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It isn't all that cold here, but I dislike wearing socks indoors, and am not that fond of wearing layers constantly either, OTOH I'm not thrilled with huge heating bills and rather enjoy getting a little of my advance payments back. So winter is a time of constant compromise and dilemma. Also blankets. Unlike socks I don't mind using blankets. So now I'm wondering how cold (or comfortably warm) other people are at their place. (If it's summer right now where you are, just remember your last winter.)

Poll #9180 your winter heating: toasty warmth or extra sweater?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 53

View Respondents

How much do you heat your place?

View Answers

I don't need to heat at all in my climate zone, it remains comfortable all winter.
0 (0.0%)

I don't (or can't) heat at all, and just tough out the cold with extra sweaters, socks, thermal underwear, blankets etc.
1 (1.9%)

I heat only some rooms, and these not quite as warm as I'd like to save energy/money, and use some extra sweaters, socks, thermal underwear, blankets etc. when necessary.
14 (26.4%)

I heat only some rooms, but these are as warm as I like it.
8 (15.1%)

I heat all rooms when I use them, but not quite as warm as I'd like to save energy/money, and use some extra sweaters, socks, thermal underwear, blankets etc. when necessary.
9 (17.0%)

I heat all rooms comfortably when I use them, and only turn down the heat when I'm not there.
6 (11.3%)

I heat all rooms, but not quite as warm as I'd like to save energy/money, and use some extra sweaters, socks, thermal underwear, blankets etc. when necessary.
13 (24.5%)

I heat all my rooms as warm as like it. Saving some money/energy is not worth being uncomfortable at home.
1 (1.9%)

I heat all rooms as much as possible, but still need some extra sweaters, socks, thermal underwear, blankets etc., because winters are just that bad here.
1 (1.9%)

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We also have automatic thermostats, to turn things up and down depending on if we are there/time of day. But we never turn the heat completely off when we're not there -- partly bc we have pets and partly bc it takes so long to warm back up. (we own a largish house that is about 110 years old, but has been insulated; the 3rd storey is a master suite but obviously we're only really up there at night.)

Yeah, I leave the heat on in some rooms when I leave too, even though I don't have rats right now, because I dislike coming back to a cold place.

Automatic thermostats sound nice. My thermostats are just a valve on the radiator that you can turn more open or close, so you can't choose a temperature exactly or anything like that, though iirc the middle position was supposed to be 20C or so. Though afaik the building's central heating is automatically downregulated some for the night for everyone.

We had to redo the heating/cooling when we bought the house anyway, so we got the automatic thermostats then. they had to replace the thermostat on the first floor, and there was no heating or cooling on the third at that time -- it ended up being simplest/cheapest/most energy efficient to put the third on a completely separate system -- and auto thermostats are basically the default on the modern market here. Admittedly a white plastic therrmostat looks damned weird in a Victorian crown-molded carved-wood stained-glass living room, but so does a television set, so whatever.

My answer is not quite accurate--I prefer a cooler temperature, so I often don't heat because I hate getting up to fiddle with it. And at night I turn the heat off entirely. I love to sleep in a cold room under a big down comforter.

Everybody says sleeping is better in a colder room, but I loathe that. I mean, I don't heat to extremes in general, but I rather have my bedroom at 18°C or even warmer than at 16° or colder.

Sadly I had to give up on down comforters after my rats chewed holes in my last one, and I didn't want to invest the money into an expensive blanket just to risk it again, next time I forget to put it away from the reach of inquisitive teeth. At least if something chews on the artificial fiber filling it still holds together you don't end up with feathers everywhere, and it's also more easily washed.

18°C is considered cool to cold in the US, 16° means "is the heat even on? I'll go check". Believe it or not, as I was growing up "room temperature" was defined as 21-22°C (70-72°F). We keep the house cool in US terms: around 19°C.

