Post by @rl_dane@polymaths.social

@rl_dane
67°F / 19°C

@jbowen

Holy crap, that's downright frigid, bruv!
Doesn't that cost you an arm and a leg?

@rl_dane That’s a very fine grained set of options no one is going to tap on. (I have never set foot in a private residence here in the UK with air con).

@normalmode

Wow, I just noticed that more people voted that they don't have/use aircon than all of the others put together.

Ouch. :(

@rl_dane Honestly, I’m surprised you got that many votes for aircon. I reckon most of those must’ve voted without noticing the UK restriction 😉

@normalmode

Likely 😄

@rl_dane@polymaths.social
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha... Home air conditioning in the UK? 🤣

(I'm aware some city based high-rise premium accomodation _may_ have air con, but generally it only exists in cars and offices here)

@rl_dane@polymaths.social
To answer from the original post what I would set air con to if I had it or when I'm in a hotel room, it's about 17°C

Was going to say I'm a bit weird, but turns out other people have said 18 so perhaps I'm not as weird as I thought.

@paul

Holy crap, that's really cold!

@paul

Really! I was aware that it wasn't necessarily widespread, but I assumed that at least newer homes would have it. Yikes!

How hot does it typically get in the summer, then?

You've reminded me of a trip to Victoria, BC in 2005 when it was getting "a little warm" in the hotel room, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to turn on the AC unit.

Of course, there WAS no AC unit. 😄

@rl_dane @paul For most of my life, 25° (77) was a *baking* hot day.

But for the past five years or so, 30° (86) is normal in the summer (not the *whole* summer, but for weeks at a time), and 40° (104) is no longer beyond the pale.

@normalmode @paul

Wow, that's a crazy increase.

I don't think I've noticed the summers getting hotter, because once it's over 40°C, it's just HOT.

I have noticed the winters becoming more irregular, though. A lot less snow, but occasional snowmageddon.

2021 was a horrible winter for us in Texas, and this winter may be the same.

@rl_dane @paul Yeah, it’s pretty alarming. I went to Vegas in my late twenties and it was 40° out. I won’t say I *dined out* on that story, but I was definitely telling people about it.

Now it seems 40° is just a temperature it gets to sometimes.

@rl_dane@polymaths.social in the summer typically we're in 30-38 C but maybe only for a few days. This summer has been really different though, and we've had high temperatures for weeks. Unbearable for me, personally.
I live by the coast though, so I do have the benefit of a cool breeze most of the time, which is why when I'm away in a city hotel I need cooler temperatures. That city air can be HOT

@rl_dane

Sorry I didn't see the UK thing and since I saw f I figured it was for backwards non metric Americans

@Asbestos

On brand for us, really. 😄

@rl_dane Hey :¬) I voted 24 because I remember that being the most used setting. 24 seemed to be fine indoors when compared to the hot temps outside. On the odd occasion, this year, we set 22.

@UrbanDjent

That's very reasonable, to me, and what I usually set mine to. ;)

@rl_dane so I've voted for 21C but that's because I've only got a single portable Aircon for my entire (small) house and setting it to that temperature means that it can cool most of the house to 24-25C.

@Tattooed_Mummy

@sheddi @rl_dane in winter I have the heating set to 20 ❄️😁

@Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

Ah, this is interesting to me. People seem to be more careful/miserly with heating than cooling.

68°F/20°C is what I set it to when I go to bed in the winter. I'll usually have it set to 72°F/22°C during the day.

Also, my home isn't very well insulated. Being by the windows can be a bit unpleasant.

@rl_dane @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi 20?? We are like a 17 or 18 in winter 🙃

@daniel @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

That would be very unpleasant. XD

@rl_dane @daniel @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi my living room thermostat is set to 19/16°C

@rl_dane @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

meanwhile, where I live (not the UK), it's ~30°C every day year round and I do not use AC. ;)

@rl_dane @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

When I was in the US, though, about the coldest I can be for extended periods of time is 20°C. Unless, perhaps, I'm piled under heaps of covers and stuffed animals…

@rl_dane @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

My own impression of why 'muricans complain about summer:

1. the ubiquitous controlled indoor climate doesn't allow anyone's bodies to actually adapt to the outdoor climate. I read at some point that it takes the body a few weeks in a certain climate to really adjust to being comfortable in it, which tracks with my own experience when entering and leaving the tropics.
2. so many 'muricans do not know the magic that is ceiling fans

@amin @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

I have ceiling fans. They can help a little, but I still can't imagine being without AC.

