Heat people, not spaces (2015)
solar.lowtechmagazine.com
solar.lowtechmagazine.com
If you want to wear gloves, then finger and hand mobility is effected, and usually with hands, it's the fingers that are cold anyway, making fingerless gloves not feel that useful.
While if the room is all one consistent warm enough temperature, you don't get these cold & hot spot effects.
Aside from what you mention, since basically you providing your own heat for yourself, you have to put or take off layers depending on physical activity. And so naturally this process involves too-hot and too-cold periods that are less than pleasant. Still, I survived to tell the tale.
I mean, we could all live like the hero of To Build A Fire, at least until we died.
When our gas went out in the summer, taking a 'cold' shower was bearable, some days even enjoyable.
In the freezing winter? Tried it once, never again. I'm not even sure it would be safe to shower in water that cold for any long periods of time.
Hold up - do you mean to tell me that people do not turn off the water while lathering? I've showered this way all my life, is this not the norm?
Obviously newer/better boilers come up to temperature quicker but you don't always have the luxury of choosing your boiler.
I’ve had little luck converting friends and family to it, though.
I can understand it for people that like a long shower, maybe.. except that surely it's the water they enjoy rather than just the process, so being there with it off wouldn't be any fun?
Perhaps you'll be surprised to hear that I also turn off the lights in rooms that I am not in, or that I don't keep cars running when I'm not using them to move around.
Counter-question: why would you ever keep the water running when you're not utilizing the water?
In the summer I take cold and cool showers. It struck me that it's a bit insane to consume energy cooling my home, and then using hot water to heat myself up again. Just leave home a little warmer and the cool shower feels great - less AC, less water heating, and happier results.
Also, I took a trip to a poorer country where people, lacking plumbing, bathed using buckets and a big cup. I tried it and it worked fine[0] - almost no drawback at all, just a different habit. I need far less water to shower than I imagined and if I can, turn the water on and off as I shower. Unfortunately, it requires a shower control that is one lever that retains its heat setting; resetting the temperature every time is too cumbersome.
[0] To be clear, I am not at all implying that those people shouldn't have plumbing (they should) or that I was trying to experience poverty in any way (a ridiculous notion, considering where I came from and where I was returning to). I just saw that it worked fine and tried it.
Note that I was living in a school dormitory with bedding provided by the dorm, so it met a local standard of reasonableness.
People often don't pay much attention to their toes but they're pretty important for balance. It must be difficult living with that injury.
Even here in -20 temps, I typically sleep in a t-shirt and shorts. Heat from my body warms up the little enclosed space under the blankets quite quickly and the overall temp is a lot more comfortable than being wrapped up in multiple layers that restrict movement.
In extremely cold, drafty situations (living in unheated bus) with only blankets rather than a sleeping bag, putting on clothes is necessary.
Of course, if you have a good sleeping bag, as little clothes as possible is how to sleep outdoor.
That (and 45 degrees) are strawperson arguments against turning down the thermostat a little and putting on a sweater (and let me recommend shoes). My sense is that many people generally (I don't know the parent commenter) shoot down any individual action, because it's individual action - it's reactionary, ridiculing any 'liberal' idea.
However I have a bunch of other "personal comfort issues", related to health. so often leave the heat at seventy while I deal with these.
But even more, I do think the "liberal spirit" of trying to solve or pretending you can solve social or environmental issues with exhortations to individual action is reactionary in the end. The only solution to global warming or pollution or etc is action by the state involving the regulation of private enterprises. These "if we all consumed less" positions are kind of the flip side of telling people who make minimum wage they're poor 'cause they drink a soda at lunch or have netflix etc.
Edit: TL;DR; Exploring what you're comfortable with is a good, even suggesting other explore this good. But the spirit of "the problem is you-all consumer too much" is problematic.
The idea that individuals are powerless is antithetical to democracy, which IMHO is why the reactionaries push it. They say the same thing about protests (despite a long history of success) and any other individual/collective action. Democratic government is a form of collective action, and so they decry that too. They want you dependent on strongpersons and corporations, and IMHO by buying into it, you are surrendering your power and (unwittingly for most) doing nothing less than fighting agaist freedom and democracy. Collective action is quite powerful - ironically, the reactionary movement uses it heavily, and is the foundation of a free society, as is individual responsibility. (It's also the foundation of a free market and SV-style entrepenurialism - individuals doing something in their garage and changing the world.)
Communities, society, depend on everyone doing their part as individuals. You can't prevent trash on the streets in your community by obstaining from littering yourself, but we do keep the streets clean in large part by each person not littering (and we also obey the law, help people in need, etc. etc.).
Reality is quite the opposite of reactionary propaganda: Individuals acting works incredibly well. The Minutemen in the American Revolution were volunteers, who defeated the subjects of the British King. After centuries of unprecendeted success in human history, it's incredible that people abandon it simply because of propaganda.