Here the recommended temperature range for bedrooms you tend to find is 15°-18°C iirc, and 18°-22° for living rooms, though you can get the temperature higher with most radiators. I think of "room temperature" as 20°C. My parents kept it warmer than that (I think it was more like 23°/24° or something, it was really warm), and I'd like to have 20°C everywhere, but regulate more to 18°C in my bedroom. Which then gets slightly cooler at night through the automated system.

We have a small living space and one thermostat, but it's behind the television, so if the television is on, then it can get quite cold in the back of the trailer. Because of it, there is a small space heater back there that I can plug in if I'm in the back and D's up front watching television. Mostly I keep the overall temp down to save money and turn it down even lower at night for comfort since I sleep with 3 heat producers! I've actually been really comfortable this winter, since the new meds are causing my body temperature to run a little higher than it does on its own.

Usually, I'm going to add layers before I turn up the thermostat, in part because I don't trust my body's temperature sense but also, most definitely, from a savings perspective.

I should add that I have a whole arsenal of tricks to warming my core temperature up when I feel cold despite the warmth of the room, so that's a whole other subject. :D

Edited 2012-01-21 17:36 (UTC)

Unfortunately rats are too small to make much of a difference, even if they slept in my bed...

I also sometimes have odd temperature perceptions. Mine seem to go with my menstrual cycle, i.e. there's always one time a bit before my period when I feel inexplicably cold for 30 minutes to two hours or so, regardless of the temperature. Bodies are just so odd sometimes.

I don't have control of the heat in my apartment -the radiators go on and off as the super wills. I will say that I think generally it would be warm enough, but the air conditioner in my bedroom is mounted improperly, so even when it's covered over, cold air still gets in. The bedroom is far colder than the living room, but when it's really cold, it's cold in the whole apartment, so I spend a lot of time in fleecy hoodies and socks.

That has to suck, to not be able to control the heat. Here the temperature is regulated down for the building over night afaik, but you can still control it relatively to the overall baseline.

Heat is included in our rent so we don't have to worry about costs though of course we try to conserve heat for environmental reasons. But my main room where I work in is always as warm and pleasant as I like it.

We never heat the bathroom since it's not worth it, for the little time it's occupied. (Sometimes you'll here a little curse coming from in there.) We only heat the kitchen very occasionally, since it's tiny and the stove usually creates enough warmth.

I don't heat my bedroom except for 10 minutes or so when I'm going to bed - my feet can touch the heater and I have balmy warm feet all night. (Hate going to sleep with cold feet. The never ever warm up on their own!)

See, I always heat my bathroom, because it may be little time I spend there, but I loathe feeling cold while I use the toilet or come out of the shower. Also my bathroom doesn't have a window for airing well so I need to heat it or I'd have serious problems with the humidity encouraging mold. On the bright side with the relatively little squaremeters it has, heating it doesn't amount to much money. (The system my place uses is that some base cost is not dependent on usage, then the rest is determined by what the meter on the radiator shows multiplied with a factor for the room size.)

I don't heat my kitchen (unless I have guests), because it is a large room, which is nice for sitting there, because many people can sit there if I unfold the kitchen table fully and it is nice for cooking too, but when it is just me, it's just not worth it. Thankfully the recent renovation and repainting of the building's front took care of one of my kitchen corners being persistently clammy, so I had a spot of mold there recurring every winter. Which of course would have stopped had I fully heated the kitchen regardless of the state of the outside, so I could not complain (as per the lease obviously I'm required to heat and air sufficiently, but I was miserly). But it's not been a problem anymore with the new paint repelling the outside humidity better and I can take care of the cooking humidity by just airing.

I have central heating, so I don't so much have an option to only heat some rooms. Though we do have all the vents closed in the basement apartment since no-one's in there.

I was raised on wood-furnace central heat, and my mother is terribly cold-blooded. so she keeps her place about 74F (23C?). Moving to somewhere with gas heat and a heating bill hurt.

And my particular medical condition means I cannot even try and keep my bedroom cool, or I will do nothing but throw up all day.

