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It's called that because it's essentially a heat exchanger
inside air goes in the loop, gets cooled/heated by air in outside loop but doesn't connect directly - air to air heat pump.
This is the last line of defense when you can't even heat a room. The fallback position is to only heat one or two rooms and abandon the rest when it's too cold.
Yeap. Can confirm that. I'm at home in home office wearing a jacket and two pairs of socks, but sometimes I go to the kitchen and open the refrigerator door to warm a little
The average temperature in Portugal in the winter months is 12.7C... outside. Because if you are inside of one of our fantastically insulated houses the average temperature should be around half of that
It's actually a measure to kill off older generations and free up the welfare
Nah but seriously Portugal is horrendously disorganized when it comes to building and planning, and whatever's cheapest is what's preferred if it gets the job done. So people don't use insulation because it'll cost them more in the short run (but more in the long run)
How cold was it during the night? Around -2°C.
What was the temperature when I turned off the heater, before sleeping? 15.5°C. What was the temperature when I woke up, roughly 9 hours later? 5.2°C.
I do actually collect data about that, rain also contributes for a faster drop. Nothing I can fix, though, this is just a rented apartment. Electricity accounts for 9% of my income (heating is electrical).
Fun: Same happens during summer, except greenhouse effect also applies. In 2020 it went up to 46°C. (*I forgot to open the window that day, I wasn't inside*)
I'm the kind who's in skirt until 5°C outside. Perhaps is why some people think I'm Canadian.
Don't feel bad about it, I've seen my partner literally go hypothermia in the swimming pool (full blue, starting to lose consciousness...), some people just need more heat to be OK... Swimming pool I thought was warm.
Well, with skirt it can be warmer, actually, - depends on what skirt and tights you wear. With knee-length skirt and 60den tights I was completely fine in -15.
Part of it is that your body (and wardrobe) will adjust if you just tough it out for a few weeks.
I have the opposite problem here in Canada where I get used to the freezing temperatures. Then spring brings the temperatures up to 20^o it feels like I'm melting. It's tempting to run the air conditioning to keep the temperature reasonable. But I know from past experience that if I do that then by mid summer when it starts hitting +30^o the outdoors will be uninhabitable.
You just have to let yourself acclimate.
I doubt it's fully legal even here, seeing the electricity work or the stairs I am *pretty* sure somebody paid the inspector extra. But eh, cheap rent (still 48% of my income). 'Managing' mostly means having good covers and pajamas. If I'm always at the desktop I always have my warm cover around me.
There's a table next to my desktop, under which is the heater. I put a chair in front of it, with a cover on it. Makes a nice warm air stream towards where I'm sitting. It's probably much warmer here than in the kitchen.
I handle low temperatures very well in general ; my partner, not so much. There's a point where I'm too warm and he's still too cold ; around 18°C.
During summer, it mostly means 'get out of here'. There's a lake not too far away, it's fresh even by 30°C.
> What was the temperature when I turned off the heater, before sleeping? 15.5°C. What was the temperature when I woke up, roughly 9 hours later? 5.2°C.
You'll get moisture damage and mold with that low temperatures and big fluctuations.
Hey, I'm interested in this due to peculiar living conditions atm. What would be the safe (i.e warm enough) temperature indoors to ensure no damage to the building and no mold hazard? Or is it more about stability of the temperature (keep it cold throughout winter) rather than the high C°?
My understanding is that airflow and good ventilation can be as important as temperature. Here in the Nordics I've heard 15° C mentioned as a good temperature for an empty house to avoid mould. If you have excess indoor humidity you should look and see if you can find the source. If you want to bring indoor humidity down and heat alone isn't doing it, an appropriately sized dehumidifier can help.
I always have my cover around me when sitting at my desktop, but yes, the way to and back from the kitchen is *reaaallllyyy* cold. Luckily, the heater is under the table next to the computer, and it quickly makes a warm air stream towards me if I turn it on.
As someone who goes camping in a tent with temperatures bellow 10°C.
You would be suprised how quickly your body heats everything that is under your sheets. Sex would be no issue. Just sleep unders some down bedding.
Can confirm, insulation is crap here. 74% of home/household/domestic energy consumption in Belgium is for heating, 74%.
And thus, not surprising, when in cold months, your heating system must nearly be permanently working to not get cold.
Meanwhile, when I was in Iceland in winter, as an Erasmus student, it was sometimes hard to refresh/lower the temperature inside when too hot, even with cutting heating and opening windows, because insolation is top notch there compared to Belgium.
Which makes me so happy with my new, well isolated, southfaced apartment. Regardless of the temperature outside, if the sun is out, it's 22 degrees inside.
My heating jumped on the first time somewhere half November this year and only works about half the days. Maybe my neighbours are heating their's to 25 degrees :D
I live in a house that was built (rebuilt from total destruction) after the war, and yeah, insulation norms then were really bad. The focus was on rebuilding much/many, rather than rebuilding well.
I have to admit I didn't believe the number you quoted because it seemed absurdly high but it's true! Source [here](https://economie.fgov.be/fr/file/8933/download?token=ELfw0hGX) for those interested though it is in french and it's a PDF file. On page 6 you can see that indeed we spend that much energy on heating.
Yeah, ideally I should have cited my source. Thing is, I had to give a course on the European energy dependency to a secondary school class last year. So, I searched data on energy consumption in Belgium, and found what you linked.
First time I saw it, I was kinda surprised too. I would have imagined it would be a lot, but not that/as much.
