What temperature do you keep your house in the winter?

[SlitheryDee]

Your body senses heat transfer not temperature.
The colder it is outside the higher that transfer.
Thus in winter the temperature inside has to be higher then in the summer to have have equivalent heat transfer.
(If proper clothing is not worn)

I dunno. That hasn't been my personal experience. Oh I realize the the body senses temperature changes rather than actual temperature, but the temperature outside has never affected my perception of the temperature indoors. As long as the climate control is keeping the air within a certain temperature range, I'm always comfortable.

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[TheAdvocate]

65W / 74S - I hate being hot

 

[Jeff7]

Originally Posted by SlitheryDee
A related gripe is people turning the thermostat up higher the colder it gets outside. If you're comfortable at 72 degrees, then why not leave the thermostat temperature at 72 degrees regardless of what the outside temperature is? Just because it's 30 degrees outside doesn't mean you have to turn the heat up to 85 to compensate.

Your body senses heat transfer not temperature.
The colder it is outside the higher that transfer.
Thus in winter the temperature inside has to be higher then in the summer to have have equivalent heat transfer.
(If proper clothing is not worn)

I think SlitheryDee's issue has to do with humidity. I also prefer it to be closer to 73°F in the summer, versus the warmer 77-78 in the winter. The humidity is higher in the summer, even indoors with a dehumdifier running.
In the winter, it's quite dry (which I like ), so any small amounts of moisture that are present on your skin are going to evaporate more readily, and remove some thermal energy from you in the process.

Heat transfer: That's only partially accurate. You will indeed exchange more heat when the temperature differential between you and your immediate environment is higher.
But if you're indoors, in air that is the same temperature in the summer or winter, your heat transfer rate, assuming that other factors like humidity are ignored, is going to remain the same. The heat that's going from you to the air inside the room doesn't really care at all about what's going on outside.

I'm going with the humidity difference as the cause of the difference in thermostat preference from season to season.

(Also at work may be old lingering genes that dealt with hibernation, along the lines of seasonal affective disorder - if you're outside enough, your body may pick up that the days are shorter and that the temperature is low, so that also might have an effect on what your body perceives as being "warm enough." But that's just conjecture on my part.)

 

[Demo24]

I guess somewhere around 68-70 during the day, kind of have to play with it as the thermostat has quite a range before it will kick on again. At night, maybe 64? My bedroom tends to be cooler anyway. I just try to keep it comfortable, not a whole lot of sqft to regulate, plus with brick walls surrounding me and an apartment above me it tends to keep temperature pretty well.

 

[HeXen]

i like it the same both winter or summer

 

[Number1]

58

you're hanging out in the barn with the ponies?

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I don't use the heater ever. Granted I live in California, so I just throw on a jacket or put on an extra blanket and I'm fine during the winter. Where I live currently you rarely need AC, maybe 5 days out of the whole year.

When I lived in the Sacramento area the AC would be set to 78 during the warmer months. I hate the heat. Also never used the heat.

 

[gothamhunter]

65 when awake, 60 when asleep.

 

[Number1]

22 (71.6) and above.

 

[Matthiasa]

I think SlitheryDee's issue has to do with humidity. I also prefer it to be closer to 73°F in the summer, versus the warmer 77-78 in the winter. The humidity is higher in the summer, even indoors with a dehumdifier running.
In the winter, it's quite dry (which I like ), so any small amounts of moisture that are present on your skin are going to evaporate more readily, and remove some thermal energy from you in the process.

Heat transfer: That's only partially accurate. You will indeed exchange more heat when the temperature differential between you and your immediate environment is higher.
But if you're indoors, in air that is the same temperature in the summer or winter, your heat transfer rate, assuming that other factors like humidity are ignored, is going to remain the same. The heat that's going from you to the air inside the room doesn't really care at all about what's going on outside.

I'm going with the humidity difference as the cause of the difference in thermostat preference from season to season.

(Also at work may be old lingering genes that dealt with hibernation, along the lines of seasonal affective disorder - if you're outside enough, your body may pick up that the days are shorter and that the temperature is low, so that also might have an effect on what your body perceives as being "warm enough." But that's just conjecture on my part.)

Conductive head transfer might be the same (not counting the floor being colder), but radiative heat transfer will be significantly higher, working at the 4th power of the temperature difference.

 

[GeekDrew]

Summer is 70-72; Winter is 72-74. Also, I keep at least one (sometimes multiple) humidifiers running in the winter.... and the humidity is still much lower than it is in the summer.

 

[Jeff7]

Conductive head transfer might be the same (not counting the floor being colder), but radiative heat transfer will be significantly higher, working at the 4th power of the temperature difference.

Radiative heat transfer is almost always the lowest factor out of the main three (conduction, convection, and radiation - and convection is pretty well just another kind of conduction, except that one or more of the media is moving), even to the point of disregarding it completely in a lot of scenarios here on Earth. (In space...not so much.)
If your walls are reasonably well-insulated, and you're not surrounded by windows everywhere, then your environment is going to be irradiating you with only slightly less EM radiation than you're emitting back, so the net energy transfer is still very low. The convective heat transfer between you and the air in the room is going to far exceed anything you'll get from radiation.
Yes, you're dealing with the 4th power on the temperature differential, but it's also being multiplied by a very tiny constant.
Edit: Redacted. See the bottom of this post, where I decide to be slightly less stupid.

