Restoring the Old Way of Warming: Heating People, Not Places, Parts 2 and 3 | Hacker News Reader

Restoring the Old Way of Warming: Heating People, Not Places, Parts 2 and 3

lowtechmagazine.com

31 pointsstonlyb23 comments

I'm not sure if the linked article is part 2, part 3 or neither... I was actually hoping for some more tips, but it seems to just be a rehash of the information in part 1. Maybe I'm missing something.

Since I already live this way, here are a few things that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else:

1) Wear a hat all day. It makes a huge difference. A sleeping cap is essential on cold winter nights, but even during the day some kind of hat will really help. I wear a wool cap that makes me look like an old man. My wife seems to be happy with long hair, but still wears a night cap at night.

2) Your feet and hands are the first thing to get cold. I work at home as a programmer, so I'm not often moving around. My wife bought me a kind of pillow with a pocket in it to put my feet. It is amazing. Any kind of pillow with a blanket over it will work just as well, I think.

3) On the same topic, never, ever go anywhere without wearing slippers. As soon as your feet get cold, it is really hard to get them warm again.

4) If you are like me and have a sedentary job, make sure to go for walks at regular intervals. As it never gets below freezing where I live, I also go for a bike ride at lunch. Your muscles are amazingly efficient heaters -- and you will lose weight! (I am always worried about being cold on my bike, but even at 3 or 4 degrees C and the wind howling, the bike is the warmest place to be).

5) Don't get wet. At cold temperatures it takes forever to get dry again. All the while you will suffer. If you must get wet (washing dishes, hands, face, whatever), then make sure to use warm water and be careful not to get your clothes wet. If your clothes get wet (i.e., if you go for a walk in the rain and your socks get wet), change to dry ones immediately. I really can't stress this point enough.

Finally, if you do end up getting cold (your skin feels like ice, or your fingers or toes go numb), then warm up immediately -- however you have to do it. If you start shivering, then you have gone waaay too far and you must warm up. Learning to live comfortably in the cold takes a lot of practice -- it is not intuitive (at least it hasn't been for me!). Do not "tough it out". If you get cold, then realize that you have made a mistake somewhere and try to figure out how to fix it for next time.

The headgear tip is essential. I live in a temperate climate, but for leaving the house some sort of head cover is a must, particularly if there's even a slight breeze.

All good advice. One thing I would recommend is to wear wool when possible; even when wet, it's insulating properties are unmatched. I used to have a pair of wool trousers that kept me warm while winter camping in Katahdin.

One thing that is amazing is in-floor heating (hot water pipes run through the floor). Lacking that, a heated floor mat under your desk works wonders, and draws relatively little energy (compared to a space heater at least).

Korea has been using in-floor heating for a long time. Of course other cultures/nations have them, but in Korea it's been in use for decades and used in pretty much all homes.

Following video is from an expat in S Korea who put up a video to show how it works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFcmZlxa-TE

Some of the best sleeps I've ever had were on the floor in Korea, in winter, with the ondol system running.

Coming back home, I struggled with electric blankets and all sorts of things to try and replicate it and the closest I've come is an electric mattress pad. Something about the low heat rising from beneath you is incredibly comforting.

Every winter we put it on our bed and sleep like babies, even if the rest of the house is cold.

Sleeping on ondol room seems to be like sleeping in sauna, except you are lying down comfortably on a think blanket...

What temperature do you keep the inside of your house?

We have no integrated heating system in our place, so it's the same temperature inside as it is outside :-). It always freaks me out on cold days, wet days when I can see my breath inside! We live in Shizuoka prefecture in Japan, which has a mild climate in the winter. It very rarely snows (once every couple of years) and it usually doesn't even freeze over night. In the winter, the day time high can be below 10 degrees C, but is almost never below 5. Most days it hovers around 10 degrees +- 3. The low is normally below 5 but only gets below freezing a few nights of the year.

We have a south eastern exposure and big glass sliding doors which capture a lot of light. It almost never rains in the winter in Shizuoka (only a few times a month), so this is the main form of heating that we use. At noon, it is probably 15 degrees C on sunny days. Unfortunately my office is on the north side, which is much colder. On cold, sunny days I will take my laptop to the warm area of the house and work there. Because I do work for a UK firm, I do work a lot at night, so I often work with an ambient temperature of 10 degrees or colder.

The main problem I have at the moment is that my hands get cold. In the last similar story someone linked to a keyboard that works as a heater and I think I will try something like that next winter (it is already spring here, so it is getting warmer -- next week is supposed to be 18-19 degrees).

