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Comment by tppiotrowski | Hacker News Reader

I remember a story from college in early 2000's. The university was trying to cut energy use by 20% by 2020. The professor asked how much power would be saved if we turned off every light, computer and unplugged all other electronics: 12%.

This was an eye opening moment. LED's are great but if you really want to make a dent in energy usage of buildings it's heating and ventilation. Why can't we live in a world where everyone wears heated clothes and we just leave the windows open (even in winter)?

Seems like heating a person is much more efficient than heating an entire house, in which we never occupy more than 1% of the available floor space at any one time...

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> just leave the windows open (even in winter)?

Because even with heated clothes, you can get frostbite on exposed skin. Not to mention frozen water pipes, the effective inability to remove clothes to clean yourself, and technology stops working when it gets too cold.

Even igloos are at or above freezing on the inside.

You don't get frostbite sleeping in tent in the winter with suitable bedding or sleeping bag, so it shouldn't be a problem in a building. Changing clothes and cleaning in winter camping works out as well.

The response was about leaving the windows open. Do you leave the door of your tent open when you winter camp?

You can have a similar amount of draft from open tent vents than would come from having an open window in a bedroom. Sometimes you do get hot in the tent if the weather is not as cold as you planned for and you only have a very warm sleeping bag...

> The response was about leaving the windows open.

I think the response was mainly about confusing being “open” and being “wide open”. Nobody said you should let the wind enter your house (that'd be really inconvenient even at warm temperature “Oh! All my paper is gone”) but leaving them open enough to get enough air renewal to get rid of Covid aerosol won't get you wind chill.

Frostbite on exposed skin is kind of an extreme thing. I've only had it try to happen once on the face at like -20C with a gale blowing snow in my face. It's unlikely sitting at home.

My wife and I live in the same condo I used to live in as a bachelor. My frugal single self saw the electric bill for heating and AC around $50/month. I would only use the heating or AC for an hour or two when I got back from work, which would be enough to heat or cool the apartment until morning.

After we got married and my wife moved in, we use the heat a lot, lot more since she can't stand the cold (she's fine without the AC - even more so than me). The electric bill during the peak winter months easily balloons to $300-400 now.

$300-400 could be the electric bill for a large house (in winter). If this is what you're spending to heat a small apartment, something may be wrong with your building.

Is your AC reverse cycle?

If it's not, then most of that bill is likely to be heating.

That bill seems very high - through winter with my reverse cycle ACs I spend less then that to more or less constantly heat my entire house.

Could be in California: electricity at $0.30 [1], electric resistance heater, house without insulation or even seals in the windows/doors. When I lived in LA I had a gas furnace/gas water heater and spent about $50/month more on gas in winter. I've looked up historic data and it appears gas was about 30-35 cents per therm at that time so I used additional 140 therms per month or (adjusting for the 80% gas heat efficiency) 3300 KWh. If I had a resistance heater and paid $0.30 per KWh it would be about $1000.

1. https://www.sce.com/residential/rates/Standard-Residential-R...

Looks like this article is just what you need. The electric jackets and blankets are available as well.

I knew a family that struggled to pay their bills and in attempt to get even they reduced their inner home temperature to 13 degrees Celsius (about 55 F).

They were constantly miserable, because their hands, nose etc. were cold. You cannot really perform most of your home activities with gloves on.

Plus, the lady suffered from incessant UTIs.

I’ve got friends who live at 15C or so in winter.

You need good clothing, but also a certain constitution which does not eagerly pull blood from your extremities. A beard probably helps as well.

This winter I waited a lot with starting to heat, so I kept the place at around 16°C. Then when the first sub-zero days came I put it on, but I lowered the temperature of the thermostats by 1 degree compared to last year. It's absolutely ok. Maybe it's good to do such a test for a while to see how you can adapt to it.

It's good to keep in mind that heat loss depends on the temperature difference (Newton's law of cooling).

When it's 15°C outside, heating to 16°C will take ~1/16 the energy that it takes to heat to 16°C when it is 0°C outside.

