For outdoor use electrically heated clothing also has another great benefit - it broadens the useful temperature range of the clothing that you're wearing.
I fly an open cockpit aircraft (an Autogyro). In the winter months I wear a soft-shell flightsuit, with an Ororo electrically heated Gilet underneath. The flightsuit itself is very warm, and the gilet provides extra insulation over my torso even when off. This is sufficient to keep me warm most of the time, but then if it does get colder I can just turn on the Gilet the appropriate amount and I'll be cosy. The heating elements are close to my skin with both the gilet and flightsuit insulation on the outside so the heat stays in where it's needed.
This setup works anywhere from "slight winter chill" down to "as cold as I have encountered". And because my core is so warm, I don't even have to have too much in the way of gloves (I use some hand knitted merino roll top mittens so I can still use the controls easily).
I acquired and used hot water bottles for the first time in my life last winter and I highly recommend giving them a shot, especially when seated outdoors.
It seems likely that for containers of equal size, water will stay warmer longer than dry rice or any other common/inexpensive material.
EDIT: I occasionally hear of engineers working on materials that work better than water, but they don't seem to be catching on so far, perhaps because water works really well and is comparatively cheap: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/130523-zeolite-thermal-s...
After reading their post on hot water bottles a while back I went out and got some, and I’m glad I did! They actually are very comfy in the winter. This is something I’d somehow never really encountered and it’s super simple.
Just make sure to read the warning labels and take them seriously please. I believe the use of boiling water frequently causes them to rupture, inflicting burns on their users.
As one of the comments mentions, the best solution to cold temperatures has always been wool. As a foreigner it's striking to me how little wool is worn here in the US.
It's one of the few renewable natural fibres and a fantastic insulator. Get some merino long johns and wool sweaters and you're good. It's not itchy.
As a born and raised (dyed in the wool? :P) US American, I am equally amazed it took me so long in life to discover the joy of good wool. I think it's because Americans are conditioned to just stay in their house/car/public building HVAC bubble, with AC and heat always set to about 70 Fahrenheit[1], and never having to think about the real world for more than a moment in the parking lot.
As a result if you talk to Americans about this you might find all kinds of nonsense objections, like calling wool an expensive luxury.
One of the truly formative experiences of my life was the first time I slept in below-freezing weather outdoors. All it took was about $250 worth combined of wool clothing and a well rated sleeping bag. It really made me realize how much more powerful body insulation is in the fight against winter cold. Suddenly it makes sense why in old Victorian books, everyone is wearing nightcaps.
But it's not even that expensive. Like yeah, it does cost more upfront compared to cheap clothes that provide no temperature regulating function, just cover you up. I get it. If you're very poor, it's harder.
But if wearing more wool allows you to lower the thermostat, it can pay for itself massively.
For example, a good pair of very warm long underwear is about $100, and will last 2 winters (let's say 5 months each, total of 10 months) if you are too lazy to ever mend it, significantly longer if you invest half an hour a year or so into mending holes and take good care of it (eg, only wear it under pants to reduce wear)
That is about $10 a month (or half as much or less if you mend) and you can easily be comfortable 10 degrees cooler with it. If you can't save $10 a month by lowering the temperature 10 degrees
If you are worried about your heat bill, first invest in wool. It will pay for itself very quickly.
[1] All temps in this post in Fahrenheit. Not sorry, it's better for weather discussions while Centigrade is better for chemistry/cooking.
> All temps in this post in Fahrenheit. Not sorry, it's better for weather discussions
Fahrenheit is only officially used in the United States, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, the Cayman Islands, and the former American colony of Liberia.
So what if "everywhere else" disagrees? They're wrong and they made a mistake.
Thing is, while inferior, Celsius isn't that much worse than Fahrenheit for everyday weather purposes, and it had the metric halo, so people accepted it, and only nerds like me care.
But if you use your own independent thought, ignoring which scales happen to be in common use, it seems obvious that Fahrenheit is better designed for talking about weather.
There's nothing even metric about Celsius. It isn't even easier to divide up than Fahrenheit. Degrees Fahrenheit aren't divided up into 13 Fahrenheit shillings or anything like that. The only 10-based thing about Celsius is to specify exactly 100 degrees between the boiling and freezing points of water, which is useless for talking about weather because the weather never goes anywhere near the boiling point of water. Like seriously, name one situation where it's easier to do something with Celsius than Fahrenheit. You can't, because Fahrenheit was already pretty sane, it was nothing crazy like miles/feet, pounds/ounces, etc.
