At 21°C I can work normally at home (21.5°C to 25°C means absolute comfort to me), sitting behind a desk. At 20°C I am uncomfortable. Extra clothing doesn't help: anything beyond the thick jumper and fluffy slippers annoys me just as much as the lower temperature. I usually have to stop and take a hot shower in the middle of the day to get back to some semblance of comfort (not really conserving energy there then). At 19°C and lower I am miserable. Something to do with being tall and slim I guess. In summer heat my range of comfortable temperatures lies a few degrees higher too, so that evens out.
19°C is fine if I'm remodelling, hoovering, doing the dishes, or anything else that involves not sitting behind a desk, and I don't mind being out in freezing cold as long as I'm moving and have very, very good gloves on, but working behind a desk with my brain requires my body to be comfortable, relaxed, and not annoyed by stiff fingers hitting the wrong keys.
When the gas prices went up a few months ago I decided to turn off the heating in my apartment completely and see how far I could get. In the beginning it was about 16-17C which felt unpleasant, but by the time the indoor temp dropped to 12-13C a few weeks later, my metabolism had adjusted and it felt quite comfortable.
Great! My body doesn't adjust to that. It's only a minor hindrance in the grand scheme of things, but it sometimes does annoy me (and others whose comfort zone starts at a slightly higher temperature than the majority) when people think the problem is purely one of lack of acclimatization or grit.
I can adjust to higher temperatures just fine, but not sitting still (even with regular active breaks) at anything below 21°C. Our company used to rent office space when we were a startup in a place that didn't turn on the heating until temperatures outside dropped below a certain threshold. Sometimes this meant 19°C or 20°C for weeks: I don't get used to it; it just stops me being productive (and nice).
> when people think the problem is purely one of lack of acclimatization or grit.
In most situations, I feel like people talking extensively about grit assume the difficulty level is the same for everyone. And they tend to be antagonistic towards people who try to explain why some things are more difficult and instead double down on pushing grit.
I'm much the same. Coworkers and roommates tell me to add layers and drink tea, but layers and hot tea make no difference if it's consistently 20ºC or below. My brain just does not work for anything more demanding than deleting junk mail. Thank goodness for space heaters.
> At 20°C I am uncomfortable. Extra clothing doesn't help [...] I usually have to stop and take a hot shower in the middle of the day to get back to some semblance of comfort
I wonder how many people feel that way. I've never heard of anyone having to take a hot shower to keep warm in a 20°C room no matter the clothing. I wonder if it's just a taboo, something that simply doesn't come up, or if this happens to one in a thousand.
As for tall and slim, I'm also Dutch so I imagine I'd have heard of this more than zero times before if that were the main cause.
"Miserable" is a bit too much no? An extra layer of light clothing or getting up a doing a few steps will more than compensate for that.
I personally thing that "huge" sacrifice is feasible specially when the comfortableness is directly related to democratic countries being invaded on what is just the first step of something even much more sinister.
17 degrees might _feel_ cold, but it's definitely not cold at a level that's problematic to the human body. If it's a choice between wearing your coat inside or Russia taking over Ukraine, I think we should seriously opt for the former.
Yeah, this is the right place to fight about who has better tolerance for either extremes of heat without recognizing that people grow up in and adapt to very different climates.
My apartment gets to 17C all the time, I live in SF and never use heating. I do wear a sweater or hoodie during the day and use a thick comforter at night, but it's not bad (the cold air temp actually is really good for my sleep). You do need to make sure not to drink large amounts of cold liquid at once though.
I could see someone living their whole life in a tropical climate not being able to tolerate these temps, but in almost all of Europe this is a normal outdoor temperature. In the parts of Europe that actually get cold enough to need active heating, it's nothing. You would get used to it pretty quickly.
As a Canadian myself, 17°C would be very cold for an indoor space. The standard recommendations (for offices at least) are much higher than that.
> Canadian Standards Association (CSA) and ASHRAE standards are used for thermal comfort and ventilation in indoor offices [....] These standards are a good resource to use when considering the thermal conditions in indoor office space.
> According to CSA standards Z1004-12 – Work place Ergonomics – the comfort level at work is determined by temperature, humidity, wind and work-rest cycle. The optimal temperature range for office comfort should be 23 to 26 °C with 50% relative humidity in summers and 20 to 23.5°C at 50% relative humidity in winter.
17 is a bit on the chilly side indoors, but 23-25 in the winter (sweater season) sounds like a sweaty, awful, and, even before current events, expensive time.
21 is cozy, 20 is absolutely fine, 19 during the day is where we’re at now because toddler (who seems to be adapting better than me). We’ve been 18 at night for years - a big ol’ down comforter from my in-laws makes that ideal.
Back when we used to have offices rather than WFH, we eventually had employees sit in different rooms by their preferred room temperature rather than any practical function. There was so much silly behavior over the matter that was resolved by this (like people insisting on wearing coats and blankets in a 20C room because it was "freezing").
That's really amusing. Did it have any positive effect (aside from solving the AC control war). Wondering if it improved cross pollination of ideas between teams.
Not really. The company was reasonably small at the time (about 10 people) and most work done in the cloud anyway, so resolving the temperature dispute was the biggest win.
19°C is fine if I'm remodelling, hoovering, doing the dishes, or anything else that involves not sitting behind a desk, and I don't mind being out in freezing cold as long as I'm moving and have very, very good gloves on, but working behind a desk with my brain requires my body to be comfortable, relaxed, and not annoyed by stiff fingers hitting the wrong keys.