7 ms·

> The world has a lot of potential to be more efficient. This winter wasn’t “efficient” it was cold as hell because we all turned the heating as low as it coul

> The world has a lot of potential to be more efficient. This winter wasn’t “efficient” it was cold as hell because we all turned the heating as low as it could go without causing building damage[1] because the price of natural gas more than 10x’ed. It’s not an example of a sustainable reduction in consumption. [1] though a lot of people didn’t think things through and set the temperature too low or even turned off the gas and now have mold and other problems in their basements.

locallost 3y ago
I was probably not clear enough, my point was that even in normal times, energy use im some countries can be almost double per capita than other similar countries. But even in the more energy efficient countries there's room for improvement - better insulation, more efficient appliances on the individual level, and better urban planning etc. on the society level.
squokko 3y ago
Sure it's sustainable. Wear a jacket indoors. Won't kill you.
- fredrikholm 3y ago
  This is how (a lot of) students live in Glasgow; jackets indoors, heating when you have guests.
  - johnchristopher 3y ago
    I even lower heating when I have guests. Most of the time human bodies emit heat enough (N=1, for my lodging).
    - nottorp 3y ago
      Yeah, when i have 4+ people in my living room i have to lower down the heating or open a window.
- amelius 3y ago
  If you're not bothered by mold.
  - dybber 3y ago
    Mold is due to inadequate ventilation, not low temperatures.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      But you cannot ventilate everything and mold comes with moisture.
      - whstl 3y ago
        If you can't crack the windows open a few times a day for a few minutes, then you got bigger problems that require proper solutions. In this case a proper dehumidifier is much more energy-efficient than keeping the heaters on.
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        If you have a old house, with a basement and lots of stuff, than it is quite hard, that the ventilation reaches every corner. And those corners will get moldy. Oh and I don't have a house, nor a mold problem, but know enough people who do have, even though they do ventilate reasonable. Houses were build with the assumption, that they are heated. Now you can build new houses that are better designed - but you cannot magically adjust all the existing houses.
        jaclaz 3y ago
        >Houses were build with the assumption, that they are heated. Yes and no. It depends on the country and areas within it and it applies mainly to houses built in the last 60-70 years or so, maybe a few more years back in cities (for heating with radiators) before that time many, many houses were (poorly) heated by fireplaces and/or stoves. Besides, the permeability of the building materials was traditionally much better, and windows/doors were leaky, guaranteeing a much better ventilation. At least here in Italy the heating was a luxury until well after World War II, particularly in the country and in small vilages, anecdotally my family used to have a house in a small village in central Italy where the heating until the '70's was based on the devices that can be seen here (Italian): https://www.muet.it/storie/tutte-le-storie/item/il-riscaldamento-domestico.html https://www.muet.it/storie/tutte-le-storie/item/il-riscaldam... Particularly the kitchen and dining room was heated by the "stufa economica" that was also used to cook meals, the sitting room had a fireplace that heated also (a little) the bedroom behind it, and there was another large bedroom heated by a "stufa in terracotta", having a "prete" for each bed was needed. The house was anyway very, very cold, particularly at night/early morning.
- yourusername 3y ago
  Not if you're young and healthy. Older people get less mobile and stiff when it's 15c inside though. And for health purposes it is suggested to not let the temperature get below 16c due to issues with moisture and mould.
  - parkersweb 3y ago
    Wife teaches exercise classes for the older 50’s and this is a cyclical problem. High temps mean less movement is required to keep warm which leads to loss of muscle mass and lower mobility, which requires higher temps to keep warm and so on….
- ExoticPearTree 3y ago