> I'm actually pretty progressive
I don't know you, of course, and it's just one comment in one moment in your life, but the parent comment is clearly anti-progressive.
Stopping climate change is not a “liberal idea”, at least not in the mainstream liberal sense. Airplanes are still filled with liberals even quite far left on the spectrum in the US (even AOC flies all over the east coast because her time is “too important” to be disrupted by climate change).
Those that criticise individual action are most often the ones that can't bring themselves to sacrifice even the smallest pleasure or convenience, but still feel a small pang of guilt whenever they see other people doing their best to do their part.
still end up with cold-ish fingers though which feels similar enough to cold hands. im thinking what i need is something like mittens but instead of something that wraps around your fingers, it would just rest on top and keep the air off while your fingers are free to move underneath
An alternative is also, as it is mentioned in the article, to warm certain spots in a room instead of the whole of it.
For the average HN reader in north america? Probably not. For the median person in europe right now? Maybe not (thanks to what's happening in ukraine affecting gas prices).
I could skip buying a coffee and more than make up for it.
The price is higher compared to cotton or synthetics, but it's possible to find good values by shopping sales. The daily rewards of wool (in every season) are worth the extra effort.
Also found that it's perfectly OK to wear thin wool inner layer all the time. It doesn't really get too warm as long as you don't wear warm clothes over.
There's the old saying: "cold feet? wear a hat."
dress with the right layers. I always put a layer of synthetic beneath cotton.
Nice socks help your body deal with cold quite dramatically. "Darn Tough" brand merino wool socks are pretty exceptional socks that keep your feet warm and (importantly) dry.
They're almost like fingerless gloves, but more comfortable and easier to manage.
You might be worried "but it's the fingers that are cold anyway, so fingerless gloves are not what I need." I thought that too, but trying them immediately proved me wrong and I never had an issue with cold fingers again. I'm fairly sure it's because warming your wrists/palms keep your blood from losing heat in those areas, so your fingers get much warmer circulation.
For something less than $10, it's probably the best purchase I've made for working in the winter
this is calling back to the recent post on Dickensian poverty for me. Everyone not well to do in A Christmas Carol was cold and had layers on and fingerless gloves and stood around shivering. But the rich people were heating the spaces (except Scrooge of course)
Still need to solve the cold yet damp (from sweating?) feet and sweating armpit issue although.
As others had noticed, the cold hand / feet thing is mostly a computer thing for me. Also probably due to me restricting my eating at times.
We can sit and imagine problems with every course of action, and never step forward.
In my life, I've never had the quoted problem and I've never heard anyone else say it's a problem. On my list of things to worry about, this ranks near the bottom. No clothing I know of has special cool spots, beyond outdoor recreation equipment (e.g., mountaineering gear with pit zips), yet somehow we all do fine. I expect our bodies adjust fine to such variations.
> While if the room is all one consistent warm enough temperature, you don't get these cold & hot spot effects.
That doesn't add up: No clothing (with the exception mentioned above) has such cooling spots. If our bodies couldn't adjust, a constant temperature would be the same, sweater or not.
EDIT:
> If your slippers have sheep's wool in them, like ugg slippers, then they often sweat a lot or feel a little wet while simultaneously feeling cold at times, or warm enough.
It's incredible that Ugg sells any slippers!
No and no. The temperature in my home is set just warm enough that a sweater (and let me add, shoes - insulation from the coldest air and surface in the room) keeps me comfortable. My hands don't get chilled at that temperature.
FWIW - from wilderness experience - it is widely believed that the best way to warm your hands is often to warm your core. Your body naturally prioritizes your core (probably better to keep your heart at 37 C and let your hands get a little chilly than vice versa!); keep that warm enough and energy/blood will be diverted to keeping your extremities warm.
It’s perfectly viable to keep a living space just above freezing. You however need gloves to stay comfortable at 3-4C (38f).
Another factor is just getting up and doing some light exercise every 30 mins or so. 5 push ups, or jogging up and down the stairs a few times, is enough to keep your circulation reasonably balanced.
I have the quoted problem. Sitting working at the computer at home. Armpits especially. Groin can be similar.
Think about the problem. In a proper typing position with elbows by your side, the part of your upper body where flesh touches flesh is the side of your chest and your upper arm. It's no wonder the armpits are warmer than elsewhere.
I ameliorate the armpits by using a gilet over thinner layers. It keeps my core warm, but does nothing for poor circulation in my hands. And I find even the thinnest gloves slow my typing.
Take the commentor you replied to and myself as people with this problem. Its not for not trying - growing up counting pennies, not in poverty but money was tight, lead to a layers based heating mentality. One of the greatest benefits of the extra wealth afforded to the software career is to heat the space I'm in.
On the flip side I'm also sensitive to hot spaces - I keep my house in the 16-19 celcius range during the day, and colder at night.
Anecdotally I've 100% had the slippers problem. Although it is more or less solved by using socks within then.