What do you mean with central heating? I have central heating, but that just means that the furnace/boiler is central for the whole house and combined for all apartments (rather than individual ovens), but still the rooms have individual radiators you can regulate somewhat.

I'm not in an apartment, we have a house, and we don't have radiators, just vents.

You can kinda control the amount of air movement by opening or closing the grates, but they don't ever really close, not without magnetic strips to go over them. Or at least mine don't.

So something blows warm air? Here heating works through heated water in pipes, afaik in single unit houses too (though I don't know anyone living in houses except some relatives I never visit). There are no vents, because only commercial buildings like stores and offices and such may have air conditioning.

Yes. The furnace sits in the basement, and blows heated air through ducts into individual rooms.

Here via

ilyena_sylph's poke at me.

Huh. How interesting. So that is a common way to heat a house in the US? Won't that stir up dust everywhere? And do these vents need to be cleaned? Do they make noise with the blowing air? And is that as efficient compared to the usual radiator heating systems that use hot water?

Yeah, forced-air heating is pretty much the most common way of heating in the US. It doesn't actually stir up much dust, because at the point where the air is heated there are fairly large air filters. They're changed every couple of months (at least in my house, where the same system runs the air conditioning) to keep the dust down.

I take the vent covers off about twice a year to vacuum out accumulated dust, once before I turn the heat on and once before I turn the air on, and it seems to keep them pretty clean. There are companies that specialize in fully cleaning the entire ducting system, though I've never hired one.

They make a little noise, but I'm so used to it that I don't even notice. Until it's not happening, and then it's 'oh hell, something's wrong'.

They are apparently very efficient. I don't think I've ever met a hot water heating system. My grade school had a steam-radiator heating system -- which had the pipe burst and destroyed everything in my homeroom when I was in fifth grade, thankfully we weren't there -- but that's as close as I've ever been to one of those that I know of.

Heh, this thread tells me I should point out by "single thermostat" I did indeed mean for a central furnace - run off 'fuel oil' (versus propane or gas) in our case. Ours is an inexpensive model from the mid-70's and thus does not have a filter.

Less common heating fuels, usually in rural areas, include newer corn and wood burning furnaces. Wood burning furnaces are reasonably cost effective if you have the access and physical ability to deal with the wood. Corn is not, really, given the volume required, but they've sold a lot under the auspices of renewable bio-fuel.

The 'smell' people are mentioning is the smell of hot/burning dust that you notice (usually) when you first turn the heat on for the season. If you lived in a mild climate where you only turn it on intermittently, you could smell it every time. Dust settles on the inner workings and when it's first turned on, the dust heats up, then the air blows the smell through the vents. After that, the dust doesn't have time to really gather again before the furnace kicks on again, so you don't smell it.

Edited 2012-01-22 13:03 (UTC)

The house I live in was rather awkwardly subdivided into apartments, so a.) I don't pay the heating bill, and b.) even if I could control the heat, I couldn't change it without affecting other tenants, who I know at least in past years have tended to be too cold.

I'm finding it too hot, so I've been blocking off vents as necessary, and keeping the window beside my bed open whenever I'm sleeping too minimize nosebleeds.

You are the second person to mention "vents" for heating. How does that work? Is this like some combination with air conditioning? And something that blows heated air into your place? I only know heating through water-filled radiators (either next to the wall or sometimes through pipes in the floor) with a central boiler (either in the house or district heating providing the warm water), or heating through individual ovens (sometimes still with coal in really old buildings that haven't been upgraded or electric storage heaters, which have become less popular b/c of inefficiency).

In my house it is hot air only, not air conditioning, blowing in through a grate in each room, in the floor or wall. It's not silent, but there is none of that annoying banging in the pipes that always seems to happen with radiators. This is the second apartment I've lived in with such a set-up, and judging by the exposed ducts in closets, I think it's a retrofit for older houses. If so, I'm not sure why they did it, but it's handy to not have any floor space taken up by radiators.