  > Sure it's sustainable. Wear a jacket indoors. Won't kill you. Right. That's why we have technology and other advanced things, to live like cavemen used to. Not everybody lives at the right latitude to have 22 degrees Celsius indoors without additional heating in the winter.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    I believe the idea from above poster is not that you should stop heating and "live like a caveman", but that many people would make great savings by wearing a wool sweater on top of their t-shirt and turning the temp down a couple degrees. As a case in point, I never spent a winter with 22°c indoors, usually it's around 18-19°c. That being said, as someone else said, controlling humidity is also a concern for the long-term viability of buildings.
    - ExoticPearTree 3y ago
      Anything under 21 during night for me makes it uncomfortable to sleep. At 22 for me it is the perfect temperature and in the winter I wear a normal clothes, too cold for t-shirts at 22.
      - hoorible 3y ago
        Jesus, I got uncomfortable just reading this. 21 at night would be insufferable for us (we’re in western Canada). 17 at night, 19.5 during the day is as hot as our house has ever been in winter; though with a new baby I suspect that might change by 0.5 for a while.
  - theodric 3y ago
    I'm in Ireland. My ancient cottage gets down to about 13°C with every-other-day heating, even if it's 0° outside. Rarely colder. I do indeed just wear a jacket or a sweater, and I have a heated blanket on the couch. You get used to it and start to prefer it! If it were 22° in here I'd be in a T-shirt opening windows to let some heat out.
  - adriancr 3y ago
- Phelinofist 3y ago
  I do that every winter - not because of the high prices for heating but because heating gets my skin dry. So I keep it around 18-19° and wear a jacket/warm clothes and drink hot tee and have a hot-water bottle. I also have a wearable blanket which is just super comfy.
  - zamnos 3y ago
    A humidifier will combat the dryness if you'd rather be wearing only a t-shirt.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      Humidifiers are things that I will only run if I have to. I would much rather turn the heat down than run a unit that has to be refilled with de-ionized water constantly and blows moisture into whatever it is next to, and makes a huge mess if knocked over. It also has to be cleaned constantly because even with RO/DI water in it mold still grows.
pshirshov 3y ago
I didn't notice that. I kept temperature at usual 24.5 degrees. I have a heat pump and a solar pv though.
- tinco 3y ago
  Damn, we had the temp set to 17 or 18, if I walk in and it's 21 it feels like a wall of heat in the winter. I can't imagine having the thermostat set to 24, I'm pretty sure it would be uncomfortably hot unless you never go outside..
  - pshirshov 3y ago
    I've spent a fair share of my life in a very cold region where people overheat their houses so I'm used to high temperatures.
- palata 3y ago
  Yeah, some people have to lower the temps to compensate for your sauna :-)
  - pshirshov 3y ago
    I'm paying my bills and I'm giving about 1.5 mWh per year back to the grid for free. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong.
    - hgomersall 3y ago
      Clearly not. What's your total energy consumption? Unless your looking at something closer to passivhaus levels of 15kWh/(m^2.yr) your house is too hot (and frankly, however efficient your house is the temperature is absurd). That is a statement of ethics. The price you pay for your energy doesn't even begin to pay for the damage. That is a big part of the problem. Moreover, every kWh spent on overheating your house is a kWh we as a society need to find for all the other things that are less stupid. Put on a jumper. Or even, let your body adjust. There's plenty of evidence that keeping your body working to stay warm when you are healthy is very good forblood sugar control, which has additional benefits.
skrause 3y ago
I live in Germany and honestly didn't notice any difference. I heated my home normally and it also didn't feel colder in other places I visited.
- abyssin 3y ago
  I live in Belgium and my house was cold all winter because I couldn’t afford the price spike.
  - cutemonster 3y ago
    A villa, not an apartment? I live far to the north, in an apartment, and didn't notice anything this winter, wherever I went. But I heard someone in their villa here nearby actually moved elsewhere, over the winter, because of the high cost of heating