When the heat comes, perhaps I will give some advice on how to stay cool without air conditioning ;-)

Having recently lived in a few very cold houses... I have to say, no thank you. In order for a place to feel like home — for my thoughts to relax and spread out — I absolutely need the temperature to be warm all around me. If it isn't, I feel like a hostage to my environment, hugging my computer's power brick and covering myself in heaps of blankets just to keep my mind working. The outside no longer feels "out"; it's inside too, all around me, chipping away at my defenses until I start to freeze again.

I need my safe place to be happy and productive.

What people fail to remember is that in humid climates like Canada where there is a lot of rain and snow, it is important to heat well to get rid of humidity which both increases comfort (humidity makes cold temperatures seem colder than they are in reality) and also prevents mold formation in houses.

What we should do instead: - Better insulate houses - Make smaller living spaces - No one needs 2000 sq/ft of living space.

I have lived in 2 cold climates that differ greatly in temperature comfort. Canada, with its R-2000 "standard" and China with its build-concrete-boxes-as-fast-as-possible method. The difference is incredible. Though Canada experienced colder and wetter weather, the indoor comfort was ideal. Whereas in a drafty concrete box, one relies on "heat people, not places" and it is uncomfortable much of the time. Especially during typing (gloves and keyboards don't mix)

I'd say the 3rd paragraph of the article is the most important. If you have the choice, live in or build an efficent, insulated dwelling. If you're already stuck in a drafty box, this article has some good insights for you.

I wish it would give more hints on how to keep typing fingers warm though.

With regards to typing, find some fingerless gloves you like. My favorite pair is under $10 and wool, but instantly makes anyone who tries them on look like a hobo. Add extra insulation on your arms too. The gloves are also essential if you like hacking outdoors in temperate climates.

One possibility that I've been meaning to try is a ceramic reptile heat bulb mounted in an articulated desk lamp, with a dimmer to tune the wattage.

Low tech magazine? Now I have seen everything. Luddites rejoice, for your publication has arrived!

It's not even printed in papyrus! What a sham.

One way to achieve radiative heating (heating surfaces instead of air volume) are far-infrared radiation panels.

Unlike other IR heaters they don't need to glow red-hot, but they need a larger surface area due to low power density.

In the "What could possibly go wrong?" department: http://www.wired.com/2008/01/pain-beam-centr/

that's frightening. Sounds like one of pitches in the last episode of HBO's silicon valley.

What worked for me was to do weightlifting every day. I used to run my heating at 20 degrees (68). Now I'm quite comfortable at 17 (62.6).

An alternative would be to make energy cheaper, instead of altering behaviours to cope with energy poverty.

Why use more than you need - even if it's free. And besides, even if the energy is cheap or even free, it still takes resources to capture, store, transport, and use energy. So: consume less.

Why use more than you need

Need for what? Just bare metabolism/survival? Or a flourishing life, where you're healthy and fully engaged in your work, pastimes and friends, never giving a moment's notice to things that would be terrible if you didn't live in an amazing, technologically advanced society with abundant energy?

Things like:

- healthy fruits and vegetables in the winter

- visiting your family thousands of miles away over the holidays

- having clean water, free of naturally occurring bugs such as giardia, cholera, etc.

- hospitals with ICUs, surgery rooms, sterilized surgical instruments

- computers and the Internet

- having a car big enough to pick up your friends so that you can all go on a hike in a park with tall trees

- living in a big city so that you can live near work, great food and culture - all those buildings and subways took a vast amount of energy to build, and require a vast amount to keep running

- being wealthy enough so that you can pursue an education and career instead of having to work on a farm (or in whatever line of work your parents happened to be in)

- having a clean set of clothes every day (if you go back far enough in the energy-impoverished past, most people did not shower every day, and many only had one set of clothes that they had to wear and patch until they fell apart!)

How many BTUs does it take to do a heart transplant? Think about the energy used by all of the equipment inside the hospital needed for the operation, the energy used to maintain the climate within the building, the energy that the doctors and nurses and administrators use to power their homes and lives, the energy it takes to make the tools that the surgeons use, the energy behind everything the patient takes in during recovery etc. It's a vast amount of energy!

Life is motion, and it takes energy to move. Using the past two centuries of progress as a guide, there is no limit to how much life can get better if we use more energy on all of those things that make life possible and worth living. (Many of these uses haven't been invented yet!)

> Why use more than you need - even if it's free

Well, if it's free, why not - unless you're driven by a puritan urge to deny yourself.

But in fact, living in a huddled hunkered-down style limits your enjoyment of life. I always find that when I'm somewhere comfortably warm I do more and enjoy more than if I'm shuffling about in the cold, and having to stick in one place to keep warm.

>So: consume less.

Consume more, if it makes your life more enjoyable. Life isn't for scraping by on a pittance until you pop your clogs.

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