My water radiators make very little noise unless there is air in the system. Then they gurgle and sometimes bang, but properly vented they are pretty silent.

If I ever live in a house with clattering radiators again, I will have to figure out how to vent them properly. The banging makes me very jumpy, having lived for many years with a perhaps unbalanced downstairs neighbor who banged on the walls whenever he was angry with us (which was often).

There is usually some kind of screw at the end opposite from the thermostat, that you open, then the pressure pushes out the air, and you close it when water starts to drip out. (ETA: Though usually once a year someone professional has to come to fill up the water in the system downstairs, obviously if just not enough water is in the pipes for pressure you can't get rid of the air.)

Edited 2012-01-22 19:49 (UTC)

We live in a regular 2-story house, but have a gas fan heater in one room only, and set it to 19 degrees (turning it on and off as needed). Upstairs, we read books, etc. in the futons (lots of blankets and sleeping bags as well!); our bedroom is an unheated corner room, so probably around 2 to 10 degrees? We have a kotatsu in our heated room as well (low table covered with a blanket, warmed by a heating element underneath; the blanket traps the heat in).

I also heat-by-cooking, as the heated room contains my kitchen a large pot of stew can raise the temperature a good bit.

Oh! And of course our bathroom and toilets are unheated. In fact, we usually leave the windows open, even in winter. Builds moral fibre!

I have to say, having central heating with radiators in every room as an option sounds much better to me, withered moral fiber or not. *is a wimp*

Yeah, traditional Japanese building is very drafty (insulation is not common; what I heard was airtightness leads to mold and rot, as we are a very wet country). But there are heating units available for bathrooms that I do kind of covet. They're on the list of things to buy, somewhere below the kids' educations....

Yeah, the extreme insulation here that's pursued for energy efficiency creates a host of problems when it is just added on to old buildings that were never meant for it, especially when it is done sloppily. My father (who is a civil engineer and did much in building renovations and such and also as expert to appraise molds, infestations and all kinds of structural damage in buildings) has many lengthy rants on the subject.

But I should note - okay, yes, we heat the whole house as much as we want whenever we want, but I live in a place where it never gets down to freezing (the last time I think was in the '50s?), let alone colder, and most of the winter the lows are, like, 50ish, and that's at night. In the winter, mostly wear t-shirts in the house, and we often wear t-shirts outside without jackets during the daytime. (I do wear socks most of the time in the house, but that's because it drives me CRAZY not to wear socks inside. Every year it's a big wrench when it gets too hot to do that.)

And, also, I like rooms to be on the colder side. For years we never used the heat at all, because we didn't actually need to, and I hate hate hate the way heat smells. (No, I'm serious, it has a smell. I AM NOT CRAZY WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME THAT WAY?) But then we had the earthling, and while I might have enough insulation, and enough acclimatization, to be comfortable in a house that's 60 (15.5 C), he doesn't. (And now, after years of keeping the house around 70 (21 C), I don't, either. I feel cold at about 65 (18 C) now.)

I felt odd when a person on my friends list did a poll about indoor temperature, and revealed that she kept her house at 78 - 80 degrees year round. That is too hot! Way too hot! Way, way, way too hot!

80F is indeed much too hot. My brother keeps his place really warm now but I think it's more like 22-23C (it started with his children too, I remember that his old apartment was always cooler).

Why does your heat smell? Do you also have one of those vent systems the people above described rather than hot water radiators? If so I could imagine that it smells, especially if the whatever filter these things must use isn't too great. I mean, vacuum cleaners create a smell of heated dust particles that is unpleasant, and that's the direction my thoughts go when you say your heat smells.

You are however crazy for liking indoor socks. Why would anyone want socks on their feet, when they could go barefoot?

Boo indoor socks! I wear them in winter for necessity, but right now my toes are bare!

