Hacker News Reader

Comment by morog | Hacker News Reader

Had 2 Swedish people visiting Cape Town over winter, they said it was the coldest winter of their lives...the houses have no insulation, windows &doors drafty. Average house temperature indoors approx 10-15celcius.

View on HN

Being from Scandinavia myself I’ve also visited Southern Europe several times during winter, thinking I’ll get a boost of sunshine, and it’ll be like spring. But the 10 C inside gets me every damn time, because as soon as you stop moving and sit down, you start freezing over.

My own apartment is so heavily insulated that even in the winter, it’s almost to make the indoor temperature drop below 20!

Where in southern Europe did you go? Where I'm from (Greece) it gets down to -20 C in the winter, so our houses are very well insulated and heated. They have to be, otherwise we'd burn up in the summer as well.

So a Russian professor came to teach in the south of Brazil (roughly same latitude as Cape Town). Apparently he had never experienced so much cold. Temperatures are rarely negative, but houses aren't heated.

Many from the southern US who visit cities in the Northern US are absolutely shocked to encounter places such as subway stations or shops without chilly air conditioning in the summer months. It had probably been quite some time since they'd been indoors for any significant amount of time without heavily cooled air.

NYC is interesting in this way, in a given year living here it’s very likely you’ll spend considerable time outside or in unconditioned spaces in windy 15F/-10C as well as humid 95F/35C weather.

There are obviously places in the US with far more extreme temperature fluctuations, but most of them are fully car dependent and many people living there can wind up experiencing the weather firsthand for seconds at a time (in parking lots), unless they deliberately choose to do otherwise.

Indeed. I lived in Boston for nearly twenty years. Car ownership there is usually more hassle than not and it's also quite expensive. Most housing near subway stations is also incredibly expensive so most people rely on spotty bus service supplemented with longer walks, bicycles, and taxis/ride shares for transport. In total, I must have spent months of time in 90F-100F humid summer sun or 10F howling wind late at night traveling or waiting for busses/trollies outdoors. The worst though was around March when it's just warm enough for the salty snow and ice either falling from the sky or lining the ground to be slush so you're perpetually damp, but it's just around the freezing point and windy. To boot, everything is grey and filthy and everybody else is miserable and you question how many more of those seasons you've got left in you. But the crisp autumn days and warm summer nights around there are absolutely magical. It almost seems worth the punishment.

Same experience in the Bay Area. Older houses have terrible insulation, so indoor temps are lower than further north where good insulation and ample heating exists.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com