45 Degrees is Cold? Please.

Some NYT lib is congratulating himself on surviving a house whose thermostat he set to 45 degrees F.
The lowest the thermostat would go was 45 degrees, which I figured was good because I had to make sure the pipes wouldn’t freeze. At first it was fairly unpleasant. I wore two pairs of wool socks, thermal underwear, a thin pair of pants, sweatpants, a wool shirt, a sweatshirt, a light hoodie, a light jacket, a big poofy winter jacket, two winter hats and those fingerless gloves. Yet I was still having trouble typing because of my numb hands. That’s when I pulled out my down sleeping bag, and decided to wear it whenever I was sitting. With the sleeping bag, now that my core had been warmed, my extremities were warming up, too....

I’m not going to say that I liked living in a 45-degree house, but eventually I didn’t mind it, and it taught me that one’s sense of comfort can be redefined with a bit of grit and resourcefulness. Sitting in my sleeping bag, I began to wonder: If we all set our thermostats to our own “comfortable low,” how many West Virginia mountains could we save? How many fewer wells would need to be fracked? How much less greenhouse gas would we emit?
Here at Grim's Hall, there is no bottom to the thermostat. We shut the heat off when we moved in, and don't turn it on but a few days a year. If the temperature is going to get very low, I shut off the water from the well, open the taps so the pipes can't burst, and let the house freeze.

Doesn't hurt anything. When the temperature gets down low enough to be genuinely dangerous -- say the teens -- we all move into the room with the wood stove, tarp it off with blankets, and sleep snugly. The rest of the time, if you're cold you need to work. There's always work to do.

18 comments:

E Hines said...

I hate cold. There's a reason I'm from the Midwest.

However.

Sitting in my sleeping bag.... Cold is a frame of mind. When I was courting my wife-to-be in Duluth, one fine blustery late fall day, we moseyed up to Enger Tower, which is just that--a tower Mr Enger had built 100 years prior. It had enough diameter to enclose the spiral stairs, and it rose above the forest so it gave a spectacular view of the canopy--truly spectacular during the week the leaves are turning, but haven't gone brown. My lady had forgotten her jacket, so I gave her mine. I wasn't cold because I chose not to be. (Too much work for mind game to be routine, though. I hate cold.)

I recall, too, a TDY I had at King Abdul Aziz AB in Riyadh to help the Saudis watch the Iran-Iraq war (Israel decided to hit Hussein's reactor while I was down there. It was fun with the Saudis accusing us of withholding that information from them; they couldn't believe that magical AWACS wasn't all that, and that we had neither known in advance, nor seen it in progress). It was a fine October day, temperature about 70degF. Our TDY contingent was down from Germany, so we were in our short-sleeved blues, as we approached one of the guard shacks scattered about the base. The poor guard had his trench coat pulled tight, the collar up around his ears, his weapon hugged tightly in his arms and useless to him because his hands were covered in thick, heavy mittens. And still shivering badly. Man after my own heart, though. He hated cold.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

I'll give him a little credit. Despite the offputting crowing about his own grit and resourcefulness, he's at least experimenting with the idea that he should look to his own behavior when it comes to putting ideals of sacrifice into practice. Of course he immediately goes to "what if I could make everyone else do it, too; how much credit could I take for saving the environment then!"

But despite the silly tone ("Wow! I'm the first human in history to experience cold indoors! I wonder if this is what privation is like?"), he's really only using his powers of persuasion to try to bring others around to his point of view, by arguing that if they all followed his example voluntarily they could join him in achieving what he considers to be a great end.

So now, buddy, try doing without fossil fuels in transportation, and then preen for us some more.

Grim said...

Heh. That bicycle looks pretty fun when it's in the single digits outside, huh? Can you ride it while wearing your sleeping bag?

Texan99 said...

No sacrifice for the environment is too great, comrade!

james said...

Temperatures

Texan99 said...

That was wonderful.

Gringo said...

I am reminded of my uncle's remark about my father: "My brother-in-law is such a tightwad that he bought a new thermostat that goes down to 45."

Right now my inside temperature is 59. I am not going to laugh at the NYT person, but am glad to welcome him aboard to the winter-low-termperature-inside gang. I am not at Grim's level, however.