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      I guess someone who owns a villa in Belgium doesn't really have to worry about electricity prices :P Unless they suddenly lost a lot of their wealth somehow.
      - larksimian 3y ago
        Villa just means house in that context, I believe
      - nuancebydefault 3y ago
        I am 'owner' of a villa in Belgium. Villas in Belgium vary between 250K to 750K for a normal family 3 to 4 bedroom house. Typically a house has 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom. The price is very dependent on the location! Well we saw the monthly gas+elec price of 150 euros before the crisis, suddenly go 6-fold, so we did worry a lot. We decreased our heating a few degrees and used a lot more bio fuel during winter. Lately the price is about 3 or 4 fold the price of before the crisis. Edit: by villa we typically mean a house that is not adjacent to another house.
KptMarchewa 3y ago
10x in August. By January it was lower than 2021 winter.
- harvey9 3y ago
  The person you replied to was talking about retail consumers. Retail prices don't always move in step with wholesale.
  - orra 3y ago
    There's a saying that if wholesale prices rises, retail prices quickly rise; if wholesale prices drop, suddenly there’s a disconnect.
    - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
      This is always the case. If e.g. petrol moved in tandem with the price of oil, it would have gone up and down by a lot - it's gone from $25 / barrel in 2020 to $110 in 2022. I for one hope the consumer market will get an overcorrection and I can fix my contract for a few years, since I'm not convinced we've seen the last of energy price fluctuation.
ben_w 3y ago
I don't know where you're based, but you are mentioning prices in dollars in another comment, so I'm assuming most likely US. Continental Europe's got much better housing than the bits of the US which I've visited. East coast more relevant here than the West, given exactly where I went, but Boston, Providence, etc., were awful build quality, the "middle class" places around there were even worse than the "working class" Victorian terraces and post-War council houses in the UK.
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  A lot of stuff in Boston and other places in the East Coast is actually pre-War and pretty terrible. I grew up in the Upper Midwest (Minnesota), and our house, built around 1980, was very well insulated. Double paned windows, etc. Houses built today to even just code are even better, and anyone going a step beyond code has an insanely efficient house. My current house in Virginia is over 100 years old, and isn’t terribly well insulated and has single pane windows (although we have storm windows which help… also it’s small and is a duplex which helps). So the places you visited (on East Coast, big old cities) are not necessarily very representative. Any place with newer housing will have better insulation. (And yes, I realize that a lot of people think newer houses are cheap crap, but overall I think building codes have improved average quality significantly, and the reason you don’t see it in some old houses is because the crap old houses were already torn down, ie sample bias.)
  - dimitar 3y ago
    It's survivor bias, and a great point to make when people say old construction is better. Really bad construction simply doesn't survive long enough to be considered old
- jimbob45 3y ago
  I’m not here to defend US housing quality but if you’d asked me the worst-built houses prior to your post, I’d have said the Eastern US, specifically New England/Boston.
yxhuvud 3y ago
While what you are saying is true, there has also been a tremendous amount of investment in energy efficiency, and that is something that I would expect to continue for quite a while.
- stingraycharles 3y ago
  I know my mother (based in .nl) had her heater set to 14 degrees because she simply couldn’t afford the gas bill. And there are huge threads on Reddit about people in similar situations in .nl last winter. My personal gas+electricity bill went from €180 a month to almost €600. I really think the price of energy is a huge influence in the reduction of usage.
  - throwayyy479087 3y ago
    Capitalism worked. Price signals are very effective, though painful
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

