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Comment by wodenokoto | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand HN obsession with this.

I want to walk around in boxers and a T-shirt when at home.

I'd like to drive my sportscar all the time. I'd like to do a lot of flying. I'd like to not have to bother about recycling anything.

But it is selfish to have what I want and not care about the future of our planet, so I make some compromises.

Relying on human selfishness by putting a price on the externalities of emissions seems to me far more likely to succeed than preaching self-abnegation.

Pay more for more heat or pay for fancy thermal underwear. Choose what selfishly makes you happier.

I completely agree that that would be a more effective approach, and we should all campaign for it. That isn't the world that we live in though, so instead I have to choose not to be selfish.

FWIW, I don't wear fancy thermal underwear. I do accept that wearing a warm jumper during the winter (while heating my house to 19 or 20 degC) is a perfectly reasonable compromise.

Exactly. I mean, I don't pretend to wear only boxers at home during winter... but just my jeans and a t-shirt? C'mon. Also, I don't see the need to turn on the heating in the whole house: it's usually turned on only in the living room (where I spent 90% of the time). The bathroom, kitchen, hallways, they all could be as cold as needed, I don't mind. As for the bedroom: as soon as I'm inside bed for at least 10 minutes, I'm already warm no matter if the heating is off.

If your house is properly insulated the others rooms will be warm just because your living room is. May as well heat them all as the cost difference is minimal and then you can be comfortable that other 10% of the time.

When I first read this something about it stuck in my brain, but I couldn't put my finger on it until just now.

>May as well heat them all as the cost difference is minimal

If you sit down and reason out the math, you find that this isn't actually true.

The total heat loss is proportional to the temperature difference integrated over the total area of the building envelope (weighted by U-value). The integrated heat flux through this surface must equal the heat supplied within the interior, primarily by the heating system.

If rooms with exterior walls are colder (when in the equilibrium maintained by the heating system), then by definition you're losing less energy through that surface, so therefore less energy must be added.

The advice also wildly disagreed with my own experience, which is that shutting off unused rooms (especially rooms that are naturally colder anyway) has resulted in large energy savings.

I do make sure to regularly monitor such rooms for any sign of moisture or mold, but blocking off the vent/under-door airflow (and keeping a particularly chilly guest room closet ajar) seems to suffice.

Exactly.

And you definitely don't want to spend whole days in merino. It'd ruin both the clothing and your health.

Would it ruin my health? Most of what I've read suggests otherwise, do you have any suggestions on further reading about this?

And I'd expect any fabric to wear out when you wear it (there's probably a good pun to make here).

Perhaps, but where should we make it?

Perhaps a better question would be how can we wear our wearable wares so that they don't wear out from us excessively wearing them?

What are you talking about? I wear merino every single day, year-round, and it is absolutely not going to ruin the clothing or your health. My socks, my undershirts, and my boxers are all made of merino wool. It's not as miraculous of a fabric as some people claim, but merino /is/ pretty awesome, and it is not going to in any way damage your health any more than any other fabric you might be exposed to.

My comment did sound too harsh, probably.

What I meant was wearing a t-shirt and shorts in a room at 19c and feeling awesome versus being all dressed up in a merino tight fitting sweater and tight fitting leggings in a cooler room. I see no health benefits there, really, no matter how breathable and natural merino is.

And you would need to wash that wool daily (or rather often) if you were wearing it daily. And by now you probably know that merino is a sensitive fabric, and the more you wash it — the faster it degrades (compared to cotton).

That all adds up. And I don't see it as being practical and making too much sense, that's it.

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