Something that really should be used more is using those rubber hot water bottles. it won’t heat your whole room, but it’s great when paired with a blanket.
And risk burning yourself when the rubber wears out in 3 years and bursts?
Nah, get yourself one of those oat-filled microwavable teddies. Does the same job but with less risk of severe burns and doesn’t need replaced every few years.
I live in a relatively warm part of Canada and let me tell you a sweater alone is not enough 😭
There are plenty of places in the USA Midwest and Europe that get colder.Yeah, good luck with only a sweater in Newport VT.
I live in Northern mn where it goes like -40f I don’t wear more then two sweatshirts all of winter I don’t do outside activities in the cold tho
In -40f, if you don’t have artificial heating in your house, your pipes will freeze.
Your pipes can freeze well before that.
Thanks for confirming their comment…
Thank you for the recognition. I could not have done this without my family and my friends. I accept your Thank You in honor of all who have been thanked before me.
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.
This meme brought to you by a child in California that doesn’t know what real winter is. It was 20 something here last night and this dipshit thinks a sweater is gonna keep you alive though that.
Just set your thermostat to 60 instead of 70
His entire point is no heat just sweaters.
I live in Canada and tbh I’m with the Chad on this.
Not saying “turn off your furnace” but energy use (and cost) baloons exponentially based on how hot you have your thermostat set at. Lower your thermostat to the point where wearing a sweater indoors is enough and save money. It’s not even just about the money, it’sresponsible energy usage.
And I’d be happy to subsidize the first X GJ/mo to help people keep themselves from freezing, but if people want their apartment to be the tropics that’s gotta be on their dime.
Same with electricity. I’ll subsidize keeping your lights on but I’m not paying you to mine crypto.
Another possible approach is to keep your home cool (keep it above 50 to avoid pipes freezing because that just sucks to deal with regardless of responsibility) and use a small like 200w heater pointed at yourself to warm up some. I live in a century old farm house and do that because it’s drafty as heck in parts of the house and impractical to fully heat the entire house to a fully comfortable temperature once winter truly sets in and it’s consistently around 0F
To be fair, you could wear winter gear 24/7. I lived like that for a bit. The real reasons we need heating are structural decay and pets. Pipes burst below 55 and pets don’t do well below 65.
There are real reasons to heat your house besides just wanting to be warm.
“Pipes burst below 55°” hahahahhah what now? “Pets don’t do well below 65°” what the crap is this nonsense. Pipes will burst after they freeze with water in them at a temp at or below 32°, the majority of breeds of dogs and cats will be just fine until it is freezing out, some dog breeds are okay below freezing.
Not everyone has a husky or Maine Coone for a pet. You wanna see what happens to a tropical bird at 45F? It will literally stop eating and starve to death.
And the pipes aren’t getting 55 degrees of heat. They’re getting whatever bleeds into their space and whatever the water is doing.
This is basic adulting shit.
Even plenty of dogs do not do well in low temperatures. I have a half-chihuahua/half-dachshund. He doesn’t have a very thick coat and he hates wearing sweaters so much that he will literally lie there and refuse to move until we take it off. We’ve tried multiple times. We’ve waited like half an hour and he won’t move, he’ll just lay there and whine until we take it off.
I can’t force a dog to tolerate clothing and it’s not like I knew he would refuse to wear a sweater when I adopted him considering it was in the summer.
Pipes are often in crawl-spaces or other outer extremities of structures indirectly heated by the warmth coming from the living spaces of the structure, so 55F is a good rule of thumb in some climates.
Wait till you hear about infants. They are so tiny a human, they can’t deal with the low temps anywhere near as well as an adult, one of the kids that died in the TX freeze was 7. I’m sorry his family didn’t know about body heat and keeping children in the middle of adults to keep warm. I seriously feel grief over this specific loss of life. I just lived in very cold climates that you forget people who never had to learn how to live in extreme cold just don’t know about the basics. Don’t get too close to the fire, don’t sleep alone.
The pipes bursting below 55° rule of thumb is because cold water is at ground temperature (aka very cold in the winter) and the pipes tend to be at the edges of living spaces so will be much cooler than the living space. Additionally, it doesn’t need to fully freeze to burst, just enough to create a blockage temporarily.
Basically, you never know what bizarre choices were made in the utility layout of the home someone lives in so giving a rule of thumb that has a comfortable safety margin is the safest bet
20 something
Sweater wont keep you alive
Wait till you hear about the latest tech: two sweaters!
Two T-shirts, think thin layers
I’m wearing two sweaters even though it’s only 10C (50F) here. I’ve never lived somewhere where it gets very cold, so this is very cold to me.
I lived up in the mountains for many years, there are risks of frostbite, hypothermia, and death at some temps and no amount of wool will save you. You need heat, most of that time I had a fire place, when I was in a tenant situation the heat was maintained by the management company and we only paid electric, and it was natural gas heaters.
I’m in the UK and have managed to get this far this year using just jumpers and the heat generated from folding at home on a couple PCs.
Nearly caved last week when temps dropped to around 0 but then i found my slippers
Right chilly today innit?
I walked to school uphill in the snow BOOOOTTHH WAAAYYYSSSS.
Ok cranky grandpa, go sit back by your space heater.
Not all of us carry that much fat around ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How does that prevent you from wearing warm clothes?
I wish I had control of the thermostat. It would be 60° year round.
Edit: Forgot Europe exists 60°F = 15.56°C
Also does any one still call it centigrade?
That would be freezing to me, but we live in a place that rarely dips much below freezing and gets super hot with high humidity. Humidity + cold also sucks. We were like 23 today (70something) and have a number of days over 35 in the summer (with 90+ % humidity). I work outside in that heat so I’m much more acclimated to that
I’ve heard some people say it in England but dunno if it’s actually common there. Was only a tourist.
