[luminouslow]

>heating an office space with 500+ people is much more efficient than heating 500 individual houses

Citation needed. I would argue its very hard to make any general statement about this. In my case the office is much more wasteful than the space I use for remote work for a multitude of reasons.

[lm28469]

I said I'm not convinced, it obviously isn't a general thing.

A friend of mine spends 500+ euros per month on gas for heating since he works from home, no way on earth his office uses 500 per person and per month on heat

[VBprogrammer]

A 2kW electric heater can heat up any reasonable size office room up to a temperature where you are going to have to strip to your underwear (or turn it off) in under an hour in my experience.

Even if it's on 8 hours a day constantly, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month that's 320kWh or just over £100 a month at UK energy prices.

[dijit]

additional note: UK energy prices are currently the highest in Europe.

not sure if that makes your anecdote out of date or if it puts further shade on the parents comment.

[cableshaft]

In comparison, we have a 1600 sq ft home and only have $50 USD gas bills lately. It's definitely been higher (at least double), but we've been learning to live with a colder thermostat.

Granted this is the US, and natural gas is considerably cheaper here than in a lot of countries in Europe right now, so you probably need to at least double what I said anyway for Europe.

[mcv]

Is that € 500 for just the working hours? Because homes are also generally heated for other uses than work. Those reasons don't go away if you work at the office. If you've got a spouse working from home, or kids coming from school, that house is going to be heated anyway.

[lm28469]

> Because homes are also generally heated for other uses than work

I've never heard of anyone heating their home when not in it, given the other comments it seems like it's the norm, weird

[scbrg]

The norms are different in different locations. Where I live (Sweden), I'd say pretty much everybody sets a comfortable temperature and keeps it at that.

OTOH, our houses are generally heavily insulated, so while heating a house is expensive, keeping it heated is relatively cheap. I'm always amazed at the lack of insulation when I travel abroad. I never freeze as much as when I leave Scandinavia (no joke).

[mcv]

I stop heating when I'm not home, but my home doesn't lose heat very fast. Except for my home office, which seems impossible to heat.

[dont__panic]

For those of us who live in a place that reaches freezing temperatures for months on end, there's no choice. If I don't heat my house, my pipes will freeze and I'll be out thousands of dollars in repair work and damage.

I turn the heat down to 55 or so (the lowest the thermostat will go) when I'm away for a few days. But I've never heard of anyone not leaving their heat on some setting for this reason. Do you live somewhere that almost never drops below freezing?

[lm28469]

> Do you live somewhere that almost never drops below freezing?

Grew up in a place that reaches -25c pretty often and never heard of that. It's in europe though so we probably have better insulation. I could leave my house 3 days and no pipe would burst, I've never heard of anyone having burst pipes now that I think about it. When I went to school and my parents were at work we'd shut down the heating completely, we were pretty poor so there is that, but I don't remember being cold

When I was in california we'd have to run heating full blast 24/7 to maintain 16c indoor so that my explain a few things

[dont__panic]

Woah, that's wild! I've lived in mostly wooden houses in the Northeast for most of my life, and it seems to happen to one or two people in every community per year.

It's mostly a problem where I come from during power outages -- if you don't have power for 2-3 days, you might not be able to run even a propane-based heating system. But maybe the prevalance of water baseboard heating systems contributes; I imagine they're the most vulnerable pipes in the house to freezing, since they by nature sit closest to cold exterior temperatures.

One more thing I assumed was a worldwide problem, that it turns out is just a result of shoddy American building quality. Sigh.

[alistairSH]

We lower the heat if nobody is home. But, that's the difference between 70* and 65*. With no heat, the house would eventually be 32* in the dead or winter.

And we only do that because smart thermostats exist and use our phones as presence sensors. Without that, we'd have to manually lower the heat and I doubt we'd bother/remember.

[mcv]

I certainly wouldn't heat your home when nobody is home, but most people do return home after a day at the office, and many people don't live alone. That's what I'm referring to.

Or do you demand that they live in the cold while you're at the office?

[watwut]

> The most common way of heating here is that you have radiators set up

Most people here would need to actively tweak it every time the leave the house and every time they come in. And do it separately for each room. Just from the way how heating works - you have valve in each room that you turn in order to adjust heating.

Of course no one does it every day twice.

[mcv]

I do. I turn up the heat in the morning and turn it down again in the evening. Smart thermostats can do that automatically, but my home office doesn't have a smart thermostat.

[lm28469]

That's the system I have and that's how I do it, same for my family, we never leave it blasting if no one is home

> Of course no one does it every day twice.

Why not ? it takes like 5 seconds

[watwut]

Sounds like fair inconvenience to go through every room and then have cold until it finally heats up.

[teh_klev]

I work from home full time, my gas bill is a fraction of that (~GBP100/month), and that's even accounting for the crazy energy cost increases we've seen in the UK.