Lower it by 1 more degree FTW.

"Somewhat surprisingly, the researchers found that happiness is maximized at 57 degrees Fahrenheit." http://gymlion.com/what-temperature-makes-you-the-happiest/

There's certainly a lot to be said for the ability to adapt over time to be comfortable at different temperatures. I think a lot of people have just become accustomed to a really narrow comfort range because it's possible and relatively affordable to do so. I get a taste of this as a runner every summer when my first few outings over 80F/27C are excruciating, but within a few weeks feel fine.

I grew up in a big drafty old house that was typically around 62F/16.5C during the day and 55F/13C at night in the winter. We wore wool sweaters and had big down blankets and didn't think much about it. Visiting friends and family who kept their houses much warmer was actually really unpleasant–many nights spent laying awake on top of the covers, too hot to sleep.

These days I live in a NYC apartment with overpowered radiators and a thermostat I don't control where it sometimes creeps up to 78F/25.5C inside until we have to open the windows. Now going back home to visit my parents is COLD! My hands go numb just sitting on the couch reading a book.

Even my wife–who friends and family know as always being too cold–adapted in time to her rented attic room in grad school where it was often cold enough to see your breath in the morning. I'm into the idea of expanding my comfort zone but that was taking it a bit far for my taste!

We use a kotatsu [0] for this - a table with a heating element underneath and a thick quilted 'tablecloth'. I'm in Melbourne, so the lowest it gets is a few degrees above 0C, but we _never_ use air con/heating. Summer we close the blinds in the day, open blinds and windows up at night.

It's not fair to expect that approach to work for everyone everywhere, but there are plenty that could do this instead of wasting so much energy on creating a homogenous environment year round.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotatsu

> that could do this instead of wasting so much energy on creating a homogenous environment year round.

The worse is when the office aircons are set so low that you catch a cold in the middle of the summer heatwave...

Cold temperatures do not make infectious diseases like colds more transmissible.

pedant. So I should have said that my persistent and year-round cold got severely aggravated by the rapid switch in temperature and low temperature in the office, causing an important increase in both frequency and strength of coughing, sore throat, nasal congestion and heavily runny nose. Happy?

I've been thinking about converting my work desk to a Kotatsu in the winter based on an Arduino project I've found sometime ago. At the moment though I'm using an infrared incandescent bulb mounted just above my keyboard + a floor heating sheet mounted to a piece of plywood for my feet.

btw, the Arduino project is this one: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/simp-team/how-to-make-a...

I keep my wfh office around 70f but my desk is right by a huge window, so my hands get very cold when it's freezing outside, making typing and desk-work annoying.

I got a little heated desk/writing pad online, and it is amazing.

With it turned to high it becomes almost too warm to touch. The mouse and keyboard heat comfortably. After a couple hours I can reduce the room temp a few degrees and still feel rather comfortable.

A microcontroller is extremely unnecessary for a kotatsu. You just need a thermostat.

This was actually the solution in some cities to pandemics of the early 20th century: Overzealous heating and open windows, even in the winter. You can read more about this at the link below, but basically the old furnaces that many New Yorkers complain about have their source from a time when health officials were fighting the Spanish Flu and recommended people keep their windows open. These steam furnaces put out an obnoxious amount of heat to overcompensate for people leaving their windows open all the time. (Also look up "New York City steam system" for interesting stuff about the big steam delivery system in New York City. Moscow has one, too!)

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

Because the tradeoff of energy usage is worth the improvement to quality of life.

Anecdotally, I hear at least a few friends each year complaining about the cost of heat during winter.

Complaining, but not doing anything about it?

That’s always the hint. “Wow this costs a lot, but I’ll still continue to do it anyway because the alternative is worse”

> ventilation. Why can't we live in a world where everyone wears heated clothes and we just leave the windows open (even in winter)?

