Heated Exchanges: The Battle Over Room Temperature
Lowering the flow temperature of your heating system can result in significant energy and cost savings. The concept of “low and slow” could be the key to reducing your energy bills and environmental impact. How low you can go with the flow temperature depends largely on your heating system’s design.
According to expert advice, setting the flow temperature of a gas combi boiler to 122 degrees Fahrenheit or below can help save money by making it easier for the boiler to run in condensing mode, recovering heat from hot gases that would otherwise escape into the air.
Last autumn, the UK charity Nesta launched an online tool to help people reduce their boiler’s flow temperature. The tool was a success, with 214,000 people using it to turn down their boiler flow temperature. This could equate to annual energy bill savings of £20 million ($25.21 million), or carbon savings totaling 37,000 tons.
Thermal Conflict: The Battle Over Room Temperature
However, putting the theory of lower temperatures and careful management of a heating schedule into practice might be more difficult, especially in homes with multiple people. Choosing a mutually agreeable room temperature can be challenging, especially as elderly people naturally feel colder due to lower blood circulation, and women tend to feel the cold more than men.
Thermostats can become flashpoints of “thermal conflict,” according to Benjamin Sovacool at the University of Sussex in the UK. He and his colleagues studied the behavior and responses of people living in homes fitted with smart heating technology in the UK. Disputes over room temperature often represented larger problems in those relationships, suggesting that people can be very particular about the temperatures they will tolerate.
Sovacool suggests that giving people a fine-grained level of control over their heating, with the help of a savvy thermostat, can reduce the likelihood of an altercation. However, there are no guarantees in life, and people’s preferences around room temperature tend to be “inelastic.” They may need to supplement room heating with warm clothes, electrically heated garments or blankets, and other low-cost measures to stay comfortable.
The challenge of maintaining room temperature is a recurring source of tension in many households. The battle over room temperature is real, and finding a compromise that satisfies everyone’s comfort level can be a tough challenge.” My partner and I fight over this all the time. I like it about 5 degrees cooler,” says Sovacool. “It’s how I’m built, darn it.”
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