep you warm.

Because of my medical situation, I don't have carpeting, upholstered furniture, etc. My home is a lot less prone to being too hot in summer and too cold in winter than when I was living the standard North American Lifestyle steeped in Affluenza.

I keep intending to someday blog about such things, but it's always such insane drama to comment on it on internet forums that I figure there's no point and haven't gotten around to it. But we really don't talk about how our lifestyles have changed so much in recent decades and we seem to, on the whole, not wonder about things like "I wonder if a hundred years ago people were fundamentally more comfortable, temperature-wise, than they are today because their homes were more spartan simply because no one had the kind of wealth we have today?"

There's a lot of things that have changed and we seem oblivious to the possibility that those large scale changes may account for some of the issues individuals are experiencing. We tend to just medicalize it and act like "You, as an individual, have some kind of personal problem."

A huge factor in your body temperature is metabolism. You need to constantly eat and hydrate at colder temperatures because your body is working harder to regulate your temperature. My thermostat is set to 61F, and I'm comfortable most of the time, but sometimes I'll randomly feel really cold even though the temperature and my clothes haven't changed. I eat a small snack, and suddenly I'm comfortable again. When I don't do this, I end up sweating as my body tries to raise my core temperature, and then I'm cold because I'm wet. And If I do 20 minutes of intense exercise, I often sit around in shorts and a t-shirt for an hour or more and not notice the cold.

Also, the material and fit do make an impact on thermal insulation, but not in universal ways. Tight-fitting clothes that aren't good insulators - like jeans with elastic - actually end up making you colder because they're not good insulators and they increase conduction heat transfer. A loose-fitting pair of non-stretch pants actually insulates better because the material itself is a better insulator, and the air between your leg and the pants is also an insulator [less heat transfer than with the stretchy jeans].

Wool and fleece are going to make you feel more comfortably warm than most other garments, the fleece because of all the trapped warm air. But wool specifically generates heat when it's moist, even though it sheds water when wet. Wool is fucking fantastic, though I think mostly as a base or mid layer, as wind tends to cut through a lot of wool-knit fabrics. https://weatherwool.com/pages/the-science-of-wool/

Slogans work better when there are one or two parts, but this is unfortunately oversimplified and recent building patterns have made this much worse.

The first thing you should dress is the building, because it takes the longest.

We have forgotten that passive cooling and heating from the environment are your first line of defense. We screw this up, and building codes now allow such small boundaries between houses that we can’t retroactively fix it on new construction.

This was really driven home for me recently when I explained to my partner that I wanted to rip out the arborvitae the previous owners installed before they got too big for me to dig up.

I wanted a tall, narrow deciduous tree for the south side of our house, to reduce solar gain in the summer, but to let light hit the house in the winter. She paused and said nobody had ever explained that to her before, which shocked me given how long we’ve lived together.

We need to use vegetation to “eat” the sun and wind during the times of year when we want neither, then adjust our houses within that protective shell we have created. But we have forgotten how to do this, if in fact we ever knew.

Sidenote:

Low tech magazine runs a solar powered website:

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com

I lived this way for a long time. What they are not talking about is getting sick from the mild building up around you. If you don't hear moisture builds up and mild grows on the walls. I spent so many winters where I was sick for at least half of the winter. It is not worth it.

There's also the option of better heating systems. Radiant floor heating keeps your feet warm and allows lower room air temperature. Forced air, wood/coal stoves, fireplaces, and radiators don't heat the surfaces you actually touch.

Interesting article. I work in the field of heating/cooling energy consumption and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of the clo before.

> Precisely how much energy can be saved by lowering the thermostat depends on the outdoor temperature. In temperate climates, lowering the thermostat just 1° C (or about 2°F) yields an energy savings of about 9 to 10 percent

It does depend on the local climate. For anyone interested in calculating the savings you have made if you have already done something to reduce your heating/cooling energy usage, like turning down the thermostat or installing new windows or insulation, a little while ago I wrote an explanation of the process that is usually used in the industry:

https://www.degreedays.net/calculate-energy-savings

And for anyone just thinking about stocking up on high-clo clothing rather than having actually done it, you could estimate how much you could save as follows:

a) get say 12, 24, or 36 months of energy-usage data from your smart meter or utility bills (making sure not to include any figures that were estimates made by the utility).

b) get a baseline regression formula as described in the link above, which will give you an estimate of your current heating base temperature (which should be lower than your thermostat temperature).

c) work out your hypothetical new heating base temperature, by reducing the current heating base temperature by the number of degrees that you intend to lower the thermostat by.

d) get, say, 5-year average heating degree days in both the current base temperature and your hypothetical-lower base temperature.

e) plug them both into your baseline regression formula (separately) to get i) your average annual energy consumption now and ii) your predicted average annual energy consumption if you lowered the temperature.

f) compare those two figures to get an estimate of how much energy you'd save in a typical year.

I will admit that estimating 9-10% savings per Celsius is a lot more straightforward :D

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.

Something I've noticed is that people who try to figure out insulated clothing from first principles often fail to remember to actually measure how the garment feels on their own body.

Before kids, we kept our thermostat at 55F(13C). We dressed in layers, we used heavy blankets on the bed and the couch, and used a small space heater in the room we were in.

It was ok, but kind of uncomfortable.

Then we had kids and that all went out the window. Kids in many layers of clothing is hard for diaper changing, is a pain to clean when they spill, and once they start to walk, keeping them in one place is impossible.

So now we keep the thermostat at 70F(21C). The energy usage is a lot higher of course, but at least it's all green energy!

This article is a breath of insulated air after people in my Wisconsin community started installing more outdoor heaters. They want to be able to eat at restaurants all winter...

When I went to europe I was surprised by European houses being heated like ovens during winter, with temperatures beyond 20c in some cases. Being from Southern South America (with my native city having a climate roughly similar to that of Ireland) I was used to houses being "fairly cold" during winter, with interior temperatures of 5~10c, we just fight the cold by wearing more clothes and going to bed early!

Do you do physical work, or how do you survive sitting still for 8 hours a day in 5°C?

When I was in the UK I lived in a terraced house from the 1880’s with thick exterior walls. It wasn’t all that bad, but I wouldn’t say that it was very well insulated either. It was OK if you just wanted to heat one room, though I did have a decent collection of fleece sweaters and whatever. Actually, The warm summers were rough because there was no cooling, and most of my clothes were designed for cold, damp weather.

I can attest. I received some super warm, thick socks as a gift this winter and am feeling more comfortable and using the heater significantly less at home this season as a result. It's interesting that I'm otherwise dressing largely the same at home, but a pair of much thicker socks made a noticeable difference.

So, get some super socks! Paid for themselves 3x already.