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> Then you use insulation. This especially is something that feels nobody in the US has heard of. At least in California.

In defense of Californians, most of us rarely, if ever, turn on a heater and most homes here don't have AC. Our heating and cooling costs are a small fraction of those of you who live in places that have seasons.

> > Then you use insulation. This especially is something that feels nobody in the US has heard of. At least in California.

There's lots of poorly insulated homes in California, either because they are old or cheaply-made, or because they are in places that have milder weather where it is less necessary. But there are also lots of well-insulated homes in California.

> In defense of Californians, most of us rarely, if ever, turn on a heater and most homes here don't have AC. Our heating and cooling costs are a small fraction of those of you who live in places that have seasons.

As a Central Valley resident, I think you may be falsely generalizing from "the Bay Area" to "California". Even cheap homes in the Valley usually have AC, even if its not central AC.

I don't think it's only the Bay Area. I've lived in parts of California that between them add up to about 70% of California's population, and not one of them had A/C prevalent, from San Bernardino County to Santa Cruz County.

My 2 bed apartment, with both people working from home pretty regularly, and floor-to-ceiling windows on one side, costs < $30/mo for electric + gas except for 2-3 months in the winter, when it rises to $60 or so. Though we have no tv and no a/c. (last bill: 5.8 kWh/day)

Given those costs, it's very difficult to get a return on better insulation or insulated windows.

"most homes here don't have AC."

That really depends on where in the state you are. Coastal cities, generally, more so. Inland, even within the SF Bay Area or Los Angeles, you'll find a lot of AC, and in the Central Valley it's a huge determinant of load and peak load.

> In defense of Californians, most of us rarely, if ever, turn on a heater and most homes here don't have AC

Then why on earth was I freezing my balls off in Menlo Park this November? The weeks before we realised our house even had heating were miserable. And even afterwards, as soon as the heaters weren't blowing hot air, or you were more than 3ft away, you were instantly cold and miserable.

Had you previously lived in more equatorial climes? Temperature preference really is about what you're used to. Some years ago when I visited India in January/February, my friends' relatives in Rajasthan were shivering in sweaters and coats while my friend and I were perfectly comfortable in short sleeves.

No, I previously lived in a climate that goes up to 100F in summer and down to 5F in winter. But I've always lived in a proper house with heating and insulation and whatnot.

New Zealand's North Island has a similar problem. A typical house has cheap construction with thin exterior walls, unfinished crawl space with exposed soil, no insulation and no heat pump. Coupled with a damp climate 5-25C, in the winter one gets heavy condensation, black mold, chills, and the fingers don't work.

I bumped into a guy here from Northern Germany who said he's never been so cold as in a kiwi house in the winter.

The NZ government is trying to change minds, but I still see houses going up with empty wall cavities and no air barrier. But then, the natives wear shorts and tees outside in 5 degree weather all winter. So, maybe its just me.

> You make hot water with cheap natural gas. If you're lucky enough, you can even use geothermal.

In Denmark it's getting pretty common to produce it via trash incinerators. They produce a kind of heat that is apparently that not great for electricity generation, but pretty good for district-heat production. So much so that the price of unsorted municipal garbage in both Denmark and Sweden has risen in the past few years, because it has become a valuable energy source.

CHP (combined heat and power) or district heating, typically, though I'm not sure which applies in your case.

Most areas which have implemented a trash-to-energy program pretty soon run out of high-grade suitable trash and resort to imports. Entropy always wins.

> you heat the whole house with hot water

As others have said, try cooling a house with rads. It's not like North America is oblivious to radiators; they were very much a standard way of heating houses before the popularity of AC made forced air a much more logical choice.

> Then you use insulation. This especially is something that feels nobody in the US has heard of. At least in California.

If you only know about the completely unrepresentative California, why expose your ignorance by projecting to all of the U.S.? And further, why bother calling it "the European model"? Obviously the way houses are built, insulated, and heated in a country like England or Norway is going to differ wildly from how it's done in say, Greece.