Well, you assume these are fake problems, and so the GP is being disingenuous.
The problems he mentions basically only happen if you stay at a computer, or such unphysical activities that form the basis of modern work. As you properly notice, these problems are mostly nonexistent if you do "real" physical activities, but you can still suffer from them. E.g. while doing inconsistent physical exercise in cold winters , your temperature will rise up a lot, so you may sweat a lot and then get cold fast again in your wet clothing. Any construction worker knows this can be quite a hassle.
He then mention "cold hands". This is called "Raynaud syndrome", and affects 4% of people. This is very difficult to deal with, especially if your primary work is typing at a computer. There are many types of gloves you can buy: compression gloves, fishermen gloves, spandex ones, with 1 to 5 exposed fingers. Each has particular downsides to deal with, none are perfect.
You can get silver-threaded clothing too, although that is quite expensive. Managing good comfort while minimizing room-heating is not easy at all, and that does not even address other "house" issues (at an extreme, water-pipes exploding because of freezing water).
That is what most people I know do for a living, and often during personal time, including me - it's probably the most common job activity among HN readers. And what are we doing now to post these comments? And yet, I've never heard those complaints.
Also, I think you have things reversed: Active people are the ones who like to buy clothes with pit zips.
> your temperature will rise up a lot, so you may sweat a lot and then get cold fast again in your wet clothing
Tangentially: You can avoid this problem with the proper materials: Don't wear cotton in these situations - it is worse than nothing if damp; it chills you. Wear breathable materials that insulate when wet and dry quickly. Wool is probably best, and then 'fleece', which is effectively synthetic wool. Down (e.g., from geese) is even better but if it gets wet, it clumps up into useless balls; however, I've never seen it do that from perspiration, only from external water sources (rain, falling in a river, etc.). Synthetic down can be very warm and still insulates when wet; I suspect it's warmer per liter or per gram than wool, but I'm not sure.
Also, wear a wind-proof outer shell. Preventing the convection of wind does as much as anything to keep you warm.
> Managing good comfort while minimizing room-heating is not easy at all
In fact, it's very easy and people have been doing it for most of history: Put on a sweater. Are we really debating how hard that is? I mean, we can make anything hard, but ... wow.
You are either very disingenuous, or have trouble with reading comprehension. The point is, if your hands get cold easily it's not possible to go too low in temperature without discomfort. Of course while having sufficiently warm clothing to have a warm core, as you said earlier.
The 4% figure I mentioned is from the Wikipedia abstract; I haven't bothered to check the research, but I believe it grounds this firmly in the "common" territory instead of the "I never heard of such a thing in my life".
Yeah I am already wearing a sweater, warm pants, wool slippers with socks and a beanie / hat. The hands are unexposed and I'm thinking at this point I need a different slippers that are bit more breathable. Also staying warm with breathable fabrics can be somewhat deceptive, because your dehydrating yourself faster via sweat your not perceiving.
Wool doesn't work well for me due to skin issues unless I cover it with a layer of nylon / cotton. Yes I've tried good merino wool, and it's still minorly irritating. I've given up on most wool that touches my skin.
Also my apartment is in a fairly temperate place, and what is hot / cold is a bit weird. The floor is a fairly cold hardwood floor, and I think it sucks a lot of heat out somehow. I'm not in a place that is consistently cold, it's only cold for like 4 months, so places here are not very well designed for it. It's also not carpet which probably solves a lot of the cold floor problems via it's built in insulation.
Also I'm more perceptive about my body state than probably most people and try to avoid wearing antiperspirant when I know I'm not going out that day with WFH. Your are probably blocking a lot of the sweating your armpits would do in this modern age as a result, and I believe we should making clothing that keeps that area a little bit more cool.
My internal body temperature can run hotter if I start eating a lot of carbs and more calories, but then I start consistently gaining weight so I don't do that.
I'm also more doing this as a challenge, I can definitely afford to just heat my room to t-shirt levels and put rugs everywhere, but I'm trying to figure out clothing that would work well without it while using a computer for hours. I'm not raynauds level of issues, but it makes sense this is mostly an computer worker issue too.
I worked in an ice cream factory for a bit, was hard to find socks/shoes that would keep you warm not sweat/freeze. That job was wild like nostrils frozen, break every 45 mins.
I wonder if it causes cancer cause it works so well I’m surprised no one talks about it.
Some months ago I moved into an apartment with good ventilation and started to do some simple experiments directing the air flow and staying in places where it's more concentrated and the wind is slightly faster, improving the heat remotion. I use, at most, a fan, and didn't feel the need for an air conditioner so far.
I wonder how much energy we could be saving. I'd love to find an article as thorough as this one but about air cooling.
I get by without AC in the northern Midwest, but I'd be inclined to get a window unit if there was more than a few uncomfortable nights a year.
I looked up the climate data for Fortaleza, and compared it to my town (random US city, about 35 degrees northern latitude, so not super far south or anything.)
