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Comment by sgt | Hacker News Reader

Here in South Africa, single glazed is still a thing. I've been replacing all my windows with double glazing. I considered triple but that makes them very heavy and expensive. Benefits are both in hot summer and in the relatively cold winter.

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My house in Australia is all single glazed. But where I live summers aren’t that hot (rarely over 30c) and winters aren’t cold (rarely less than 10c overnight). I’ve considered double glazing but it makes no sense really

You will save on heating, though. If it's 10C outside and that cold creeps in, it's going to be pretty cold inside unless you run lots of heaters or a fireplace all the time.

Not everyone is bothered by this though, but I think a house should have at least 21C in winter.

In Sweden, because of the crazy electricity prices, everyone is discussing right now how warm they should keep their houses. The idea is that a good citizen should save energy and therefore let the house get colder (also, to be "green" of course - but nothing like 5x more expensive energy to get people saving). They asked some politicians, most of them were saying between 19C and 21C.. one guy even said 15C, which everyone thinks is BS :D

Discussion of what temperature a house should be is preposterous. A well-insulated home would obviously use less energy to keep a comfortable temperature than one with drafts all over.

Discussion should focus on energy budgets or total energy use, but that may be hard to conceptualize for the average Sven.

It's all about appearances. Everyone is now driving Teslas and electric Volvos. It's easy to make "efforts" when it shows your "virtuousity" or at least in your head, makes others admire you. You're never going to see rich people moving into much smaller homes that require 1/10th the electricity, which would actually contribute much more significantly to avoiding climate doom.

In Minnesota, New York, and some other places in the USA, 16C indoors isn't uncommon. I turn the heat down at bedtime and my room will be 13C when I wake up. But we're crazy and just like to prove we're tough, so...

You should mention that Australian single glazed windows are also very easy going on all other aspects of the window and it's tightness to air/wind. At least the older ones.

I was never as cold indoors as in Australia. The houses have no insulation, it's almost as cold inside as it is outside. Even if it's above 10°C in Sydney in winter, it's about 15°C indoors unless you use AC for heating. Add to that just terrible craftsmanship of walls and windows.

American in Australia - the house quality, even if the building is new(er), is absolutely shocking. I'm contributing to climate change with all the heat/cool bleed from my rental. Where I never even thought about the electricity bill from where I am in the U.S., I'm spending anywhere from $60 to $250 a month depending on season, where the anecdata average is actually 2x or 3x that.

Thankfully two or three years ago, we signed up for amber.com.au which will give you real time pricing and alerts so we can be thoughtful about usage in peak demand.

I've been tracking usage via their API for ~two years

https://flatgithub.com/dalanmiller/electricity?filename=3121...

Why did you move to Australia? You must be out of your mind. Kidding, just wondering.

I moved for work is the simple answer. Came to find pretty quickly life in Melb is pretty great, possibly one of the greatest places to live.

I think the “quality” actually goes down as you get newer. They are better sealed and insulated yes but…not quality - especially project homes. I own an old house (1890s) and the craftsmanship of the original portion of the house is spectacular. The 80s extensions are horrible though.

Where in South Africa? I would guess that along the coast the weather is never extreme enough for this to matter all that much?

Different South African here, but I grew up in Durban and now live in Cape Town, with regular visits to Johannesburg (2-4 times a year). Single-glazing is used in all three by default, despite the climate being quite different in all cases. Durban is tropical; winter (we joke that it doesn't have one) is dry, and summers are wet, but its warm year-round. Temperatures can vary quite a bit between seasons in Joburg and Cape Town. Cape Town has a Mediterranean climate; summers are warm and windy, while winters are cold and wet, often getting to 7°C at night (it's a cloudless 25°C summers day today though). Joburg can get a little colder, although its a much more dry kind of cold.

Cape Town. It matters a lot... actually, imagine 5C or even 10C outside and that cold just coming straight through the windows. That means you'll be freezing inside. In summer it also seems to help. Yesterday was 36C here and we had 25C indoors, which would had been much worse if we didn't have roof insulation and double glazed windows.

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