Must be nice living somewhere where you don’t even know that pipes can freeze.
Okay, you can heat your house but only to 50 degrees.
Everyone who has their pipes freeze that I’ve asked said you have to set it to 60 if you really don’t want to risk it to freeze.
I usually only go for 20 degrees, but I guess a sauna would be fun
Everyone in the metric world:
50 degrees is half of sauna temp at best though.
Using what baseline? 50 degrees is half the boiling point of water, using the logical baseline of zero.
Exactly. And 100 degrees is what a good sauna should be. Maybe I could go as low as 80, but 50 is absolutely pointless.
Are we talking about the ambient temperature in the room or something else? Cause room temperature at 100c is immediately life threatening.
It isn’t. The air being 100 degrees and dry isn’t the same as pouring 100 degree water on yourself. You’re only sitting there for like 15-20 minutes. Ask any Finn and I guarantee you that 100 degrees is what you aim for.
why are they wearing towels?? freaks
I might get heatstroke but my lizard would be so excited. He could run around without his heat lamps.
based celsius moment
Pipes can’t freeze if they’re halfway to boiling, I like your thinking
It’s gonna get down to -30°C this week, I’ll turn the heat off and just throw on the good ol’ toque and a sweater and report back, assuming I still have fingers.
Don’t be lazy. You can type with your toes.
Who said I’d still have toes?
Alright, well, you should at least have a functional nub or two
I think this meme is mocking the people that turn their house up to 72°F instead of just leaving it at 60°F and wearing a hoodie. The difference in price is quite extreme.
Same here.
But there is middle-ground here. My wife came from a very temperate country. She wants the thermostat set at like, 26.
I’d be happy to have it at 17 and wear sleeves indoors. 9 degrees thermostat difference makes a hell of a dent in the utility bill.
I keep my place at 15.5c in winter because it’s super drafty. (I’m getting the siding redone soon, I really hope that helps, but ultimately we have the same climate as Siberia so there’s only so much to be done) even at 15.5, it’s still about $200 USD/mth to heat, but at 18c it more than doubles in cost.
I’m like your wife; made for warmer climates. My ideal temp is around 30c, and I’m cold at 23, but I have heated mattress pads on my bed and couch (much much much cheaper to run than furnace) so it’s not too bad overall. They are a bit pricy up front, but definitely worth the spend.
Perhaps that sort of thing would be a good compromise for you two; a couple heated chair covers or couch cover or something to bring her temp up while keeping the overall temp lower.
26?! Hell, I can’t even sleep if it’s above like 20C in my room. My bedroom right now is 10C (vents blocked to keep it extra cold) and that’s about the perfect sleeping temp. I’d go that cold in the rest of the house too but my pet snake probably wouldn’t appreciate it.
Don’t you get nightmares, sleeping in the cold like that?
Nope I sleep like a baby. If it’s too hot them my dreams might get weird though.
snake tax snake tax snake tax!!
I don’t seem to have any actually good pictures of them in my phone atm and they’re in the middle of a shed right now. So the best I’ve got is a pic from the time they decided slither into my couch frame and made me partially dismantle my couch to get them out. They’re lucky that they’re cute.
aaah handsome baby! Using the single communal braincell to get into trouble is a great honor in their culture, I’ve heard.
Agreed. Funnily I’m from a more temperate country and she’s from where I’m at now, but she’s the one that is always cold and wants to keep it at ~22. I ain’t gonna argue considering she pays the electricity bill, though.
Team 23.5 represent! My toesies are cold but the rest of me is alright!
19C during the day, 14C at night, 22C in the office because sitting still and concentrating is no way to keep warm.
I can’t wait until it’s warm enough to just keep windows open 24/7 again.
I grew up in cold but have spent almost two decades in humid subtropical. If it’s 20ish outside, I usually won’t turn on the heat, but 23 if it gets any colder (though that’s in part because old japanese house loses heat like crazy. 21 is good for me)
Damn. It’s only 4 degrees for me, but my room still gets cold if I don’t have the heater on max because some moron decided that an entire fucking wall in my room has to be window.
THAT’S VERY COLD
If a sweaters enough you must live in a warm ass place.
It hit -8 C last week where I am, still a pleasant 20 C inside without having turned the heat on.
I probably get a lot of free heat from my neighbours apartments though, I would guess.
As long as it’s bearable with additional layers on, I’m going to lean towards doing that, as cool bedrooms make for amazing sleep quality.
