random curiosity

[ratcreature]

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%)

Comments

[laurajv]

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.)

[saraht]

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.

[ratcreature]

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.

[ratcreature]

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.

[laurajv]

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.

[bluemeridian]

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

[musesfool]

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.

[mecurtin]

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.

[ratcreature]

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.

[ratcreature]

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.

[ratcreature]

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.

[astridv]

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!)

[ratcreature]

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.

[ilyena_sylph]

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.

[ratcreature]

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.

[thirdblindmouse]

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.

[ilyena_sylph]

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.

[ratcreature]

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).

[ratcreature]

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.

[senmut]

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

Here via ilyena_sylph's poke at me.

[ratcreature]

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?

[busaikko]

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.

[busaikko]

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

[ratcreature]

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*

[thirdblindmouse]

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.