Last week, the New York Times had an article about people who voluntarily live without central heat in their homes. Take a moment to read it, then come back here to discuss.
What do you think? Could you do it?
Recycla admits that there’s no way she could live without central heat. That said, she does make every effort to be as efficient as she can with her heat use. She makes full use of passive solar every day — throwing open her curtains at first light to let the sun’s rays in to warm her house. Her thermostat is set to varying temperatures within each 24 hour period, so that the temperature drops a few degrees during the day while Recycla and her family are out of the house. And if she feels chilly, she puts on a sweater, grabs a throw blanket, or hugs one of her loved ones.
How do you stay warm in the winter — central heat, fireplace, wood stove, or nothing at all?
We have a living room gas fire that we have never used in 8 years.
We have heating that warms the house to 17C for 90 mins in the morning and from about half an hour before I return in the afternoon to half an hour before our bedtime, a period of about 6.5 hours. So our heating is on 8 hours a day in the week. On the weekend it stays on all day from about 7.30am to half an hour before our bedtime.
I try never to have the heating on when we are out, the exception being when we had the supercold weather earlier this month when I had it on at 10C to ensure the pipes didn’t freeze – an astonishing number of my friends had frozen pipes then flooded houses this Christmas, including a family that went to South Africa for 2 weeks, leaving the heating to come on 90 mins in the morning and 90 mins in the evening.
Ah yes, frozen pipes aside, there is the other matter of this being an easy thing in NYC. Try it in Northern Wisconsin. Then we’ll talk turkey. Cold turkey.
I’m happy at 65 with socks and a sweatshirt, but when we have to endure wind chills below zero, a little heat goes a Loooong way up here.
Conversely, I do just fine without air conditioning, but I don’t talk smack about it since I don’t live in the deep south.
Central heat here – in Northeastern Wisconsin. We would do without A/C in the summers except for my son’s asthma; he suffered so badly when he was young. Central air was the only solution. Luckily, we rarely need it.
Kotatsu table- easy to make, I am sitting at one now, my legs and feet are toasty warm, my central heat is off…http://www.jlifeinternational.com/furnishings/kotatsu/kotatsu_e.html I used a heat lamp bulb from the hardware store and an old comforter…
Oh yeah. It’s just fine to do without central heat when it’s not below freezing for most of the winter. But I think I, in Milwaukee, sacrifice enough keeping the house at 64 during the day, 60 at night, wearing long underwear, extra layers (including my down vest), using a space heater, and still being cold.
I lived in Chile for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. It didn’t get much below freezing in the winter, but we didn’t have central heat and the insulation was non-existent. The temperature outside was the temperature inside. Have you ever tried to type while wearing gloves? Not easy. And a wood stove heats only the area near the wood stove.
I’ve done my no central heat cold days. The only reason my husband and I don’t keep it warmer in the house is because we are cheap. Not because we have any ideological commitment to not using heat.