God, I recall when we lost power for a week in the middle of a freeze, it was so cold that my multiple blankets weren’t enough to keep me warm when trying to sleep. I had to break out a nasty comforter that I’ve got that doesn’t breathe at all and gets real sweaty during normal weather. Worked well to lock in the heat.
OK, OP… where do you live that a sweater is “enough”?
Denver, CO checking in and I’ll take my central heat, thanks.
7200’ here, I’ll keep my furnace as well. I usually only keep it at 62°, unless I want a $600 gas bill. But, that the tradeoff of having mild awesome summers.
Unethical life pro tip: get an apartment that isn’t at the end of a hallway and has floors above and below. In some cases, you can turn off your heat completely and simply steal heat from your neighbors, leeching off of them like some sort of thermal mosquito. It won’t be as warm as is comfortable without bundling up, but it may be warm enough to get by just by bundling up. Watch out for freezing pipes though!
For an added techno bonus: install a smart thermostat connected to a camera pointed at the door with facial recognition tech built in. If anyone other than the residents walk in, the thermostat is automatically reset to 72F/22C. That way if you DO burst a pipe, and the landlord walks in, they won’t have any proof you did it!
A smart thermostat would likely have record of the set and actual temperatures.
Yeah wouldn’t it also be like super cold inside from the temp not being 72F prior to them entering? I mean if it was cold enough to freeze the pipes and all, seems like just they’d be able to tell what’s what as soon as they opened* the door.
Edit: Fixed a typo
my apartment is like this and it heats up to like 80°F without any thermostat setting even when it’s below freezing outside
good luck finding an apartment that A) will let you install a smart thermostat B) a camera and C) finding an apartment with a 3 pipe climate system as its usually 2 so you dont get to control if its heat or cooling year round.
In the US I’ve generally either had a single system (heat or cooling depending on climate) or a system capable of both controlled by me. I’ve never lived in an apartment where someone else controlled what was happening with my air.
I can confirm that this works. Outside temperatures are right around freezing right now. Indoors, we’re still hovering at around 23C and we have yet to turn on any heating. I wouldn’t call this unethical though. Homes are built this way by design so that you share the heating.
My old apartment was built this way, except it was to share cooling because we lived in a very hot area. I think the insulation or whatever it was supposed to be, was bad because the air conditioning guys were there all summer craning new units onto the top of the buildings. It doesn’t help that nobody would close the breezeway doors and we effectively had a bar of heat running straight through the building. (although maintenance did force the issue right before we left, they removed their ability to stay open.)
my apartment is 25C right now with no heating on and its stuffy as fuck.
or… just set the heat only for 55 if the pipes are your only concern. You’ll still save a lot of money on heating, and you won’t have to deal with your stuff getting flooded.
How is this unethical? I live in those conditions and if I turn my heat on I have to walk around naked, the heat from the neighbours is enough
My dumbass old housemates would run the heater without closing the windows…
My old housemates were the opposite lol. We tried saving every penny on heating costs. In the winter, we taped the windows over with cardboard for better insulation (they are old single-pane windows), and fashioned an automatic door closer from an elastic cord to keep the door into the living room shut (our “warm zone”). Instead of using gas heating, we mined ETH with our gaming PC’s (this was before ethereum went proof-of-stake). Between the three of us, the total energy output was close to 2kW, so totally viable for keeping the living room warm. Pretty sure we ended up earning money from heating the house lol.
2 kW is a ton of power required to keep a single room warm assuming you ran that continuously.
I mean that’s just the theoretical power from adding up all of the PSU ratings. Actual power is less, since it’s just the video cards working, optimized for hashes per watt (i.e. not maximum power), and most of the time it would be two or one computer running, since the others would be away from their desk or playing games or doing something important
Maybe their house is just one huge room
Americans should start building their houses like Europeans. Made from brick, mortar and good insulation. Your houses are made from wood and paper.
Earthquakes would say otherwise for at least part of the US. Also, without full-time mechanical ventilation, that would be misery in a lot of the US. The climate is also different to some places in Europe and varies hugely on US region
There’s earthquakes in regions of Europe aswell, and climate varies by regions in Europe aswell.
So what would be the excuse for not using paper walls?
Look up brick and motor walls regarding their performance in quakes. Those motor joints (or interfaces when dry stone) are all failure points and that leads to a wall collapsing. It’s why you don’t see modern japanese buildings like that; they don’t meet code. If you want earthquake safety, wood or reinforced concrete are the materials of choice.
Also the walls aren’t paper. Even in modern Japan where I live they’re not and we have some interior walls with paper. I have no idea what you are on about.