Our average daily highs in summer are only about 1 degree (C) lower than your RECORD highs... your averages are about 9C lower than ours.
Without AC here it would be...supremely unpleasant, and well other the threshold of danger for anyone with any sort of medical issues.
Ventilation is actually best for hot-wet climates where hot-dry climates (common through much of the US) are usually better dealt with through thermal-mass/thermal-lag as typically the nights are cold (in hot-wet usually the nights are hot).
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kiyan-Vadoudi/publicati...
[1] https://leetammy.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/blue-psycho.jpg
Running a dehumidifier here in the summer would be cruel and unusual.
I've lived in cities where we experience anything between below zero to 120F throughout the year. I couldn't imagine not having AC/Heating in those areas even with more efficient ventilation/insulation.
I live in Fortaleza, Brazil. Temperatures here are very stable along the whole year (78F - 90F, it rarely falls out of this interval).
I'm not advocating this no-AC model as a general solution though. I'm aware we're a bit lucky here. I used to live in Sao Paulo and temperatures vary more wildly there, sometimes within a single day.
And the temperature gradient I've mentioned is correct. No noticeable changes along the whole year, I'm sorry.
It does sound kind of unpleasant, but I imagine you get used to it.
Not enough rain / sunny and 50 F
Sunny and 70F; green plants
Sunny and 90-105 F; brown plants
Red Skies, ??? F; black plants / red embers
But it changes the way you live. Compared with lives of friends from Europe, I notice that theirs has a bit more of a "structure" and predictability. E.g., hang out more in the summer, doing more reading and writing more in the winter.
I think I would enjoy that. Of course I could plan my life based in months instead of seasons, but it's not the same, especially considering that people around me wouldn't be following that same plan.
We all just dress in endless layers.
In current apartment heating doesn't work properly until days after its gotten cold, and it's instantly too warm when it gets warm.
AC is very uncommon in Scandinavia, and we have 85-95% humidity in my area year around.
These are two separate problems.
In the ideal situation, you generally want the house to be fairly air tight and condition the air for (a) temperature and (b) humidity. Each of (a) and (b) are taken care of by different mechanical units: one is monitored by a thermometer and the other by an hygrometer. The latter triggers a stand alone dehumidifier:
* https://www.aprilaire.com/whole-house-products/dehumidifiers
For fresh air you have an HRV/ERV, which brings outside air (through a filter) into the house (usually to bedrooms), while at the same time blowing out stale inside air (usually taken from bathrooms and the kitchen), with the two moving through the unit so that the outgoing air tempers the incoming air:
* https://www.ecohome.net/guides/2276/choosing-between-an-hrv-...
You still have opening windows, as they're mandated for emergency fire exits.
In contrast the older philosophy is that natural ventilation is good enough, so we design houses to improve that, such as strategic placement of windows to allow cross ventilation, use high ceilings to allow heat to rise, etc.
The original article is squarely in the second camp.
Jesus, here there are even buildings importing those "glass wall" concepts, which makes total sense in climates like European's and north American's, but makes absolutely no sense in sunny cities -- you just end up aggravating the greenhouse effect and having to rely more heavily on AC. Everything because of façade aesthetics.
Yeah, and all those open windows bring in pollen and dust. Yay! Hope you have a good bug screen as well.
Of course if there's high humidity then all than ventilation may not help because the air is already saturated so your sweat doesn't evaporate so you're not cooled.
Natural ventilation could be great if the conditions outside are exactly what you want them inside as well. But if the outside is too hot or too cold or too humid then what are you going to do then?
Build Tight, Ventilate Right:
* https://www.energy.gov/indianenergy/articles/build-tight-ven...
A 5000 sq. ft. / 500 sq. m. house can be conditioned with as little as 2000W (a hair dryer):
Even today heatwaves in Europe kill a lot of elderly as air conditioning in homes isn't common
Older houses didn't have those issues, but energy consumption and humidity regulation were nightmares.
Removing drafts created and solved many difficult engineering problems.
I think having a tightly sealed house with lots of openable windows is a good solution. Most days, you can hopefully leave the windows open during the day and/or night. On smoky/hot/cold days you can run filters and ac/heat.
In some countries, it's common to open all the windows for 15-30 minutes, even on really cold/hot days. There's basically no thermal mass in the air (vs. the contents of the house), so it uses much less energy than you'd expect, and the house returns to temperature quickly. However, it greatly reduces indoor air pollution (by roughly an order of magnitude), including dust and pollen.
You could get a similar effect with an air exchanger, especially in Alaska, like in your link.
However, those don't usually do much to help with humidity entering/exiting the house, which is the main drawback of opening the windows for 15 minutes.
2000W sounds like a small amount of energy until you realize modern heat pumps have coefficients of power between 5 and 10. So, that house could leak 10-20KW of energy on average, and still meet the 2000 watt goal. (Assuming they installed a heat pump, which they should have before paying for ultra high end insulation.)
