Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

You were basically freeloading on your neighbors; there is no way you'd keep 20C inside without any heating source. Without your neighbors footing the bill you'd have ended up with massive hard-to-get-rid-of mold patches near windows by spring.

View on HN

I'm not sure I'd call it freeloading.

If he shut off his heat counting on neighbor heat to keep him warm, then maybe it would be freeloading.

But if his heating system was on and he set the thermostat to 20℃, which is in the normal indoor temperature range according to most sources I've seen, and it just happened to never turn on because his neighbors set theirs to higher I wouldn't consider that to be freeloading.

Modern insulation is very effective. I could see 10cm of insulation preventing basically all heat loss if there are few windows and those they have are triple-pane low-E coated. They get radiant heating from the sun as well, so if you're losing almost no energy then you're basically a greenhouse.

This is true. It appears some people are not familiar with the idea of passive heating and cooling or zero energy homes.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/zero-energy-ready-home...

Let's not assume all or even majority of homes are zero energy. At least in Europe the vast majority are energy performance class F/G.

You can't rent or sell anything F or lower in my country, so I guess that'll change soon.

By 2030 everything should be at least E, by 2033 at least D and by 2050 all A.

If he lives in typical block of flats in Slovakia, he pays part of the heat of the neighbors. Typically, part of the heat cost is based on your consumption and part is based on total consumption of the whole block divided between flats.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com