Also, one of the funniest things I've ever seen is an outdoor cieling fans where the blades were semi-melted and drooping downwards by about 45°.

TEXAS!!!! 😆

@rl_dane @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

sounds like shoddy materials to me. :P

@sotolf @amin @rl_dane @sheddi we have no heating on. This is current situation in the lounge. (we have a conservatory and it's sunny today) (uk October)

@Tattooed_Mummy @amin @rl_dane @sheddi Yeah, that seems pretty analogue to what we have here in austria at the time, back home it's around 4-11 degrees around this time.

@amin @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

WAIT, it's 30 AND HUMID, and you don't have AC? 😱

@rl_dane @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

I have it but don't use it. AC is expensive

@amin @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

That makes sense.

@rl_dane @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

That was a condition of me getting my own bedroom back in middle school or whatever, that I wouldn't run the AC at night, because that would increase our electricity bill by like 50% to have another room running AC all night. XD

(Each room has individual units, it's not central cooling.)

So, yeah, the rest of my family still uses AC.

@amin @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

Oooof, bro's living in an AC desert 😭

@rl_dane @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

Not sure I understand your meaning?

@amin @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

I mean that there's AC in the house, but you don't have it/can't use it.

Like an island of no-AC among other AC users/enjoyers.

@rl_dane @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

Ah.

That restriction isn't exactly enforced anymore, I'm used to it now. Those were the original terms and I was fine with them at the time, too. :)

Also, I will say that AC is less of a constant in this house than it was before my dad shed fifty kilos (he's now under [half-joking] doctor's orders to butter his toast).

@amin @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

Impressive!!

@amin @Tattooed_Mummy @sheddi

Does your GenX dad have any tips for this GenXer trying to shed about 20 kilos? ;)

@rl_dane nope, just a fan. But this summer was the hottest for a while and it seems to be getting hotter so we might invest in a portable unit. The problem is we only had a few days over about 25 in the past, so it wasn't worth the expense just for a couple of days

@Tattooed_Mummy

Yeah, this year was nuts:

rld@Intrepid:~$ weathersummary 

Weather summary for days over 100°F: 

year  days  readings   year range     data range  
----  ----  --------  -------------  -------------
2024    0       0     10/10 - 12/31               
2025    5      94     01/01 - 12/31  07/25 - 08/19
2026   49     751     01/01 - 10/09  07/08 - 09/15

(That's 37.7°C)

rld@Intrepid:~$ ctof 40
104.0
rld@Intrepid:~$ weathersummary 104

Weather summary for days over 104°F: 

year  days  readings   year range     data range  
----  ----  --------  -------------  -------------
2024    0       0     10/10 - 12/31               
2025    1       2     01/01 - 12/31  07/31 - 07/31
2026   10     141     01/01 - 10/09  07/21 - 08/24

@sheddi @Tattooed_Mummy

Ah, setting it low, knowing it'll never get that low. It's like that at my aunt's house, because it's pretty big.

@rl_dane I would assume anything below 23°C would make it very unpleasant to go outside?

@kabel42

I mean, it can be unpleasant to go outside, no matter what you set the aircon to, but yeah. ;)

@rl_dane if you are already used to it being hot, 30°C isn't that bad, but your body takes days to fully adjust

@kabel42

Yeah, you do get used to stuff. I remember visiting Austin during the summer in 2008 and being amazed that I actually used to live there. The humidity was just unbearable, and it's not even that humid a place.

@rl_dane Having grown up in Guatemala (way up in the mountains), I never knew anyone who had A/C in their home. The only time we encountered it was when we would vacation at a resort hotel down near the coast. That’s why it would always be such a shock when we’d drive up to Dallas in August.

Our temps (at elevation 1900m/6200 feet) generally were in the 60s–70s Fahrenheit. We would get three or four winter mornings every year when there would be frost on the grass, and a few summer afternoons when it crept up into the upper 80s — but that was a fairly dry heat.

@ossobuffo

Sounds like paradise to me. ;)

@rl_dane
No air-conditioning in the house but the car climate control is usually set between 15° and 16.5°... except this year when it was broken for the hottest couple of months.

@MurrayWindripper

That's rough. I drove with the AC off and the windows rolled up after yoga a couple times just to keep the warmth for longer to make sure I didn't get any charliehorses. It was kinda brutal, even after being in a yoga frame of mind. 😄