Nothing wrong with wood as a construction material. The key factor is the insulation.
You do realize that there’s insulation in those walls right. That’s the whole point of wood frame construction; you stuff the gaps between studs full of several inches of insulation. Besides, most of a homes heat loss isn’t through the walls anyways. It’s through any openings in those walls (windows, doors, etc) and through the roof.
More insulation, double or even triple glassed windows. My in-laws have half the insulation on the walls compared to my parents, roof wise my parents got 2.5 ft insulation
Isn’t the whole point of woodframe construction to use wood?
Europeans still have insulation in the wall cavity.
Isn’t the whole point of woodframe construction to use wood?
Well, no. Not as such. The point was to not use brick. Wood was just very useful, cheap, and could be made uniform. Very similar to brick if near a brick factory. Cheaper if not near cheap but heavy bricks.
looks around at countless houses made from wood I guess northern Sweden, which gets below -30°c every year, lost its European status.
Wood is a better insulator than brick actually. Sitting outside in the winter on a wooden bench would feel warmer than on one made of brick even if they are at the same temperature. A log cabin without insulation is better insulated than a brick building without insulation. Problem is that US homes aren’t log buildings but stick frames boarded up with cheap chipboard.
Such ignorant shit
./confidentlyincorrect
This is… Uninformed.
nobody can afford that here lol
Stop with this nonsense. This is the financial illiteracy that is being pointed out how Democrats lost because of the “economy”.
Housing purchasing went up in price for a short while but stopped increasing so rapidly. More Gen Z owns their home by 30 than millennials. The rate is on par with gen x.
Most people in this country can afford a house and the upper third can afford very very nice houses.
Well good for them. I sure as fuck can’t.
Will clearly you represent everyone and nobody all at once.
Source?
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/04/16/generation-z-is-unprecedentedly-rich
You can dig the direct numbers out from opm as well.
It does not have to be brick and mortar. The house with the best insulation I know is made of wood and straw bales.
Blood circulation in my hands breaks down completely when I get cold, so no. I will not be turning down the heat.
Meh I just deal with the purple arms
Gloves wear big ass gloves use gloves that make your hands look like Mii character hands big ass spheres attached to the ends of your arms zero functionality just big ol gloves
The older I have gotten, the more true that has been for me. I’m in an enclosed room with its own electric heater and it’s plenty warm in here because I’m comfortable in a T-shirt, but my fingers have been like ice since I woke up well over an hour ago and they aren’t getting warmer.
This is the year my hands and feet started getting cold. It’s been… an adjustment.
I can’t remember when it started for me but it’s like a big red “you’re old now” flag. Sigh.
Right? No me gusta, I wanna go back to being 20 kthxplzbye.
I’m a very chilly person who loses dexterity fast. I find some quick exercises warm me up pretty well.
But yeah you’ve got to heat your space to a minimum of comfort
Fingerless wool gloves.
I’m not the person you replied to, but fingerless gloves don’t fix the big problem of your fingers being super cold due to the poor circulation. My hands feel just fine right now. My fingers, which were warm for a while today, have felt like they were suspended in ice water since the last time I was outside about 45 minutes ago.
I wish there were a good solution like that, believe me I’ve tried to find a good one that will allow me both warm fingers and manual dexterity and not be super uncomfortable (like tight rubber gloves or something), but I haven’t found it yet.
Electrically heated fingerless gloves?
Again, they won’t heat my fingers. Which are what were cold until about 5 minutes ago. It took a lot of holding them under my arms and blowing on them.
This ad paid for by thermostat-guarding dads
Ironically, my dad is the one who insists on our house be heated up like a fucking lizard terrarium.
Don’t get mold buddy
Cold one or hot one?
I have to turn on the heater for my cats or else I’ll suffer the consequences.
Guys if you keep heating your houses to 15°C or more you’re the cause for climate change and the corporations can’t blow petawatts on their AI data centers c’mon don’t be so selfish
Both uses are a problem, one is just more unnecessary than the other.
Being comfortable is unnecessary. If you’re not suffering as much as this guy, you’re the problem with society.
Is there a limit to comfort?
For me it’s about two hands. That’s where I max out.
People can get injured if it’s too cold. They can lose sleep, which is a problem over time. With our level of technology, life doesn’t ever need to hurt.
Exactly. The usual context of “comfort” contains an unsaid word: “sufficient”.
Yep. With the understanding that sufficient is different for everyone.