I'm in Toronto, Canada: our winters are -10C and our summers are hot-humid 30C.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto#Climate
Leaving windows open is not the preferred option for most of the year (though I grew up in a house with A/C, and only first experienced an abode with in in my 20s).
Further, more places are getting bouts of extreme weather:
But during the worsening wildfires seasons, I must tightly seal and air purify my apartment for weeks straight, and had to buy an air conditioner that I run during the day. The stale air is unpleasant, but unavoidable.
How idiosyncratic are my preferences and environmental circumstances? Are any architects working on house designs for me?
You must have quiet neighbors if you can stand leaving the windows open all the time.
I say this as somebody fairly particular about my comfort. I can’t stand interior transformer hums for example.
Which city?
Highly insulated, air tight (but vapor permeable) building envelope. Constant intake of fresh air to bedrooms living rooms, filtered and passed through a heat exchanger to heat or cool it with air exhausted from kitchen and bathrooms.
They generally cost about ~25% more than a standard code-built house (unless you want a lot of windows), but cost much less to heat and cool. They're also more comfortable and have less pollen, dust, and even insects.
For my own eccentricities, I have the bedroom window open slightly while sleeping, closed when awake.
During the winter, when inside I wrap up in warm clothes, thermals, scarf. When exercising outside I wear only one or two layers. I call it the 'Winter Paradox'.
Very. SFO is is in climate zone 3, and the Bay Area is a micro-climate unto itself:
* https://basc.pnnl.gov/images/iecc-climate-zone-map
Do you think Florida or Texas could do the same thing? Minnesota or the Dakotas? Anywhere in Colorado or the New England region?
An architect will design anything you want, as long as it meets code.
I've learned a lot about US climates and their notion of ventilation, here at the comments I got.
I hope you guys also have found interesting that, in some other parts of the globe, ventilation and air cooling are two very interconnected concepts. And also that, in climates like ours, relying solely on AC while not taking advantage of the cooling properties of moving air masses means waste of energy.
Of course one size fits all codes don't help. What works well in Europe will work someplace in the US, just not everywhere
What we’re seeing, though, are tighter building envelopes so that the structure is thermally efficient. However, with a tighter envelope, active/natural ventilation systems becomes even more important than in older structures where there is some rate of natural air exchange with the exterior through building cracks and terrible (by todays standards) windows.
There are companies coming up that are looking at “Personal Comfort Systems” and there is a fair amount of active research in this area (ex., https://cbe.berkeley.edu/research/personal-comfort-system/). It’s an interesting space since you have essentially two knobs to play with: (1) a persons actual heat exchange with the environment and (2) a persons perceived heat exchange.
If you're lucky and live in an older house of the correct design from just before A/C, (most of the oldest two-story single family homes in Berkeley, FWIW) you might notice that some of the internal walls stay well below room temperature during the summer.
The buildings typically have pier and beam foundations, and the cooling walls have passive draft ways that pull cool air over the ground under the house and up against those walls. This is great in the summer, but not so much in the winter. I don't know how they use convection to pull cold air up, or how they prevent moldy foundation dirt air from permeating the house. I've heard there are some pretty clever designs, but (of course) they're hidden behind walls.
Anyway, our modern house is one story, and has an intentionally-uninsulated concrete slab on grade foundation, so we get a similar effect. (Passive solar heat keeps it toasty in the winter.)
We usually have our windows open, but we also over-insulated the walls (for noise and efficiency), and have a tight building envelope, so the heating/cooling bill is tiny.
(Edit: I bet they vented the walls into the attic and under the floor. That'd create a strong updraft in the summer (out the attic vents), but (if the attic is well insulated against the rest of the house) not in the winter.
I'm not aware of such standards over here. Maybe they exist but aren't being followed, or maybe they are deficient.
At bedtime, they could open the bedroom windows and turn on the fan and a stiff wind would blow in through all the bedroom windows in the house.
That fan, along with window awnings and tall ceilings, really made a difference in how often they needed to use air conditioning, even near the Gulf of Mexico.
I personally find fans made very little difference for me in humid climates.
Sitting in a breeze does two things: 1) Allows your sweat to evaporate more quickly, and that evaporation is what causes most of the cooling effect. It's not very effective in high humidity because your sweat won't evaporate very easily. Evaporative coolers / swamp coolers work off this same principle. 2) Sitting in the still indoor air your body heat warms the air around yourself and you end up sitting in that pocket of heat. Just about any airflow stops that, which is why air circulators (fans that are meant to point from one end of a room to another instead of directly on a person) work to make a room feel a bit cooler.
Running the attic fan at night with open windows can have similar effects as above (especially the air circulator), but on top of that it's for pulling in the air from outdoors after it's cooled off at night, and expelling the warmed-up air that accumulates near the ceilings and roof. You'd want to close windows in the morning so the warmed-up air doesn't get pulled in and replace all the cooler air.