For scientists doing chemistry, Celsius was slightly nicer, but honestly, not that much nicer, as Fahrenheit users don't really find themselves forgetting the freezing/boiling points of water, and dividing that range into convenient tenths or fifths or what have you is not something anyone ever needs to do.
For everyday people who talk about weather, Celsius was a big step back. The size of the degrees, almost twice as big, is also a step in the wrong direction. 1 Fahrenheit degree is almost exactly the temperature difference a person can notice if they pay very close attention. 1 celsius degree is noticably slightly too large. For setting thermostats, this matters. You either need an awkward half-degree granularity, or you don't have as much precision.
Yes, most of the world's governments have specified Celsius, but that is just an appeal to authority. Fahhrenheit is almost perfectly designed for talking about weather and thermostats, which is what most people use temperatures for most of the time.
PS: Centigrade is still an acceptable name, if quirky when speaking English. Outside of English such as in Spanish it is actually way more common and I've never even heard the term "celsius" in Spanish. I thought you might be interested in this since you seem interested in how it's done outside of just the USA ;-) and I find that "Celsius" as a term is more of an anglosphere thing. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius#Centigrade_vis-%C3%A0-...
> I think it's because Americans are conditioned to just stay in their house/car/public building HVAC bubble, with AC and heat always set to about 70 Fahrenheit[1], and never having to think about the real world
This can also be described as "living in a civilization with abundant energy", and it's an admirable state of affairs - one we should strive to develop further, rather than regressing to the level of societal poverty where we're subject to weather's capriciousness.
I love wool, but not because I hate temperature control technology.
> This can also be described as "living in a civilization with abundant energy", and it's an admirable state of affairs
I think this is the American mindset that I've noticed the most - a historical abundance of energy means future energy supply should be guaranteed. Big cars, A/C, central heating - all are inefficient uses of energy.
Your body naturally produces heat, all day. Wearing insulating material, like wool, makes use of that heat. Burning fuel to replace its loss does not.
As they mention in that article, the main advantage of synthetics over wool is that synthetics weigh much less while providing the same insulation. However, I figure this is less important if you're sitting around your house than if you're e.g. hiking and have to carry the weight with you, and wool should be great indoors.
Personally I will avoid buying synthetics from now on in an effort to eliminate plastics / fossil fuel products from my life, and reduce microplastic pollution. I will probably be buying more wool, to avoid "death cloth" / clothes that stop insulating if you sweat / get wet.
Are there any other notable natural fibers besides wool that continue to insulate when wet?
Synthetics do weigh less, and there's definitely a place for them, but this is not without trade-offs. If you're purely trying to warm up, synthetics are superior to wool, but if you want to assist body temperature regulation across a wider temperature band, wool is actually superior to synthetics.
Are you sure these are natural? In their FAQ, they say:
> Is My Buffalo Vegan Friendly?
> "Yes - The shell lining we use is 100% Polyamide and our internal lining is synthetic - 100% Polyester. No animal products were used in the production of your Buffalo Systems garment.
I think that means it is synthetic, not natural. It may be possible to make fiber pile from natural fibers, but I think this company is using plastic.
> As a foreigner it's striking to me how little wool is worn here in the US.
This one has always surprised me as well. I wear wool socks, wool underwear, and a wool undershirt/t-shirt every day. I got into the habit while traveling as a digital nomad, because wool is so good at temperature regulation that it actually works well in any climate. Just a thin layer of wool will help you to both feel cooler when in hot weather and warmer when in cold weather, and this works even when wool is wet (unlike cotton).
There's definitely an increased cost to doing this, but wool clothing items tend to also be more durable (and easier to fix through mending and darning) than other clothes, and it packs well because wool doesn't produce wrinkles in the same way as other materials.
It seems though that there is at least some appreciation for wool in the US for those who like technical clothing or who do outdoors activities.
Kind of disagree with this. My merino wool tshirts are great in winter but they are not cooler in summer than cotton, and they are also less hard wearing than cotton. Great for all temps except warm temps and with the advantage of being nice and soft and smelling less.
I adore it, and as someone trying to avoid non-biodegradable fabrics, I lean on it, but its care needs are quite different to all the other clothing I own. An absence of wool perpetuates itself because then people aren't comfortable cleaning it.
I love my merino wool long underwear, its both incredibly comfortable and very warm. For everything from skiing to work, to lounging at home during the winter.
Hands get cold? Better brew up a cup of something!