Not that different
> *buys new iPhone*
> *uses Google as primary search engine*
> *doesn’t use adblocker*
> *pays for youtube*
> *pays for spotify*
> *pays for netflix*
> *buys brand clothes*
> *doesn’t give a shit about monopolies, worker conditions, product origins, nothing*
> Guys, it’s the corporation’s fault for making all these products for me to buy!
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism
I find that quite the platitude.
When is consumption ever “ethical”? Is hunting animals to survive ethical? Is killing plants to survive ethical? Is modification of the environment for survival ethical? Life itself is destructive because in order to survive, something else must die. In order to make life more enjoyable, even more must die and suffer. This is not limited to capitalism but any form of survival.
If we were 4 billion people on the planet without global trade, markets, businesses, advanced technology, and so on, we would still kill everything around us, go to war, enslave, rape, subjugate, and consume.
that phrase doesn’t really attempt to tackle the general idea of consumption, just the one under capitalism.
It’s a response to the phenomenon where seemingly no matter what you buy, no matter where you buy it, somewhere along the supply chain someone got hurt or got taken advantage of, and the environment was most likely hurt as well.
Ethical people (ignoring the definition of what that means as i’m not really feeling like writing an essay) usually want to avoid any products that cause someone or something to be harmed during production. But under capitalism that’d mean never buying technology again and having to quit society as having a smartphone is mandatory nowadays, though you’d probably starve first if your best friend isn’t a 100% eco friendly farmer (and even then that farmer probably uses a combine which is made out of quite a few parts, production of at least one or two definitely involved some form of abuse)
So the slogan “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” highlights the fact it’s not an individual’s fault, and the invidivual is not to blame, when they buy something that unknowingly (or knowingly but out of necessity) brought harm to the people or the environment involved in making the thing.
In the olden days you could feasibly survive by being a farmer who kills maybe a couple of his stock a year for meat. You knew exactly where your patatos came from (your field), you knew exactly where your clothes came from (your best friend is the town seamstress), you knew exactly where you furniture is from (the lumberjack who gets wood for the carpenter is your brother).
But then things got more complicated, and capitalism encourages cutting ethical corners in favour of profit
It’s a response to the phenomenon where seemingly no matter what you buy, no matter where you buy it, somewhere along the supply chain someone got hurt or got taken advantage of, and the environment was most likely hurt as well.
I call this the Doug Fawcett Principle
good name for it indeed! The Good Place is a fantastic show
that phrase doesn’t really attempt to tackle the general idea of consumption, just the one under capitalism.
Yes, exactly why I said it’s a platitude. It’s thoughtless and trite. I’m saying: consumption is not ethical, no matter which system. There is no ethical consumption.
So the slogan “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” highlights the fact it’s not an individual’s fault, and the invidivual is not to blame, when they buy something that unknowingly (or knowingly but out of necessity) brought harm to the people or the environment involved in making the thing.
That’s a cop out. It paints consumers as mere puppets or robots who are unable to make choices or decisions that could lead to a reduction of suffering.
In the olden days you could feasibly survive by being a farmer […]
The good ol’ days, how many times have I heard that one. In the good ol’ days there was often imperial rule. In the good ol’ days, slave trade was the norm. In the good older days, your little town or village could be overrun by wandering horde of Mongols or even just the next village over that had a different tribe. In the good ol’ days, if you were disabled you were fucked, if you had a different skin color you were fucked, if you were a woman you were figuratively and literally fucked, if you got sick any “incurable disease” you were not fucked, you were dead, if you couldn’t work anymore your offspring had to tend to you and if those didn’t exist or weren’t willing to you were fucked, and so on.
It’s nice to romanticise “simpler” days after watching “Gone With Wind”, but life back then was hard af. It was backbreaking. People died at much higher rates than now with little to show for it. People still live absolutely miserable lives, but the rate thereof is much lower in the countries exploiting others.
But then things got more complicated, and capitalism encourages cutting ethical corners in favour of profit
Capitalism doesn’t encourage anything. It’s one of the natural products of human greed. Any other system created by humans is flawed and infected the human disease, doomed to create suffering and torment. The only question is how much. Whether capitalism generates more than other systems is debatable, but to claim that there is “ethical consumption” in any other living system is wishful thinking. It doesn’t exist.
the other person’s reply is good so i won’t repeat their points,
but i also wanted to address the “romanticisation” of the “ol’ days”. Because i did not intend to do that, what i was trying to portray was that it was simpler in the context of the supply chain of your food and belongings. You knew exactly where all your things came from, and the process of creation and aquisition of goods was mostly contained within your village and the village nearby, with the occasional traveller looking to trade
So just die I guess?