When I was living in the cold, cold North, my bedroom was in the vicinity of 50 degrees at night. When I came home from the library at midnight, I needed to put a heating pad on my feet in order to be able to fall asleep. I turned off the heating pad after my feet were warm.

Texan99 said...

I'm a climate wimp. We don't usually let the house get below about 68, not that it often tries to, considering the balmy climate here. But also, we'd really prefer it never got above 75, though the climate very much tries to push it there. We use enough electricity to take the edge off the heat, with nary a thought for the sea level at the Maldives.

To balance things out, though, we almost never drive anywhere to speak of, and we practically never fly. I'll bet we never fly 3 or 4 jets to Davos for the whole rest of our lives. And we have a rainwater cistern, which is, like, so virtuous.

raven said...

My brother used to tell of the Vietnamese standing around burn barrels with heavy coats on when it would get down to 60 or so. I think it affected him too, when he got back he decided to become a Southerner.

james said...

I remember one night in Liberia when the night watchman for the compound knocked on our door at 10pm. Dad said afterward that he had asked to borrow a blanket because it was too cold to sleep. Maybe 65, probably a bit warmer.

Grim said...

Heh.

The last trip I took to camp in the mountains was in summertime, and my comrade on the expedition dressed and packed for a summer hike. Turns out the weather is a lot colder above six thousand feet than he was expecting. He woke me up in the middle of the night to beg for my ground sheet to use as an extra blanket.

Texan99 said...

When it's 68 in my house, there's no way I'm sleeping without a blanket! You Yankees are a mystery to me.

Gringo said...

Texan99
When it's 68 in my house, there's no way I'm sleeping without a blanket! You Yankees are a mystery to me.

I sleep with a sheet and blanket at 68 degrees inside temperature. As it gets colder,I add a lot more blankets. And if really cold, apply a heating pad to my cold toes for 10 minutes. And in the summertime, when upstairs temperature needs to cool down to 86 or below for me to sleep, I still sleep with socks on.

I learned in my NE childhood to adjust inside temperatures "al clima" [to the climate]- cold in winter, warm in summer. I follow the same way in TX. Much more comfortable that way.

MikeD said...

I'm a firm believer in honoring the men and women of science who brought the human race the comforts of central heat and air. Yes, I CAN (and have) survived without them. Just as I CAN (and have) done without many luxuries in my time. But why should I? If that's how I choose to spend my resources, earned by the (non-literal) sweat of my brow, then why should I not?

Grim said...

Because it makes you stronger! :)

Texan99 said...

One of the skills I most value is the Ability to Do Without. Nevertheless, I'm not very vigorous about it. I do without the things I care least about. I enjoy climate control, so I indulge in it. Diamonds? New cars more often than every 15 years or so? Don't miss 'em.

It's good practice, in preparing for severe financial disruptions, to get away from the notion that most of the luxuries we're surrounded with in cushy times are necessities. That doesn't mean I'm going to go around wearing hair shirts, but I do feel more secure when I occasionally demonstrate to myself that I can be quite happy without things that many other people think are non-negotiable. The more such things I identify, the better able I should be to live within a changing income.

I know people who are tons better at than I, and I enjoying watching them for inspiration.

MikeD said...

Because it makes you stronger! :)

I'd need to see some empirical proof of that theory.

Grim said...

Ask and you shall receive.

During the swimmer Michael Phelps’s 2008 Olympic gold-medal streak, Cronise heard the widely circulated claim that Phelps was eating 12,000 calories a day. Having been fastidiously trying to lose weight, he was incredulous. Phelps’s intake was more than five times what the average American eats daily, and many thousands of calories more than what most elite athletes in training need. Running a marathon burns only about 2,500 calories. Phelps would have to be aggressively swimming during every waking hour to keep from gaining weight. But then Cronise—who knows enough about heat transfer to have been employed keeping astronauts alive in the sub-zero depths of space—figured it out: Phelps must be burning extra calories simply by being immersed in cool water.

Fascinated, Cronise began a regimen of cold showers and shirtless walks in winter, and he lost 26.7 pounds in six weeks