They aren’t very practical, but could be more efficient than cooling an entire building for one person.
Fans like this aren't nearly as effective if either of these conditions is not met — then you're just pulling in air that is somewhat less uncomfortable each night, instead of getting truly refreshed.
In the early summer, the temperature dropped from the upper 90's in the day to the low 70s at night. In the worst of the summer, the temperatures were only dropping to the 80's, and they did use the air conditioners then.
However, that fan moved so much air that there would be a stiff wind blowing across the beds all night, and that cool humid wind would have you under the blankets in no time.
There is a lot about this house that needs to be updated to modern energy standards and getting rid of that fan is on the list. Overall it costs far more than it saves.
The one in my relative's house had louvers that would open when you turned the fan on and then close when you turned it off, so it sealed itself off when not in use.
They saved a fortune by not having to run the ac all summer.
I had remembered whole-house fans when growing up in Kansas — many of my friends had homes with them. They could be noisy but really did make for a nice house breeze in the evening.
Really interesting architectural technologies came out back in the day.
Desertification in that area is starting to roll that back though. Never-irrigated ranches are drying up. Without argiculture, the towns die. The ecosystems don't recover, even in places where the people are gone and the buildings have rotted to dust and blown away (too hot / no rain).
This must have been how people felt when the Sahara turned into a desert. I can't believe it's happening so fast. (Towns that were populated 20 years ago are completely invisible now.)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THSm-I790H0 (PBS Eons vid about it)
My startup, Following Fan, has built a person-tracking 20” fan that uses computer vision to automatically stay pointed at the user as they move around. This technology provides the location agnostic benefits of AC with the energy consumption of fans.
Here, it doesn't get that cold in the winter, but the house gets absolutely balmy and gross feeling. I have to turn the AC on just to get some humidity out of the air, despite it being in the 60s or 70s.
I have a dehumidifier also, but it can't do the job alone. It's really weird seeing how much water it sucks out of the air.
However, there are many places such as garages, airplane hangers, and large warehouses where AC is impractical due to a lack of insulation and the need to open large doors to move vehicles or goods in and out.
In those environments, fans are about the best cooling solution you can get. One big issue with traditional fans though is that they just point in an single direction or oscillate back and forth regardless of the location of the user.
Last year when the electrical grid in Texas failed, we could heat ourselves by our gas fireplace, but our central heating was out. It was fucking miserable. Similar to what the article pointed out, basically any part of my body was either too hot or too cold, so I was constantly turning like a spit roaster trying to keep a "nice even bake" on all sides.
The solution to poor energy efficiency of heating is not for us to all invest in hooded chairs, it's to ensure homes are appropriately insulated.
Later, the ice slowly melts. Drip, drip.
What kind of outdoor temps do you have? Maybe I’m newly interested in triple glaze.
That is a strawperson - People wear a sweater all the time - they are pretty popular, believe it or not - without wearing "piles", having their movement limited, or even suffocating. If you find yourself suffocating when wearing sweaters, see a doctor!
Holy cow, the burden of wearing a sweater is just incredible in some of these comments!
I never do because I feel suffocated.
> see a doctor
Thanks for the unsolicited advice. I in fact have and have been told not to wear clothing that makes me feel suffocated.
> the burden of wearing a sweater is just incredible in some of these comments
Your lack of sympathy is equally incredible
There is a big difference between feeling suffocated in your own home where no one else is involved vs. among people you could potentially be putting at risk.
Prefacing every bit of advice with, but if you have a serious medical condition then please modify this advice to suit, will get pretty tedious after a while.
In general, many people could stand to lower their thermostats in cold climates by 2⁰ or so by wearing appropriate clothing.
In December I was mostly opening the doors about midday just for the afternoon, but since mid to late January I'm back to opening the doors mostly from about 9 in the morning again, right through to the end of the working day.
To do this and remain comfortable I have to put on extra layers. When I go out the extra layers come off.
Weirdly, this is the first winter in a long time I've not really felt cold at all. I think it's because previous winters I've been working in an office heated to 20C+, and this year I've acclimatised slowly from the summer.
When I have put the heating on, I get hot real quick unless I start taking layers off, and actually it's easier to turn the heating off.
The temperatures in UK are stable during the day due to sea climate. In Central Europe we get +/- 10 degrees during the day. This is completely different story from temperature comfort/security perspective. That's why we overinsulate and overheat our houses and why we tend to have higher temperatures inside then Brits.
My Italian friend laughed that he immediately recognized Poles in Italy because in August they had blanklets and sweaters at hand. We just always expect temperatures to drop suddenly by 10 degrees.
Even on British Airways planes temperatures are lower then on other airlines...
Nothing worse than a stuffy warm room for sleeping for me. It's one of my annoyances with hotels actually. I hate it when I can't open the window. Generally the first thing I do is remove most of the blankets, turn of whatever heating is there, and if possible open the windows. For me the ultimate in stupidity is a hotel room with the AC on where people use blankets to stay warm where you can't even open the windows.