locallost 3y ago

I was probably not clear enough, my point was that even in normal times, energy use im some countries can be almost double per capita than other similar countries. But even in the more energy efficient countries there's room for improvement - better insulation, more efficient appliances on the individual level, and better urban planning etc. on the society level.

squokko 3y ago

Sure it's sustainable. Wear a jacket indoors. Won't kill you.

fredrikholm 3y ago
This is how (a lot of) students live in Glasgow; jackets indoors, heating when you have guests.
- johnchristopher 3y ago
  I even lower heating when I have guests. Most of the time human bodies emit heat enough (N=1, for my lodging).
  - nottorp 3y ago
    Yeah, when i have 4+ people in my living room i have to lower down the heating or open a window.
amelius 3y ago
If you're not bothered by mold.
- dybber 3y ago
  Mold is due to inadequate ventilation, not low temperatures.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    But you cannot ventilate everything and mold comes with moisture.
    - whstl 3y ago
      If you can't crack the windows open a few times a day for a few minutes, then you got bigger problems that require proper solutions. In this case a proper dehumidifier is much more energy-efficient than keeping the heaters on.
      - hutzlibu 3y ago
        If you have a old house, with a basement and lots of stuff, than it is quite hard, that the ventilation reaches every corner. And those corners will get moldy. Oh and I don't have a house, nor a mold problem, but know enough people who do have, even though they do ventilate reasonable. Houses were build with the assumption, that they are heated. Now you can build new houses that are better designed - but you cannot magically adjust all the existing houses.
        jaclaz 3y ago
        >Houses were build with the assumption, that they are heated. Yes and no. It depends on the country and areas within it and it applies mainly to houses built in the last 60-70 years or so, maybe a few more years back in cities (for heating with radiators) before that time many, many houses were (poorly) heated by fireplaces and/or stoves. Besides, the permeability of the building materials was traditionally much better, and windows/doors were leaky, guaranteeing a much better ventilation. At least here in Italy the heating was a luxury until well after World War II, particularly in the country and in small vilages, anecdotally my family used to have a house in a small village in central Italy where the heating until the '70's was based on the devices that can be seen here (Italian): https://www.muet.it/storie/tutte-le-storie/item/il-riscaldamento-domestico.html https://www.muet.it/storie/tutte-le-storie/item/il-riscaldam... Particularly the kitchen and dining room was heated by the "stufa economica" that was also used to cook meals, the sitting room had a fireplace that heated also (a little) the bedroom behind it, and there was another large bedroom heated by a "stufa in terracotta", having a "prete" for each bed was needed. The house was anyway very, very cold, particularly at night/early morning.
yourusername 3y ago
Not if you're young and healthy. Older people get less mobile and stiff when it's 15c inside though. And for health purposes it is suggested to not let the temperature get below 16c due to issues with moisture and mould.
- parkersweb 3y ago
  Wife teaches exercise classes for the older 50’s and this is a cyclical problem. High temps mean less movement is required to keep warm which leads to loss of muscle mass and lower mobility, which requires higher temps to keep warm and so on….
ExoticPearTree 3y ago
> Sure it's sustainable. Wear a jacket indoors. Won't kill you. Right. That's why we have technology and other advanced things, to live like cavemen used to. Not everybody lives at the right latitude to have 22 degrees Celsius indoors without additional heating in the winter.
- pyrale 3y ago
  I believe the idea from above poster is not that you should stop heating and "live like a caveman", but that many people would make great savings by wearing a wool sweater on top of their t-shirt and turning the temp down a couple degrees. As a case in point, I never spent a winter with 22°c indoors, usually it's around 18-19°c. That being said, as someone else said, controlling humidity is also a concern for the long-term viability of buildings.
  - ExoticPearTree 3y ago
    Anything under 21 during night for me makes it uncomfortable to sleep. At 22 for me it is the perfect temperature and in the winter I wear a normal clothes, too cold for t-shirts at 22.
    - hoorible 3y ago
      Jesus, I got uncomfortable just reading this. 21 at night would be insufferable for us (we’re in western Canada). 17 at night, 19.5 during the day is as hot as our house has ever been in winter; though with a new baby I suspect that might change by 0.5 for a while.
- theodric 3y ago
  I'm in Ireland. My ancient cottage gets down to about 13°C with every-other-day heating, even if it's 0° outside. Rarely colder. I do indeed just wear a jacket or a sweater, and I have a heated blanket on the couch. You get used to it and start to prefer it! If it were 22° in here I'd be in a T-shirt opening windows to let some heat out.
- adriancr 3y ago
Phelinofist 3y ago
I do that every winter - not because of the high prices for heating but because heating gets my skin dry. So I keep it around 18-19° and wear a jacket/warm clothes and drink hot tee and have a hot-water bottle. I also have a wearable blanket which is just super comfy.
- zamnos 3y ago
  A humidifier will combat the dryness if you'd rather be wearing only a t-shirt.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    Humidifiers are things that I will only run if I have to. I would much rather turn the heat down than run a unit that has to be refilled with de-ionized water constantly and blows moisture into whatever it is next to, and makes a huge mess if knocked over. It also has to be cleaned constantly because even with RO/DI water in it mold still grows.

pshirshov 3y ago

I didn't notice that. I kept temperature at usual 24.5 degrees. I have a heat pump and a solar pv though.

tinco 3y ago
Damn, we had the temp set to 17 or 18, if I walk in and it's 21 it feels like a wall of heat in the winter. I can't imagine having the thermostat set to 24, I'm pretty sure it would be uncomfortably hot unless you never go outside..
- pshirshov 3y ago
  I've spent a fair share of my life in a very cold region where people overheat their houses so I'm used to high temperatures.
palata 3y ago
Yeah, some people have to lower the temps to compensate for your sauna :-)
- pshirshov 3y ago
  I'm paying my bills and I'm giving about 1.5 mWh per year back to the grid for free. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong.
  - hgomersall 3y ago
    Clearly not. What's your total energy consumption? Unless your looking at something closer to passivhaus levels of 15kWh/(m^2.yr) your house is too hot (and frankly, however efficient your house is the temperature is absurd). That is a statement of ethics. The price you pay for your energy doesn't even begin to pay for the damage. That is a big part of the problem. Moreover, every kWh spent on overheating your house is a kWh we as a society need to find for all the other things that are less stupid. Put on a jumper. Or even, let your body adjust. There's plenty of evidence that keeping your body working to stay warm when you are healthy is very good forblood sugar control, which has additional benefits.