Even within California the climate differs so much that there are 4-5 different building codes for insulation. But in general, the minimum code for insulation in California is around half that of states with colder climates (e.g. R30 for ceiling in California, R50 for Wisconsin).

> And further, why bother calling it "the European model"?

Because I've seen radiators and decent insulation in literally every house I've ever been in anywhere in Europe. Warm places like Greece and Portugal included.

Differences are mostly attributable to the age of a house rather than its location. But arguably old stone houses (200+ years) in hot places have the best insulation in that they are simply built with 1m+ thick walls and super tiny windows.

Insulation. It works. For both hot and cold.

Granted, the moderner your building and the thinner walls and more cement it uses, the likelier you are to need AC in summer. In old buildings you get enough cooling by just airing the house overnight and keeping everything closed during the day ... unless of course you have a big computer in your room. Then you're screwed.

> As others have said, try cooling a house with rads. It's not like North America is oblivious to radiators; they were very much a standard way of heating houses before the popularity of AC made forced air a much more logical choice.

I've always found the popularity of AC in the US bizarre, every single European who've traveled to the US in the summer and had to spend extensive time inside complained about the cold and quickly switched to long sleeves and trousers.

Forced air heat is a lot more common in the U.S. because we are further along on adopting air conditioning. If you put in ducts for AC, it's cheaper to use those to distribute heat. Upscale construction does seem to be adding radiant floor heat.

Houses are generally pretty under-insulated though.

Air is a pretty bad transport agent for heat compared to water. To heat a house (and especially poorly insulated ones) the air either has to be rather hot or flow pretty fast. The former is not very comfortable because of the large temperature gradients and it can cause a 'scorched dust' smell. The latter is also not very comfortable when you're in the flow path, it's noisy and the increased flow of air in the room means more heat is escaping to outside.

It can work for well insulated and airtight houses but I'm not a fan (pun not intended) because you're tying two different functions (heating and ventilation) together.

This is common in the Northeast and Midwest.

Also, if you're in an apartment your place might be so hot because you have a neighbor that has cranked the heat. I used to be able to keep the heat off in a place I lived at because the person that lived below me had their place like a sauna.

its done that way in Russia as well, at least in the city. the downside is they have to turn off the hot water occasionally to do cleaning, which means no hot water for 1-3 days.

in village homes they use pechkas [1]. a giant radiant heater that uses firewood and sits in the middle of the home. most are adapted so that you can use them to cook too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oven

In moscow, they do this in what is (nominally) summer for almost 2 weeks. I thought the water would be chilly, but if I took brisk showers I'd be ok. The first time I tried I nearly gave myself hypothermia -- no exaggeration, I was under a blanket unable to stop shaking for 10 minutes -- and figured out why I saw kettles in people's bathrooms when I was a guest in their apartments. Thank god for the gym which was in a different area of the city.

Crappy insulation is the norm here in Australia as well, which is more of a problem down south where it gets cold in winter. I used to work with a Scot who highlighted the issue, saying that in a Scottish house, the insulation was good enough that you could basically heat a room with a candle.

I once asked him if there were any wooden houses in Scotland, he replied "Yes, we keep our lawnmowers in them".

> I once asked him if there were any wooden houses in Scotland, he replied "Yes, we keep our lawnmowers in them".

Austro-hungarian empire outlawed wooden houses in the early 19th century. Hence we still don't have any, and if you live in a wooden house[1], you are considered to not have been able to afford a proper house and thus looked down upon.

[1] becoming common with drywall construction methods. Particularly because it's cheap and fast.

There's another historical difference between Scotland and the US here: the US has a near-unlimited supply of wood, while Scotland was mostly bare of trees by the 18th century.

Much cheaper to build walls from local stone and save the imported wood for the floors and roofs.

What is wrong with wooden houses? It is quite possible to apply insulation to those as well as it is to any other house.