When i was a young lad in the seventies, our local town shop had shirts and pants you could plug into the electrical system on your tractor during the cold days (before cabins were a thing)
This is my problem. I don't mind the cold on my skin, but breathing the air gets me. Throat and nose dry up, gets itchy and scratchy. Very uncomfortable, so keaping the heater on is really the only solution I see.
Mold is caused by not handing water vapor well, you can have a building that is not climate controlled that has no issues with mold. In fact, mold is usually caused by preventing the free-flow of water vapor while conditioning the house.
Freezing pipes is another issue, but that can be remedied by conditioning to 40 or 50 degrees (freedom degrees™) but I suppose you could build a building with anti-freeze dedicated to the piping itself.
Ventilation controls the mold in places you can see, like showers, but has little effect on mold growth in concealed places like sealed wall cavities. That's the far more dangerous form of mold, because you can't clean it.
Many old uninsulated wood houses, despite their reputations for being preserved primarily due to their mold resistant old growth structural lumber, were preserved in major part by the fact that they were constantly being heated all winter by high capacity heating equipment like wood or coal stoves that had to put out a ton of heat (at very low efficiency) to overcome the lack of heat distribution, resulting in significant vapor drive [1] wherein radiant heat and air pressure pushes water vapor out of warm spaces through permeable walls, therefore keeping them dry.
Vapor drive and the location of the dewpoint boundary are important principles in designing a house's envelope, and maintaining permanently enclosed mold sensitive materials above the dewpoint is needed to prevent mold in walls and other areas.
This is especially critical in houses with vapor barriers (usually plastic film in the wall), which essentially trap vapor on either side of the barrier, so the dewpoint boundary (the line in the wall assembly maintained at a temperature where vapor condenses) should always be in a place that can easily dry out the condensate that develops there. Otherwise, mold will likely grow.
That's the main point - much of the mold problem can be attributed to vapor barriers; if you have them, you have to maintain the thermal envelope and the moisture content; if you do not have them, you only really have to worry about it in perpetually wet areas (bathrooms, kitchens) as the others will let the air and vapor through.
This is why abandoned houses often don't have much mold to speak of unless you're in a very year-round damp climate.
So if we wanted to build mold-resistant houses that were designed to idle at 50 or 60 degrees, we certainly could.
Most houses should probably have more humidifiers/dehumidifiers than they do; much of what we do for "climate control" is very ancient technology.
> That's the main point - much of the mold problem can be attributed to vapor barriers;
Indeed, if I lived in a cold climate, I'd much rather have a vapor permeable but continuously sealed and insulated wall assembly than a vapor barrier.
> So if we wanted to build mold-resistant houses that were designed to idle at 50 or 60 degrees, we certainly could
Totally. Wood framing, plywood sheathing, and drywall's paper backing are prone to mold when exposed to condensation, but those are the most economical materials we have for building. Keeping condensation off those materials at low temps is challenging, and most easily accomplished by heating them along with the space.
OTOH concrete (i.e ICF) is pretty impervious to condensation, although it has other major issues with that make it not ideal for most house walls.
> much of what we do for "climate control" is very ancient technology
I've used a cheap hygrometer last winter, during which the air inside my home was always way too dry. I had to place humidifiers (with some success). The difference in humidity for inside and outside temperatures is huge. You can calculate the relative humidity for different temperatures with online calculators such as [0].
Long story short; if you still heat your home, but some degrees lower than you used to do, you are probably fine regarding mould.
I don't think the article means to suggest that you let your house go completely to the elements - only that you maintain a lower more economical temperature. How is mold going to grow more at 55F than it would at 70F? As long as you ventilate moisture and minimize condensation you can keep the mold under control.
Yeah, many people don't realize that the importance of climate control is more so for moisture than temperature. Although winter is "dry" it's wild how much ambient moisture humans emit - anyone who's grown any kind of mushroom can also attest to how acutely fungus react to even minute (5-10f) fluctuations in temperature. If you have a compost pile, wait for the first time in fall where soil temps dip below 70F or if you have a light freeze - you'll likely see the entirety of your compost pile fruiting with mushrooms :)
Heat both helps with airflow and reduces the need of it.
How do you cheaply create airflow in winter? Open windows 24/7 and turn on a fan? Thus increasing the need for body-heating and reducing house temperature even further?
What I really want is USB powered heating in my bones. Like just the long bones in the arms and legs would be fine. Or wirelessly powered (put the charge in my mouse-pad.)
Here in Korea, almost every household has heated blankets and mattress toppers. Most are heated with wires, but some have elaborate hot water tubes running through them. They come with their own thermostats and timers. Different parts of the bed can be heated to different temperatures to accommodate each person's preferences. Welcome to the future!