That’s a pretty ridiculous take.
No, Maggot. Think before you consume.
Perhaps to you the saying is a platitude, but that seems subjective. To someone who hasn’t considered the impacts of their consumption habits, or the ways that different economic systems can serve to reward different patterns of human behavior, it can be a thought provoking statement.
There is no ethical consumption.
If you view ethics as a binary, then sure. If you view ethics as a complex and nuanced spectrum, well, not so much.
Capitalism doesn’t encourage anything.
What a reductionist take, especially considering the paragraph you’d written just above it.
Perhaps to you the saying is a platitude, but that seems subjective
Wow, everything is relative. Do you have any other wise things to say? It’s in the eye of the beholder maybe? There is no truth? There are no absolutes? Want to whip out some tautologies or falsely attribute some quotes to Einstein?
If you view ethics as a binary, then sure. If you view ethics as a complex and nuanced spectrum, well, not so much.
Again with the “everything is relative”. So actually, we’re living in paradise right now, because relative to 5B years ago, earth would be inhospitable. But we are also living in hell because things could be so much better.
Everything is nuanced. Of course it is. Which is why the phrase “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is false. You’re just confirming it yourself with your “everything is relative” and “to the esteemed members of the ivory tower with completely formed and immensely folded brains, ethics is an intricate and nuanced spectrum”.
What a reductionist take, especially considering the paragraph you’d written just above it.
Yes, thank you for confirming that you understood nothing of what I wrote.
Yes, exactly why I said it’s a platitude. It’s thoughtless and trite. I’m saying: consumption is not ethical, no matter which system. There is no ethical consumption.
That’s a false dichotomy…even if we agreed with your definition of all consumption being unethical, it wouldn’t mean that there aren’t different levels of unethical practices used to produce those consumables.
All consumption being unethical does not mean that all forms of production are equally unethical. If that’s the case you wouldn’t really have a problem with sending the kids back to the mines.
It paints consumers as mere puppets or robots who are unable to make choices or decisions that could lead to a reduction of suffering.
Can you point to a time in history where a general boycott of a dangerous or harmful product was successful without the help of government intervention?
Any other system created by humans is flawed and infected the human disease, doomed to create suffering and torment.
And apparently that doesn’t happen under capitalism? Then what exactly are you bitching about plastic for?
“ethical consumption” in any other living system is wishful thinking. It doesn’t exist.
Again, your argument is based on a forced false dichotomy.
Not to mention that it seems like you are really just a libertarian angry at consumers for participating in the “free market”.
You can’t simultaneously believe that the free market is the best way to regulate the economy, but upset at the people for their consumption habits in a free market.
I like how you put paying as the bad thing instead of just using
Using monopolist services and good is bad, but sometimes forced. Paying is most often voluntary and worse as it gives them even more power than just use.
My flat grows mold if I leave it under 18C for too long and my landlord doesn’t care 🥴
Mmmm, mold.
I’m right with you on that though. Small basement apartment with a concrete floor that was built in the 1930s. Yep. Mold.
Yeah how else will ChatGPT tell you how to distribute (a^2 +b2)(c2+d^2)? /s
True, but also let’s not just let ourself dash toward suicide. Society is not meant to sustain nudism in the middle of winter 24/7.
come to florida! hehe
Just wear a sweater bro
I’m sorry, me heaters are set to 16°C 😢
In my defence they don’t go any lower than that for some reasonThat’s basically the minimum requirement to avoid structural decay. You should not be letting your place get any colder than that.
Some reason being that if you don’t maintain a certain temperature in your house you’ll get mildew problems.
You can’t put sweaters on pets
You need to have one room You can heat if needed to keep the pet in if it’s going to get cold
I mean, they have a built-in sweater. If they got really cold you’d see them cuddle up in a blanket, on a bed, or close to a person. Either way I bet you’d be more risking your pipes freezing than harming your pets.
Zonal heating what what. My home office is the cat office during the day.
You can’t put sweaters on pets
I know many retirees who disagree.
I’ve lived in my current place for over 10 years, and so don’t actually know if the heater works.
Then again, I live in Texas (and was away from home for the big freezes we had in 2021 and 2023), so it’s rarely an issue.
But air conditioning is a different story. I can only trove so much clothing, and without air conditioning my little trailer home gets to like 120 degrees in the summer.
Just embrace the cold and build up your brown fat which burns calories to keep you warm so you can eat pizza all day and stay skinny*.
- Not really but sorta