I loathe socks. I like to feel what I walk on (well as long as it is not painful, cold or wet or such). Besides, they cause lint to accumulate between the toes, and you can't use your feet to pick things up anymore either, like for example when I drop a pencil and it rolls half under the desk, it's much easier to grab it with a foot and either pick it up or at least roll it into easy reach than to get up and crawl under the table to reach with a hand. *is lazy*

Exactly! How can you pick things up with your toes if you muffle them in cloth? Then again,

st_aurafina can't pick things up with her toes AND likes to wear socks indoors. Maybe there's a connection?

Of course heat has a smell! Who is looking at you?!

Some days it gives me more trouble than others, but it was 20F today for the high.

st_aurafina is generally colder than me, so she has a little portable heater that she uses. We have an electric room heater in the living room only and if it was just me I'd probably only turn it on 2-3 nights a year - instead it's maybe 20 nights over winter. The cats have a heat pad. Most southern Australian homes only have built-in heating in the living room, so this is pretty normal.

The indoor temperature without the heater probably drops to about 8C at the coldest, but usually stays around 13-14C. With the heater, we get up to about 18-19C which is comfy.

I suppose if you don't have to heat a lot it's not worth installing pipes or vents and such, even if electricity for heating is expensive.

Well, most towns and cities in Australia have gas heating, which is much cheaper. Sadly, I live in a very small town so while we have an enormous gas plant 10 minutes down the road, the pipes go right past us and we get nothing. :(

I'm in Australia, and my house is mostly open-plan and built for the heat, so no in-built heating. Our winters don't get very cold, but I used to really feel the cold and used portable oil-column heaters around the house, but they just couldn't heat the rooms enough.

I saved up money last year for ducted reverse-cycle air conditioning last year (the ducts are in the roof),and it made such a difference. I'm spending slightly less on heating because the reverse-cycle is more efficient than all the portable heaters. (I'm spending more on cooling in summer, but then the air-con is a bonus which does a much better job on really hot days than the ceiling fans)

I suffer in hot summers because I have no air conditioning or even just ceiling fans, but I'm right under the roof, so if it is just 25°C outside with sun it is much hotter inside and it becomes unbearable if it is over 30° outside. The average summer high here is more like 21°C, so it's not bad if summers are regular, but we are having more and more really hot periods (well hot for here not Australia, obviously *lol*) in recent decades due to climate change. So that sucks.

Urgh, yes, same here! I loved that last summer was rainy and non-hellish for once!

Yes. I take rainy over too hot any time. Ideally I'd like it moderately warm (say a nice 20-22°C) and sunny, but rain is the lesser evil.

I'm not very sensitive to cold, so pretty much the only rooms with constantly turned-up heating are my roommate's (and the hallway, because, annoyingly, all the pipes go through there). The thermostat in my own room is about 17°C when I'm home, and I turn it down when I leave for work.

Visitors tend to complain, but I like cuddling up cosy with extra sweaters and woolly socks, or a blanket, so... :D

I guess it's easier if one doesn't mind socks.

I voted for "all rooms, as warm as I like it" because that's what I generally end up going for, but I often start out intending something more like all rooms, but not quite as warm as I'd like to save energy/money or even only some rooms, but these are as warm as I like it.

Well, there's something to be said for just being comfortably warm and forget about energy saving.

Heat some rooms, warm as I like it

But, you see, as far as everyone else is concerned that's cold, because I like bundling up in a sweater, blanket, thick socks. As long as my fingers aren't too numb to turn a page or type, I'm a happy camper. (Amusingly enough, I'm never a happy camper - 'bugs, dirt, rocks, campfires mean smoke in your eyes, what is this no electricity crap, I'm outta here...')

As long as my fingers aren't too numb to turn a page or type, I'm a happy camper.

...
You are strange. But it sure helps for saving energy.

You are strange.

*cracks up* I just got the 'aren't you cold, don't you want to turn up the heat?' complaint as I was reading. I strange. But like you say, it's an energy efficient strangeness. And I suffer all summer.

I suffer in summer too if it is very warm (it doesn't even need to be hot). I have a very narrow comfort zone as far as temperatures go.

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