So you're basically stealing the heat from your neighbors :) You can see how that strategy falls apart if everyone starts doing it?
I have read the article couple of years ago and I do not burn stove all the time, just put a sweater on or turn on electric blanket.
Frankly I have got used to 'cold' and it just doesn't bother me anymore. I sleep much better when it is cold inside the cabin but warm in my bed with electric blanket (20W). As long as the temperature doesn't drop below 12C (54F) working on a laptop or reading with a sweater on is comfortable. I do not enjoy excesively heated living rooms in the city.
The other article on lowtech magazine mentions that the average temperatures in our houses have been raised over last couple of years significantly (due to better insulation, heating etc). I do remember that when I was teenager no one had been sitting in a living room with a t-shirt on but rather in a sweater as in winter the normal temepratures in a living room used to be 18-20C and in the sleeping room 16C. Nowadays it is more like 24-26C for most people I know.
Really cool to see the article, thank you. The leather hooded chair in particular caught my eye, what a find.
Reading one of the follow-on articles I appreciated the idea about opening the windows for hopefully-improved air quality being more of a doable thing with localized heat, since the air is not the primary heat transfer medium anyway.[1]
Thanks for posting!
1. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/03/local-heating.html
An interesting recent discovery is that our body need infrared radiation to function properly, not just UV light/vitamin D.
I think that people living in the northern climate discovered/felt that it was better to be exposed to the radian heat of the fire in the winter. We recently (50-100) years have been getting rid of fireplaces and replaced with forced air and baseboard heater that probably generated a lot of health problem.
A month ago I discovered this information, bought an small infrared heated and healed in 10 days the winter eczema I have been fighting for 25 years.
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YV_iKnzDRg
I hope this help somebody
There is a bit of visible red light too, I didn’t study the detail closely, it was a cheap/fast test and it worked for me.
I would guess that the best thing is the sun light, we don’t know what we don’t know.
Also, it's pretty darn awesome to fire up the pool once a year in the winter, like for Christmas, and host a swimming-in-the-snow party. Wouldn't want to keep it heated, but for a couple days it's not too bad.
Many new Japanese homes are uninsulated, with the residents using "heat the person" techniques like a kotatsu to keep warm.
There are probably a bunch of different solutions that we just need to make it a little easier for local people (& contractors) to try out.
Looked them up, priced them on Amazon (for a good looking one? ouch!), and then decided I will build my own version of one this year before next winter comes (I like woodworking).
And I will also build one for my daughter.
Interesting whether this would happen in an entirely unheated building.
But good building design following current standards isn't going to be affected by this.
It's not just that spores work better in certain weather conditions, it's also that there are often more spores in those conditions as well. Mushrooms coming up after a rain, gambling that there will be another one in a couple days, for instance.
Source: lived in a ~100 year old house in the Midwest for 15 years or so. The only place we got mold that I remember was inside the air conditioning unit.
You need a certain amount of wet for mold and mildew. Push the levers too far and you just end up with termites, or a failed foundation, and the whole thing gets replaced with something new.
The houses that have beaten their nemesis, water, are the ones most of us are willing to walk into more than twice.
I don't think it is even too horrible as long as there is proper insulation in place and technology used makes sense.
Tropical animals don’t since they don’t need it
My long narrow nose is great at conditioning the air, but conversely I can't breathe through my nose when I exercise...
"Such a nose is unsuited for cold countries as it permits masses of cold air to flood the air passages and irritate the lining membrane, so that the nose must be large and have much warming surface, and the nostrils therefore are slender slits to admit air in thin ribbons easily warmed."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-ch...
I may be unusually sensitive to infrared: one of my backrub tricks is apparently "kknowing" what hurts without being told. Aside from posture, if you just wave your hands over someone's back, you can feel the heat come off more in any inflamed or tense area.
Personally, I can feel whether I'm facing the outdoor wall or not with my eyes shut, no matter how hot the room is. Predictably, that side gets cold even if my back is sweating.
I suspect most people are the same and don't necessarily realise it (e.g. why do many people prefer cooler air temps in the summer and warmer air temps in winter, even controlled for humidity?) because there's just no common way of measuring or altering your rooms radiation values besides insulation.
These cannot go below a certain temperature, not much below 60F, otherwise dry rot will slowly but permanently damage these buildings in most places (depends on humidity). I suppose if you drop the humidity below a certain point you might get by with pretty low temperatures.
Wouldn't the most exterior pieces drop below 60 deg in the winter? Plenty of homes have wood that is actually on the outside of the house all winter.
Microwave frequencies used in ovens would be dangerous because they can penetrate deep in the body and heat internal tissues, but in the EHF range microwave heating could be safe. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
With all that said, what I had in mind is in the far less scary and far more prosaic near-infrared range.