If your walls are uninsulated, and they're quite terribly frigid, there would still only be a difference of 40°C between you and your walls. (In which case, you'd have ice crystals forming on your interior walls, or else you've got one hell of a nightmarishly-fatal fever.) Put up against Stefan's Constant, and the relatively small surface area your body presents, there's not much heat to be lost due to radiation.
P = emissivity * Stefan's Constant * body surface area * ΔT⁴
Emissivity is going to be less than 1, but what the heck. 1.
P = -1 * 5.67*10^-8 * 2m² * 40⁴
P = -0.29 W.
Not a heck of a lot of power loss there. Now, assuming that the air temperature is the same in summer or winter, you will indeed incur more losses in winter due to radiation. But it looks like it's not going to be a whole heck of a lot. Keep in mind too that you're (probably) not walking around naked, so your body's full surface area is not being directly exposed to your cold walls.
And I'd also hope that your walls have better insulation than that, unless you live in a steel shack.

If you're outside in an open field though, then you've got a nice view of the sky, which presents a much lower temperature as far as a thermal analysis is concerned. Checking...values for a clear night sky seem to be a bit scattered, though I seem to remember something around -70°C being used for an example problem awhile ago, so let's try that. (It's not the much lower temperature of the Universe's background radiation, as the warmer atmosphere emits its own EM radiation back at you.)
So now you'd be talking about a difference of around 107K.
That'd be close to 15W, assuming you're standing around naked outside, showing off what you've got to Google Earth. And as your skin cools from convection with the air, you'll lose less heat to radiation.



Edit: Ok, let me be less stupid here. (That's what I get for not writing out the equation properly.) Some of those numbers were bothering me, so here we go again, with better (correct) math this time:
P = emissivity * Stefan's constant * area * (T⁴ - T&#8308
P = 1 * 5.67 * 10^-8 W/m²*K⁴ * 2m² (310K⁴ - 270K&#8308
P = 444.62 W

...yeah, ok. So I hope your walls are well-insulated.
Guess how often I also screwed up things like that in college. :\
And apparently I've forgotten quite a bit of my Heat Transfer class. Sucks how much is lost when it's not used for a few years.

Yes, it does indeed look like radiation transfer is a significant factor in summer/winter temperature preferences.

 

[Rubycon]

^

You forgot to factor in the evaporative cooling effect on people.

 

[PrinceofWands]

64-68, depending.

 

[shortylickens]

95.

Celsius.

 

[Matthiasa]

You could still light a led with that kind of power though.

 

[Jeff7]

^

You forgot to factor in the evaporative cooling effect on people.

(I mentioned that in an earlier post. [Assuming you were referring to my post.] I think that the difference in humidity in winter vs summer is the main reason for the different temperature preferences. Radiative cooling is going to do something due to cooler walls, but not much.)

Edit: See earlier post for significant revision.

 

[arcenite]

(I mentioned that in an earlier post. [Assuming you were referring to my post.] I think that the difference in humidity in winter vs summer is the main reason for the different temperature preferences. Radiative cooling is going to do something due to cooler walls, but not much.)

Did you just put your entire post in parenthesis?

 

[Argo]

74 during the day, 72 at night.

 

[HeXen]

your all living in your home wrong.

 

[arcenite]

your all living in your home wrong.

I have no interest in living in a house that is 62f. Sorry!

 

[Rubycon]

(I mentioned that in an earlier post. [Assuming you were referring to my post.] I think that the difference in humidity in winter vs summer is the main reason for the different temperature preferences. Radiative cooling is going to do something due to cooler walls, but not much.)

It plays a huge factor for sure but due to condensation concerns RH must also be controlled when it gets really cold outside too.

That said I prefer it to be quite cold when sleeping. I'd much rather be snuggled up under covers than be under a thin sheet and too hot. It's more comfortable that way.

 

[Jeff7]

Did you just put your entire post in parenthesis?

It was something of a side statement, mostly to point out that I may have already addressed the concern about humidity.

I love how it gets dry in winter around here. I live about a half mile from a lake, so it gets humid here, moreso than I like. Winter is a nice reprieve. Dry enough that clothing dries in the time it takes to fold it right out of the washer. Well....ok, not quite. But that would sure be a timesaver.
(Though probably not as humid as being out on the ocean, I'm sure. [Yeah, that's right, more parentheses. {And check this out too: I'm using brackets and braces, in reverse algebraic hierarchy, no less.}])

"If you can't hear me sometimes, that's because I'm in parentheses."

It plays a huge factor for sure but due to condensation concerns RH must also be controlled when it gets really cold outside too.

How do you mean? Condensation on uninsulated sections inside the house?

That said I prefer it to be quite cold when sleeping. I'd much rather be snuggled up under covers than be under a thin sheet and too hot. It's more comfortable that way.

Same here, though not so cold that my face ends up freezing in the night. Or I end up kicking the covers off and wake up with cold feet.
</first world problems>

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Um... so Jeff agrees: hotter in the winter because of humidity.

 

[MagickMan]

65F