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Comment by harry8 | Hacker News Reader

Also widening the range would be a reasonable thing. Wear a jumper in winter. Don't be forced to go from 40C to 20C in summer. We don't need precisely the same temperature 24/7, 365.

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Heat people, not places: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people-not-s...

That's nice for heat, but thermal mass means that air conditioning is most efficient when it can get the whole room to equilibrium and then shut off. Like a car coasting going down a hill.

I always see it like this, if it's cold you can put on more clothes (you probably already have them, and they don't waste energy to wear). When it's hot, there's a certain societal lower threshold for what you're allowed to wear in an office (depending on the office shorts are ok, but not less). So you can't individually cool down.

I just bought my apartment last year and I made the decision to use infrared panels for heating. Best decision ever. No moving parts(no noise and no constant breeze), no dry air indoors, the heat is actually stored in the walls and furniture(denser objects), so I can vent the air regularly without loosing much energy. And it's supposed to help generate vitamin D which during the winter is usually a problem. The downside is that it takes longer than air conditioning to warm up the same room and it requires great wall and floor insulation(which I have). There is also the problem of overshooting the temperature(because the panels don't cool immediately, it takes about 15-20 min), which is solved in some thermostats using hysteresis algorithms for the temperature delta(it uses shorter cycles between on and off and more precise measurements, however this could wear the electrical panels quicker). I'm not that sensitive to the temperature so I don't use those and I have my temperature sensitivity up to 0.5C.

Sorry to disappoint you, but vitamin D3 synthesis is triggered by UVB, not IR

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3897598/

Yes, you are correct. I've misremembered the effects. However there are other positive effects from infrared light.In any case, this is just a bonus to the actual purpose of the panels.

What did you buy exactly? This sounds interesting but I have never heard of this.

There are many different manufactures and models. Mine are constructed in Austria. Here are some examples: https://www.redwell.com/en/products/ https://www.sundirect-heater.com/frameless-infrared-panel-he... https://www.heat4all.com/en/products

The cool thing is you can make it part of the interior. I have 3 panels hanging from the ceiling, 1 painting and one mirror. They can be integrated into hanging or floating ceilings and usually have standard dimensions. You have to be aware, that most panels do not have thermostat. They have only one operating mode - On. In order to regulate them, you have to put a thermostat on the electrical line before it(essentially a smart switch). There are thermostats for wall integration. I use those, the cables are hidden in the wall and the actual thermostat is mobile so it can measure temperature at any location in the room. There are also thermostats which are plugged directly on electrical sockets for more integration out of the box. The price is comparable to any other heating solution and the consumption is a little less than air conditioner. Mine came with 5 year warranty. I just hope that they last longer, but with the exception of the painting, all the rest are easily replaceable.

I was looking into infrared panels as well, but was slightly worried reading that they may cause your eyes to become cloudy. Is this something you heard of?

The mantra I've heard is "move heat (energy) don't make it". Don't burn or even use renewable enery to generate heat but move heat already present. Move it away to cool and move it towards somewhere that needs heat.

Well, jumpers and thick gloves. Due to circulatory issues my hands often turn numb and blue in offices where the AC is cranked up, even if the rest of me is toasty warm.

Maybe you should drink tea. It would warm you up and supposedly tea has mild blood "thinning" properties. You're not supposed to drink tea if you're going to have surgery.

For air conditioning the best part of it is the dehumidifiation. It doesn't need to be arctic cold just the dryer air and a bit of cool is OK.

OP could be referring to Raynaud syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raynaud_syndrome). It's not sure tea helps in such cases.

Thanks for the link! I had not heard of the syndrome before. but it could be what my wife has been suffering from for the past year or two. We already are waiting to see a specialist to have a look at her, so I won't make any conclusions, but that seems very likely it.

I have Raynaud's disease and cold weather alone isn't a trigger for me unless I am not wearing gloves and if I am holding onto something. A shovel when shovelling snow, or pulling a heavy cart. It has to be a continuous session not just one thing for a few minutes.

I've also been sitting quietly at home and suddenly half my thumb goes purple and the other half is fine.

You know it's Raynaud's syndrome because it feels like someone hit your hand with a hammer. It's not just cold hands it's the pain too.

As much as I am a huge fan of tea, in this case I think the vasoconstrictive property of caffeine would have the opposite of a therepeutic effect.

Many* places normally don't have the same temperature since people do wear jumpers in winter and less clothes in summer.

Buildings are often (not always) set to 24-25C in summer, and 21-22C in winter.

*no figures sorry, just in my experience

At my office the climate control is considered adequate if it is 68 or above in winter, and 78 or cooler in summer.

20 Celsius / 25 Celsius.

I find anything over 22C too much for intelectual work. So, I am glad I WFH

Heh, I find it uncomfortable under 25C.

My wife and I live in Hungary. Every so often we visit Phoenix, AZ in the summer to see family. (My wife is a teacher so it makes sense to go in summer) and the hardest thing for us to do when we go out to eat is finding a restaurant that has seating where we are not freezing cold. It will be 40+ outside and 20 inside.

Yeah, regrettably, the American practice seems to be to overchill in the summer and overheat in the winter. This is also done in the home to the point that people will wear shorts and tshirt indoors in the winter and warmer in the summer (blankets while watching TV for example). Also office buildings suffer from the same problem. Women usually complain the most about it being too cold (men are more likely to wear suits and generate more great I believe).

That is probably partly explained by (at least in older houses without reflective insulation) low radiant heat from outside in the winter, and high radiant heat from outside in summer.

And different humidity explains it some too, even though AC lowers humidity, indoor humidity is still much lower in winter.

I've joked for years that the hotter the place in the US, the colder they keep their AC in the summer.

So many times I see the opposite: of its hot out then people crank the AC to coldest setting and if it's cold out then crank the heat up uncomfortably high. It drives me nuts: I don't have an extra layer with me in the summer and I'm freezing in the store/theater/restaurant. I can only hope that this is an American peculiarity.

Singapore has this issue too. Hotel conference rooms (and some offices, I'm told) will be set to 19⁰C or something equally not achievable so AC works full blast, while outside is humid high 30s.

For large spaces there's more considerations than more person-sized spaces. If you make your theater or restaurant comfortable when it's empty and people are walking in, you'll need much bigger AC gear to catch back up once everyone's in there generating heat. It's one of those cases of a problem being quite a bit harder than you might intuitively think because for the most part, engineers have just solved it for you in most spaces, but there are some places where it just gets too hard to fully solve. Variations between locations are probably accounted for in differences in code and how much money there is to spend on the heating and cooling gear, plus how much variation there is in the outdoor weather.

IIRC a person can be approximated as 100 watts of heating. If you add up everyone in the full restaurant or theater you get quite the number for how much heat the people themeselves are putting out.

Always the same AC fight at the offices, one of the things I don't miss with this work-from-home. My preferred room temperature would be 27C which is obviously a no-go in a shared office, but cooling to 20C in summer is just as crazy too.

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