Bro said Europe as if the rest of the world uses shitty ass Fahrenheit
The United States, Liberia, Micronesia, Cayman Islands, and the Marshall Islands use Fahrenheit. It’s not just us. It’s mostly us.
To a point, yeah. But when it’s -40 outside, heating to 18 or 21 doesn’t make much of a difference energy wise.
haven’t seen a shitpost hit a nerve this hard in a while, hahaha!
yeah unless you’re drying off the thermostat should never be above like 58 for heating. Layers fix everything else
Never mind things like water, pets, children…
Yeah, nah, I’m on the side of the government paying for utilities. Human right to electricity. Figure out a system to prevent overuse, but everyone deserves to have heating and cooling when needed.
Figure out a system to prevent overuse
If we’re going down the “government should pay for it” route, then a good solution would be subsidizing thermal insulation. It’s a big investment upfront, but will save a lot of money for both homeowners and the government in the future. Not to mention the obvious ecological benefits.
Absolutely. We should be subsidizing anything and everything that helps decrease energy usage, especially in ways that mean we don’t have to make big changes to lifestyle. Though that’s a whole other discussion. :/ But utilities in general, electricity, water, Internet, gas (though if possible move that shit to electric) should be public and no cost at the point of use, imho
That would require them to think long term and logically , Also i assume lots of companies would not like that they won’t be able to get as much profit.
Don’t get me wrong I definitely agree but there’s just so much things that would work better, be cheaper more efficient and better for the environment but that would cost money and not make much profit. Sometimes I have hope people will get fed up with this BS and change happens but mostly I’m skeptical.
I feel like it already is. Just not always from the government. I put three pallets worth of insulation into my attic(~$1500) and between the rebates from the gas and power company it ended up costing me like $350. I did have to front that cost though and the paperwork was kind of a pain. Had to draw a scaled picture of my house with the part of the living area covered with insulation on graph paper. They don’t pay for over the garage.
Just looked at what I bought again and insulation has gone way up in price. It’s close to $2500 now. No idea if the rebates also went up but I kind of doubt it.
What temp is freezing in F? Is it still defined by the temp water freezes at, like in C, or do you guys have a different scale for this too?
32f is the same as 0c, and they’re both freezing. 0c is the temp at which brine freezes, but nobody really knows/cares about that. Where I live it down to -25f/-31c at least a few times a year, and normally you can expect at least a few weeks to a month below 32f/0c, but the last few years have been mild
0c is the temp at which brine freezes
I looked that bit up as it didn’t seem right, you mixed up ‘f’ and ‘c’.
Water freezes at 0c and brine freezes at 0f.
That’s a good fact though about 0f being the freeze point of brine, it’s helping me visualise the scale of f a bit better. Thank you!
Yeah @[email protected] that’s neat, never knew that!
(btw congrats on having accounts across the most instances I’ve seen!)
Made several because instances were going down left and right at one point. Lol. Finally settled on slrpnk, and only ever use this one when I accidently log into it without paying attention.
Also, gotta say, I love Lemmy, but it still weirds me out being recognized across multiple communities. Like, noticing the same users in one subreddit over and over, or being recognized in the sub is one thing. But on Lemmy I notice the same names pop up in multiple communities, and have had people continue conversations from one community in another because they recognize the username. It’s a weird experience. I feel like I’m in Mayberry. Lol
Whoops, yeah, typod that one. Sorry!
32°F is freezing. 0°F (-18C) happens, but isn’t too common in most of the US.
Pets? One of my cats found a nice solution for that: recruit some dumb human as her heating pillow. (The “dumb human” is me, by the way.) And when I’m not on the bed she sleeps inside a blanket folded in the shape of a pocket.
…although winter here rarely goes below 0°C, subtropical region and all that shit. If I was a bit souther I’d probably have some heaters in the bedrooms, and that’s it - there’s no reason to heat the whole house.
Some people think water tastes better crunchy
-20 ºC winters have entered the chat
Build your house better
Igloo effect
K, filled my apartment’s living room with ice and snow, doesn’t seem to be helping. Did I miss a step?
Yes, understanding insulation
Ah yes let me just unbuild my house like minecraft
Either you’re smart enough to realize that’s accurate or dumb enough to think it’s a point
Wearing a sweater still makes sense there. To spend less energy.
But in that case it’ll be more a matter of heat isolation. Though when such a low temperature exists on the outside consistently, air humidity drops and it sucks heat less. I think it works this way, but that’s pure intuition or something, my physics knowledge sucks definitely.
I doubt they could pass the Turing test.
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.
-40° and a newborn say otherwise
You’re supposed to be the sweater on the newborn and not just yourself in this scenario
They’re going to need slightly more than a sweater.
Two sweaters?
Haha, but no this is a serious issue, kids died in Texas last winter because parents didn’t realize it could get cold enough to kill them inside their house.
… why is texas?
Because large parts of Texas aren’t used to being cold. They’re hot desert climates and while a 75 degree night after a 110 degree high feels cold, it won’t kill you. So when they got nights at 32 degrees and their electricity was out it was something of a shock.
im the ranging person during the summer with AC. my apartment gets super fucking hot during the summer and i need AC blasting 24/7
If you have south or west facing windows:
Metallized privacy films have made a big difference in my home. For heat protection, they should be the weather resistant kind and applied to the outside of the window. (They should be removable without leaving any residue)
If you want to try this method out first: Stick a few space blankets in front of the windows. Looks like shit, but it’s a cheap way to test whether this method might work for you.
I’ve never sweat through my eyes before.