Sounds pretty radical, but if you think about it, it sounds interesting. Specially now with the pandemic. In the first months our schools in Germany were forced to leave their windows open, even in the winter. I don't know how long they did this, but it must have been hard for them.

If everybody had such heated clothing, this sounds like an interesting idea, including in the context you're putting it in.

Then again, buildings need to be kept warm so that the humidity doesn't cause mold.

In the UK, we still have requirements for windows to be open. This year it's much better because they decided to introduce carbon dioxide monitors to every room and force teachers to figure out how to leave the windows open and still have it below an acceptable level. In December 2020, there was no such scheme, just all the windows open in all classrooms, in the winter. It was especially difficult for most students because while sane schools might've allowed students to wear coats, we had no such luck, only school uniform which is as good as a t-shirt.

That seems more like a failing of that school's uniform? They have to wear it outside in that weather every year on the way to and from school anyway?

You wouldn't be anything that requires manual dexterity like typing or playing an instrument.

Either your hand-clothing is inhibiting movement and sensation. Or the cold is numbing your hands.

I'm extremely sensitive to cold and live in Tasmania.

It's not uncommon to be sub zero C for half the morning in the workshop where I work.

I'm able to tolerate it by being able to spend about 30% of my day in front of a 2000 watt heater and by wearing a close fitting AEG branded batter electric heated jacket with two polar fleece jumpers over it, as well as one or layers of micro fleece thermal leggings.

Dressing appropriately certainly help!

Sounds like it’s time for a move to Cairns. ;-)

<puke>

Orright place to visit if you're in to that sort of thing, wouldn't want to live there, the heat and humidity are unbearable if you work in a workshop environment like I do.

We find what we look for.

The main issue is most new buildings are really bad in terms of insulation and energy performance, even though this has been a solved problem for a few decades now. The main ideas behind standards such as Passive House do not require any radical changes to house construction, it's just a bit more insulation and building a quality house that is sealed properly (which also means it'll have less maintenance issues).

But the construction industry doesn't want to change because that'll mean less profits... If you buy a cookie cutter home it's probably been funded by a hedge fund, who is going to earn a pretty nice return when you buy it. This isn't just a US thing, in most of the Western World it's the same. Building housing is a very profitable business.

I live in Northern Europe and the building code here requires insulation and air tigheness levels that actually exceed Passive House. All new houses must have a heat demand of less than 15kW/m2/year. That's in a place where it regularly gets to -25C / -10F in winter. Of course all the big construction companies complained about these regulations when they came out, saying how it would make housing so much more expensive - but at the end of the day it has very little impact on the overall price, and you actually save in the long run due to much lower heating costs.

I'm not sure it would catch on terms of comfort and convenience.

You don't even really need heat though. I spent a couple of months with one of these in 0c to -20c conditions and was never cold https://rab.equipment/uk/expedition-8000-suit

You don't end up doing the laundry etc so often though. I think passive haus stuff has more chance in the market.

This depends entirely on the efficiency of the house to retain heat. In the extreme, if the house is 100% efficient then it needs to be heated just once in all eternity. Not to mention that in many locations it's quite possible to engineer a house (mostly lots of insulation) that can warm or cool itself to a large extent just by taking advantage of the local climate.

>Seems like heating a person is much more efficient than heating an entire house

Frozen pipes, and possibly other issues I’m not thinking of.

No need to go to extremes. Turn down the heat during the day and wear a sweater. People have to spend time outside anyway so they should already dress warm.

At night turn off the heat or down significantly more. Have warm comforter. Set the timer to turn the heat on before you wake up.

Drying clothes? I know in the US you use clothes dryers, but here in Europe we generally hang our wet clothes in front of a radiator.

In a cold house the clothes would take far longer to dry.

You can use a foot pedal operated dryer. They're cheap, portable, and only end up using caloric energy

> Why can't we live in a world where everyone wears heated clothes and we just leave the windows open (even in winter)?

If the goal is to keep the place warm, shouldn't the windows be closed?

(I'm from a tropical part of the world where there's no such thing as winter)

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