For me, I'm totally fine with the house being cold and in the low 60s during the winter and just using sweatshirts and space heaters as necessary.
However, some folks (especially females) don't like the ambient air being that cold because their fingers start to hurt. Can't blame people for not wanting to wear mittens at home.
EDIT reply to: >(note that some people regard the use of "females" as a noun to be a red flag)
Thank you for the heads up but I'm surprised "females" has become controversial. I did a cursory google check with a mainstream respectable outlet like NYTimes and they use "females" the same way I did. When did the norms change?
That's why I clearly wrote that there's a ton of material and that I was sharing 2 random links.
> Are you saying it increases the risk of injury or just pain?
Both. Lowering blood circulation decreases the ability of muscles, ligaments and tendons to self-repair. Among other things, cold lowers blood flow (and viceversa). That's why people warm up before stretching.
I’ve read a lot of conflicting research about warming up before exercise. With evidence it improves, does nothing, or reduces performance depending on the specifics etc.
My intuition is cold hands would be a risk, but I don’t particularly trust such intuition.
> Thank you for the heads up but I'm surprised "females" has become controversial. … When did the norms change?
It is still not uncommon to see the word used that way in scientific text, official documentation, and data collection forms, though in those contexts the word male is probably near-by too so “female” isn't being used in isolation. Even in those places it is less common than it used to be.
Over the last ~decade referring to women as females, particularly in less formal contexts like discussions here often are, has become associated with incels & similar individuals/groups. They use it as a pejorative term, deliberately¹ using the technically-correct-but-unnecessarily-formal word as a way of distancing from women, suggesting they are a lower form², or blaming women for the unfair distancing the speaker perceives³. Then again they use almost every word as a pejorative term at some time or other, they seem to have a lot of negative brain wiring of which their attitude to genders may be but one of many symptoms.
---
[1] and in spoken form making sure to pronounce the word in a way to make the intent obvious
[2] for a popular culture reference that might help: if you are a Trek fan, think how Ferengi characters talk about women
[3] “why don't these people I'm constantly bad-mouthing ever like me?”!
But I think it's a legitimate question of whether feeling the cold especially indoors is a sex-related or a gender-related difference, and I think someone could reasonably guess it was the former. Do women feel colder indoors than men because of e.g. clothing norms, or do females feel colder indoors than males regardless of their gender identity? I have read the explanation that the difference is mostly caused by the delta in metabolic rate -- in which case distinguishing by sex rather than gender seems clearer and more accurate.
I'm not debating it because I truly don't know but it sure seems like a lot of people (including women) did not get the memo that "females" has suddenly become an offensive word.
That's not a NYTimes article. Furthermore "vast majority" does not mean every single instance, it means significantly more than 50%.
Google results will vary from person to person, but for me only 2 of the first 10 results are from the past 20 years, which is especially surprising since Google tends to prefer more recent results. I think 80% counts as "vast majority".
Finally since I'm at work I decided to just ask 4 women colleagues and they all agreed unanimously that referring to women as female is weird. It's clinical and unusual in the same kind of way as referring to people as "human" (said in a kind of alien/robotic voice that people use to make fun of Zuckerberg).
>I decided to just ask 4 women colleagues and they all agreed unanimously that referring to women as female is weird. It's clinical
I actually already agree with your coworkers reactions but your survey isn't really what I was doing. In regular conversation, I don't call women "females" and don't know anybody who does. Yes, that would be clinical sounding and de-humanizing.
But in writing, when we wanted the text to refer to both F-gender-age-over-18=="women" plus F-gender-age-under-18=="girls" ... the elegant short phrase that covered both was "females". It's just a form of text compression.
And (some) women journalists still using "females" in 2022 means people are still using it innocuously. It's a shame that incels ruined it.
I fly an open cockpit aircraft (an Autogyro). In the winter months I wear a soft-shell flightsuit, with an Ororo electrically heated Gilet underneath. The flightsuit itself is very warm, and the gilet provides extra insulation over my torso even when off. This is sufficient to keep me warm most of the time, but then if it does get colder I can just turn on the Gilet the appropriate amount and I'll be cosy. The heating elements are close to my skin with both the gilet and flightsuit insulation on the outside so the heat stays in where it's needed.
This setup works anywhere from "slight winter chill" down to "as cold as I have encountered". And because my core is so warm, I don't even have to have too much in the way of gloves (I use some hand knitted merino roll top mittens so I can still use the controls easily).