skrause 3y ago

I live in Germany and honestly didn't notice any difference. I heated my home normally and it also didn't feel colder in other places I visited.

abyssin 3y ago
I live in Belgium and my house was cold all winter because I couldn’t afford the price spike.
- cutemonster 3y ago
  A villa, not an apartment? I live far to the north, in an apartment, and didn't notice anything this winter, wherever I went. But I heard someone in their villa here nearby actually moved elsewhere, over the winter, because of the high cost of heating
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    I guess someone who owns a villa in Belgium doesn't really have to worry about electricity prices :P Unless they suddenly lost a lot of their wealth somehow.
    - larksimian 3y ago
      Villa just means house in that context, I believe
    - nuancebydefault 3y ago
      I am 'owner' of a villa in Belgium. Villas in Belgium vary between 250K to 750K for a normal family 3 to 4 bedroom house. Typically a house has 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom. The price is very dependent on the location! Well we saw the monthly gas+elec price of 150 euros before the crisis, suddenly go 6-fold, so we did worry a lot. We decreased our heating a few degrees and used a lot more bio fuel during winter. Lately the price is about 3 or 4 fold the price of before the crisis. Edit: by villa we typically mean a house that is not adjacent to another house.

KptMarchewa 3y ago

10x in August. By January it was lower than 2021 winter.

harvey9 3y ago
The person you replied to was talking about retail consumers. Retail prices don't always move in step with wholesale.
- orra 3y ago
  There's a saying that if wholesale prices rises, retail prices quickly rise; if wholesale prices drop, suddenly there’s a disconnect.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    This is always the case. If e.g. petrol moved in tandem with the price of oil, it would have gone up and down by a lot - it's gone from $25 / barrel in 2020 to $110 in 2022. I for one hope the consumer market will get an overcorrection and I can fix my contract for a few years, since I'm not convinced we've seen the last of energy price fluctuation.

ben_w 3y ago

I don't know where you're based, but you are mentioning prices in dollars in another comment, so I'm assuming most likely US. Continental Europe's got much better housing than the bits of the US which I've visited. East coast more relevant here than the West, given exactly where I went, but Boston, Providence, etc., were awful build quality, the "middle class" places around there were even worse than the "working class" Victorian terraces and post-War council houses in the UK.

Robotbeat 3y ago
A lot of stuff in Boston and other places in the East Coast is actually pre-War and pretty terrible. I grew up in the Upper Midwest (Minnesota), and our house, built around 1980, was very well insulated. Double paned windows, etc. Houses built today to even just code are even better, and anyone going a step beyond code has an insanely efficient house. My current house in Virginia is over 100 years old, and isn’t terribly well insulated and has single pane windows (although we have storm windows which help… also it’s small and is a duplex which helps). So the places you visited (on East Coast, big old cities) are not necessarily very representative. Any place with newer housing will have better insulation. (And yes, I realize that a lot of people think newer houses are cheap crap, but overall I think building codes have improved average quality significantly, and the reason you don’t see it in some old houses is because the crap old houses were already torn down, ie sample bias.)
- dimitar 3y ago
  It's survivor bias, and a great point to make when people say old construction is better. Really bad construction simply doesn't survive long enough to be considered old
jimbob45 3y ago
I’m not here to defend US housing quality but if you’d asked me the worst-built houses prior to your post, I’d have said the Eastern US, specifically New England/Boston.

yxhuvud 3y ago

While what you are saying is true, there has also been a tremendous amount of investment in energy efficiency, and that is something that I would expect to continue for quite a while.

stingraycharles 3y ago
I know my mother (based in .nl) had her heater set to 14 degrees because she simply couldn’t afford the gas bill. And there are huge threads on Reddit about people in similar situations in .nl last winter. My personal gas+electricity bill went from €180 a month to almost €600. I really think the price of energy is a huge influence in the reduction of usage.
- throwayyy479087 3y ago
  Capitalism worked. Price signals are very effective, though painful

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]