Thoughts On Surviving The Coming Winter

We're no longer in winter, just in time for gas prices to go crazy, and with them electricity prices. When winter comes again, many of us will face a harsher struggle to stay warm than before. Perhaps all of us will, if shortages require rationing.

So I have a few thoughts on what we can do to lower the demands for heating that could be implemented quickly and fairly cheaply. They aren't new; our ancestors faced the same struggle, we have much experience from them we can draw on when we need to. If they were new, they wouldn't be quick and cheap(ish).

1. Mist showers. The mist shower (invented by Buckminster Fuller -- who else?) atomisers water to a far higher degree than a normal shower. This great reduces water flow, whilst still soaking the body. Testing by NASA shows that they are as effective as normal showers at washing the body, with a far lower demand for hot water and so energy. It is plausible that we could cut energy use by 1.5 kWh per shower, without sacrificing comfort, and do so merely by changing our showerheads.

2. Canopy beds. Better known perhaps as the four poster bed, the curtains trap heat, creating a bubble of warmer air above a sleeping person. Nowadays the all important curtains are rarely attached, but they should be. These could be brought back very quickly, with simple frames that go over existing beds.

3. Electric blankets. Or rather, spot heating. If people are sat in one place for a while, it makes more sense to heat that place than to heat the entire house. An electric blanket over a packed sofa could put almost all the heat produced into human bodies, rather than wasting it heating empty rooms and air and furniture. If smaller blankets are available (or made available -- existing manufacturing should be able to produce these?), they could be used on chairs. Heat people, not places.

 4. Woollen socks. Actual wool, not "woolly" cotton. Whilst admittedly not the greatest of energy saving technologies, you will still lose heat through your feet touching the cold floor (and even without that issue, cold floors are not the nicest things to walk on). Additionally, wool breathes, far better than cotton does. Perhaps these socks can be safely worn to bed without having to worry about getting trench foot from having your feet covered most of the time?

Well there it is, a few ideas that we can and probably should start working on. Winter is coming after all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The ASHRAE Ventilation Recommendations Are Too Low

With winter on its way, I've been thinking a lot about heating and insulation -- specifically, about what the minimum level of power required is given the need to heat up outside air in a properly ventilated home. This led me to the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, who provide guidance as to what the outside airflow rate should be to ensure acceptable air quality. Unfortunately, having done the maths regarding CO2 production, their recommendations are far too low. Healthy individuals take 12-20 breaths per minute. Each breath exhales 0.5 litres of air , so each person will exhale 6-10 litres every minute, which at a CO2 level of 4%, contains 100 times the CO2 of ambient air. In order to dilute this to a doubling of CO2 over ambient, around 800ppm, 600-1000 L (10-17 L/s) of outside air would be required, assuming the inhabitants are not engaged in physical activity that would raise their CO2 production significantly. The recommendations f
Read more

The Fae/acc Manifesto

It is a popular passtime of humans, since the advent of mass literacy, to write manifestos, calls to action, and the like. Especially in the age of the internet, when your potential audience is measured in the billions. And especially if you believe you have Something Important To Say, That Will Change The World. Your mileage may vary on whether or not this manifesto falls into that category; for the most part it is a collection and ordering of various streams of thought, partly inspired by and reacting to the plethora of “[x]/acc” manifestos and micromovements, about where humanity stands and should stand in the universe. Remember that acceleration is not always a change in speed; it can also be a change in direction… 1. A sufficiently complex process is indistinguishable from a person “ I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think."… ...Instea
Read more

The Subtle Future

Everyone knows about the Monofuture , even if they do not know it by that name. It is The Future (tm)! Flying cars! Monorails! Shiny glass and steel towers! Spaceships and spandex, all in the wondrous future of the year 2000AD! And everyone knows that it's not the future we got by the year 2000AD. This has made a few people very disappointed, and many people flustered, because it was the only somewhat-positive vision of the future they have been given. It's Star Trek or Mad Max, and if you look around you you will not see Star Trek, therefore we must be in the Mad Max timeline. But look around more. Just, look around you. Have you worked out what we're looking for? In 50 years of progress, what has fundamentally changed? The cars look a bit different, yes, but they are still cars. Even if autonomous and electric they will still be cars. The railways that carry much of the worlds freight would be instantly recognisable to Brunel. Airlines hit their top speed and took their
Read more