I wouldn't buy a car without seat and steering wheel heating anymore. Much more efficient than heating the air (even it the "room" is relatively tiny in a car).
I guess the same principle (concentrate energy on a small target to get better results) is at play with Beefers and AirFyers.
Outside the house is cold, so we heat the house. Outside the fridge (house) is hot, so we cool inside fridge.
Is there no option for fridges/freezers to get cold air from outside the house? Or is the overcomplication not worth it?
If you want to save energy buying a coolbox and storing some stuff outside during the winter is probably far easier and cheaper ;)
Large camping fridges are as close as I have seen, but I'm sure someone's thought of one for domestic use.
As for practicality in the kitchen, I can imagine a design where you have multiple medium sized fridge drawers. Once pulled out, you can open their top lid and access the content. This way, you don't have one deep container, but rather, multiple shallower containers. For efficiency, a single compressor can feed all of them.
EDIT: actually I've seen freezer drawers - you just need to dial the cooling down a bit.
Another idea: Vertically long rectangular compartments that can be pulled out individually. Essentially a whole bunch of vertical drawers of different sizes, with meshed walls to allow air to pass through them.
Another silly idea: a horizontally mounted ferris wheel
You don't need to put tea or coffee in it, just boil some water and drink it while hot.
It turns out if you just turn the heat up in your CPAP machine it works fantastically well as a personal heater. It would be 45°F in my house, 80°F coming out of my CPAP machine, and I'd be lying in bed under a sheet with no pajamas and sweating. I actually had to turn the temperature down to 76°F get a good night's sleep.
Side note: usually when I've visited the site, the battery is up around 80% or higher. The "hacker-news effect", while not causing a 502 or other server error in this case, at least at for the time being, does have the battery down around 35%.
Lovely design ideas for a cabin though where the infrastructure is inherently more limited.
a house i occasionally looked after suffered some pipe damage because somebody else thought setting the thermostat to 50F would suffice to keep the pipes from freezing in the depths of winter.
they were not right enough.
> If you let the house drop to 60-55 F - there's no guarantee that the colder parts of your walls and pipes freeze.
That sounds like pretty high variation? ~25-30 deg F?
You only have to freeze your pipes once...
Holy cow - you have to heat the entire house to warm the exterior walls enough - in winter! - that the pipes don't freeze. Ouch.
That seems like it negates any potential savings.
Then there's the Active Denial System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
For anyone who has gone camping, they know that a warm enough sleeping bag is fine, no problem at all, and again, the fresh air is a wonderful part of the experience.
Not very famously, because I haven't heard that. Some people don't like it, I have no doubt. No matter what is suggested, nay-sayers can point to some people not liking it; what does it mean? And the people who don't like camping likely object to other aspects of it - just random chance among many aspects, and many much more burdensome such as carrying all your stuff, the food, less personal sanitation, no TV, no sushi or pizza delivery, etc. etc. I don't recall hearing anyone in my life object to fresh air, but I'm sure someone does!
Technology Connections had an aside on the heat pump video about how in the northern US doing away with incandescent lighting has probably meant more CO2 in the air overall, since every "wasteful" bulb also puts heat in a room, reducing overall heating load while providing something useful, visible light. LEDs are 20-33 times more efficient than incandescent, but now your heating system has to make up that lost wattage.
Sure, in the south, i literally only use inefficient bulbs to heat. I prefer LED for everything except slow motion video, in all other areas i find it superior lighting. I do find that large CFLs last 8 years outdoors, so i have two of those for my porches. I haven't found any comparable LED.
On the cold days (like this past day has been), I wish i had more floor standing lights with incandescents in them!
What happens to infrared energy when it hits objects with higher temperature than radiating object?
Same thing helps with air cooling units which tend to freeze your feet only: push cold air up with a fan.
Replace the furnace with a heat pump with a variable rate fan and compressor. The unit will run constantly at low speed.
It will also be super energy efficient, so there might be tax incentives.
You can get a hybrid gas or resistive heat model, which will fall back on conventional methods of heating as appropriate.
As upgrades, you could add a central (de)humidifier, air exchanger, and forest fire smoke air filter, depending on what other problems your area has.
You could also try getting a two zone system (separate temperature control and blowers for upstairs and downstairs), but that probably means tearing into walls or something. The always on slow + quiet fan is a much better solution.
Sorry, all I can think of that's maybe affordable.
As other's say though, closing off vents and such you might be able to manually re-balance the house. My last home had two "zones" and therefore two thermostats. But it required also some complicated baffles in the ventilation system to open and/or close the two zones independently. I didn't install it, it might have been pricey to do so.
But the bigger issue is how to cool off. Every summer has been hotter than the previous, and things are getting worse. Are there any effective ways to cool a dwelling, other than the traditional electrically-powered air conditioning? I've seen evaporative coolers, but what can people do who live in humid environments? Or have water restrictions?