Comfortable Indoor Temperature

I've read many posts in numerous threads where a member posts his opinion what folks should have their indoor temps at. I personally get tired of reading posts where the poster is advising everyone to "economize" by keeping the house temp at 70* or lower. We are not all created equal in regards to our tastes,preferences or likes & dislikes.We do not all run the same body temp,avg is 98.6*,mine is 97.3*. Besides having a lower than normal body temp,i also have Lyme disease. The best way to fight the painful effects of Lyme is to keep WARM. I do not intend to keep warm in my house by wrapping myself in blankets,sweaters & coats. We maintain avg of 75* in winter when heating & also in the summer when cooling. In 1999 we cut our ties to oil,propain & electric for heat,we burned wood until Oct. 10,2014 when we fired up the EFM520 & then we fired up the Crane 404 Nov. 1,2014 in our cold floored living room. Coal @ $200/ton is cheap heat & is a very comforting,bone warming heat.Older folks tend to need & want warmer temps,blankets,coats & sweaters do not cut it when trying to live as normal a life as possible. A warm building is my safe haven from the bone freezing outdoor temps. If I ever get a hankering for cold bones I can sit outside on a lawn chair & cool down. If you are the type of person who cools your house down to 70* in the winter & like it that way,fine for you.!! Please stop trying to make us who want to be WARM in our house out to be some kind of wasteful villains who have no clue as to what is best for our needs. Remember too that a tight,well insulated house will feel warmer at lower temps than a leaky,poorly insulated house. AND,for those who will then say that we need to insulate first,replace windows & then & only then should we heat,go fly a kite !!! Price windows for a whole house,price tearing all the wall covering or siding off to better insulate & then price coal. One MUST have heat,insulation & good windows can be replaced as money becomes available. I am in no way using this thread to push everyone into heating their house to 75*,but some of you need to quit pushing your 70*,(save the world ) on the rest of us who have decided to be warm when we are inside our own house.

You are right. When the walls of a house get colder your body radiates heat faster toward those walls. What may be a comfortable temperature when it is 40 degrees outside is no longer comfortable when it is 20.

One article of clothing I would recommend is long underwear when temps are in the twenties or below. Working in the shop it is always cold by the floor no matter the air temperature 4 feet up.

When you are heating with coal as opposed to oil and other main stream fuels, you are already saving a bunch. Might as well enjoy it and be comfortable. For me right now, that's 70. There are lots of things to factor in as you mentioned. One you didn't mention is humidity. Humidity plays a huge role in your comfort level in winter. Our bodies cool by evaporation. The drier your air the more evaporation occurs on our skin. So basically 70 degree air at correct humidity (about 35%-40%) feels like 72 degrees. Another big factor in my home is menopause. We heat with coal and a hot momma!

coalkirk wrote:When you are heating with coal as opposed to oil and other main stream fuels, you are already saving a bunch. Might as well enjoy it and be comfortable. For me right now, that's 70. There are lots of things to factor in as you mentioned. One you didn't mention is humidity. Humidity plays a huge role in your comfort level in winter. Our bodies cool by evaporation. The drier your air the more evaporation occurs on our skin. So basically 70 degree air at correct humidity (about 35%-40%) feels like 72 degrees. Another big factor in my home is menopause. We heat with coal and a hot momma!

As coalkirk stated I am saving quite a bit heating with coal and enjoying every nugget of Pennsylvania's finest! 74* - 76* is nice as my walls are always cold due to no insulation and cinder block between the double layer sheet rock and brick face. The new pedestal humidifier is worth every penny as we feel much better with 35 - 40 % humidity, going through 3 - 4 two liter bottles of water / day with a kettle on the stove as well.
oh by the way....it's should be spelled m a n pa u s e

I keep my house at 70° .... because there isn't a coal boiler on this planet that can get the temp any higher in this drafty house, short of a small nuclear device .. If there is, I couldn't afford to run it, even on coal!

I hate windy days like last night. While taking a shower you get a blast of outside air every time the wind blows. It really SUCKS! Had the baseboard heat in there, of course, plus an electric space heater cranked to the max. Still was only 75° in there by the time I finished. North facing bathroom that somebody cut corners on insulating to make room for the sink and tub ....

I like to keep my house between 64 and 68 in the winter. That's where I'm comfortable at. Summer time it's 74-78.

Takes time to acclimate to the seasons. Researchers say it takes about 2 weeks to get used to a temperature change. Little less for heat, little more for cold. And age and other factors effect that too.

I find the wife complaining if the house is over 70, says it's too hot.

I like 75 but a little cooler in the bedroom. I'd be cold at 68.

We have our living area at 75*,bedrooms are low to mid 60*,s,living area is defined for us as the living,dining,kitchen & multi - purpose room.Living room has the stove in it so it is the warmest,but it would be the coldest if we heated only with the hot air exchanger. The hot air exchanger pulls heat from the EFM520 in the truck box,the exchanger fan is on a t-stat which runs periodically on demand which helps moderate the whole house temps.

If it were left up to my wife, the house would be 85° - 90° all year round!

She's the only person I know that can sleep with a 6" thick down comforter in a tent in the middle of August, with 90° temps and 90% humidity, and not even break a sweat! "I'm comfortable" , she says ....

coalkirk wrote: One you didn't mention is humidity. Humidity plays a huge role in your comfort level in winter. Our bodies cool by evaporation. The drier your air the more evaporation occurs on our skin. So basically 70 degree air at correct humidity (about 35%-40%) feels like 72 degrees.

I'm another proud member of the 72 degree plus club. We feel comfortable with our living area set at 73 degrees and our bedroom areas at 68 degrees.

A few weeks ago I felt chilly and bumped the thermostat up to 76 thinking I was coming down with a cold. It was set at 76 for a few days until it caught my eye that the humidity was down to 28%
A quick peek in my plenum revealed the humidifier nozzle was clogged. Switched it out that afternoon and by the following morningi noticed my wife had already turned the thermostat back to 73.

Im with Coalkirk....... Humidity is a big factor!

Paulie

franco b wrote:You are right. When the walls of a house get colder your body radiates heat faster toward those walls. What may be a comfortable temperature when it is 40 degrees outside is no longer comfortable when it is 20.

One article of clothing I would recommend is long underwear when temps are in the twenties or below. Working in the shop it is always cold by the floor no matter the air temperature 4 feet up.

franco b ,i just checked my shop floor temp with an IR gun,in the area where I generally am working it is 60-62* right on the concrete. Since I usually don't go to sleep laying on the floor & am usually active when down working on equipment ,that temp seems pretty good.Right inside the overhead door the concrete is 40* so heat loss is a problem with these doors & the concrete floor.If I feel cool on a windy day while working on equipment on the floor, I will turn the t-stat higher to be warm & comfortable rather than to worry about what temp it actually is. Cold bones just do not feel good to me,WARM bones feel good & helps make the winter cold bearable. After all , I believe most folks use AC in the hot,humid weather to be comfortable,i do not have AC in my shop tho.

I shoot for 70-72 deg in our main living room/dining room/kitchen area. That makes our bedroom about 66 deg, which is good for sleeping.

8* outside,30+ mph WIND, 74-75* in our living area,59* in the far end of the house (2 bedrooms) The wind is stealing a lot of our heat during this cold/windy blast.

There were quite a few threads where the poster was pushing his agenda of 72* or less,anything more than that is just wasteful.