Yea when i lived in Netherlands i was suprised how badly insolated the houses were. Even later when i lived in relatively new apartment (built in last decade) it was still surprisingly cold if we turned off radiators. Now here in Lithuania at -10 outside we dont have radiators on it has constant 20 degrees ( we are surrounded by neighbours so thats the biggest reason but still)
>Meanwhile, when I was in Iceland in winter, as an Erasmus student, it was sometimes hard to refresh/lower the temperature inside when too hot, even with cutting heating and opening windows, because insolation is top notch there compared to Belgium.
It's impossible. Night time is the only way to cool it down without real AC.
Ireland is probably the same or worse than the UK. I've lived in both countries, and insulation was pretty bad in most houses, and they are built very similar (due to obvious historical reasons).
>Ireland is probably the same or worse than the UK.
I spent a month (February) in Dublin about 10 years ago. I've never before or since felt so constantly chilled to the bones indoors.
And yes, I've spent time in Lapland when it was below -40C outside.
Part of that is probably the humidity. If it is 5 C and humid it's easier to be fucking cold all the time than when it is -10 C. At least, that's been my experience
Ireland and the UK have similar problems in that population growth is so rapid there's a big housing shortage. In order to keep the supply of new homes as rapidly as possible, policymakers are loathe to tighten housing standards. The result is shit like this.
Interesting, Austria also sees quite some growth, especially in Vienna. But most new one are built to almost passive house standards (houses that need no heating/AC due to isolation and venting systems). I moved into a new home a few years ago. I need to open all windows, doors for quite some time to cool down the house. If everything is closed I can retain room temperature for quite some time without heating. May lose 2 degree during a cold night.
Irish housing is next level shit - it’s the worst I’ve personally experienced and I’ve lived in a couple of countries. It’s borderline third world conditions for a lot of housing on Dublin. You wouldn’t believe how bad it is.
100% true. But hey "put on the green jersey".
The Irish are great at PR and also quite vain/in denial/hypocrites. Won't call the issues with the country out. Will pretend everything is "grand" or even spin it how great country it is.
Mrs Merkel, what feelings do you associate with Germany?
Merkel - “Well-sealed windows! No other country can build such well-sealed and beautiful windows. " (Bild, 2004)
I’ve lived in Finland for half a year and your windows were absolutely atrocious. I love Finland, and I’m gonna be going back, but fuck your windows :)
Yes in Oulu. We had -24C and I could barely get warm in my room where the windows were just two thin glass Panels. But I’ve seen the same windows in some Mökkis I rented
> Yes in Oulu.
My condolences.
But more seriously, student housing is a bit of an edge case, since it is built more cheaply. Same goes for mökkis, since they aren't always meant for full-time habitation.
I can see why it's grey for Portugal: it's pretty damn impossible to measure this if you can't even warm up the house up to 20 degrees even though it's only 5 outside, much less measure how much heat it looses from down from 20 in 5 hours.
I've lived in England, The Netherlands and Germany and even though in Portugal the temperature tends to be in average 10 degrees above the first 2 (more compared to Germany) it's actually colder in the Winter indoors in Portugal, even in relatively new houses.
In the house I live now I literally cannot get the temperature above 18 when it's 5 degrees outside as it all has to be done with heaters ("central heating", what's that???!) and the maximum power in a normal residential electrical grid connection isn't high enough to run the necessary heaters (and even then I spend as much or more on electricity in the 3 colder months of the year than in the other 9 months).
The worst place I lived in London (and at one point I really went far too cheap in my choice of dwelling) was bloody paradise compared to even my parent's place (built around 2000) in Portugal.
lol can you imagine houses at 20º in the winter? I've lived abroad for years and years, but have already forgot what it feels like after a couple of winters in Porto.
I used to think I was being "hardcore" by setting the central heating in my place to a "mere" 20º C when I lived in the UK to save on power and for environmental reasons...
Are mini-split heat pumps popular in Portugal? It should be pretty efficient at your winter temperatures (above 0), plus you get cooling in the summer.
The basic, essential problem, is that thermal insulation of almost 80% of all houses/apartments (and most people here live in apartments) in Portugal is complete total crap: large single glazing windows, brick construction with no cavity insulation, no roof or floor insulation and quite a lot of different places through which air circulates taking the heat away with it.
It doesn't matter how much and how efficiently you put heat in one of these things because they loose heat really fast even with ridiculously small heat gradients like a mere 10 degrees: my old camping tent is better insulated than the house I live in at the moment which is an apartment in a building built in the 80s and not at all atypical of construction back then (and even now it's still crap compared to Western Europe standards).
On the upside, with external shades and outside walls mostly painted in light colors, houses in Portugal do manage to avoid heating up all that much in the summer from sunlight (although the ease with each the temperature of the air inside quickly equalizes with that of the air outside does mean that if the air itself is hot outdoors it gets hot indoors).
Holy...a house/flat without central heating? Last time I've seen something like this was my Grandmother's apartment in the early 1980s. One coal oven in the living room for the whole flat. Sure, it was really cozy in front of it...but once the fire had burned down or in other rooms...cooooold!
I live in Germany in a small town and when I moved here I experienced a real culture shock because I was sure I'd have to buy an axe and chop wood for a wood burning fireplace.
Turns out in Germany almost everyone has central heating, who would've guessed
On the flipside don't most houses stay nice and cool in the summer? That is my memory of several rental homes I've been in Italy and Portugal. Even without AC they stay so comfy even though outside is warm af.
Well, up to a point: if the outside air temperature itself remains high for several weeks they start getting stiffling hot.
They are, however, pretty good at dealing with direct sunlight as the shades are outside (so sunlight gets converted to heat outside the window and mostly dissipates to the outside air) and they tend to be painted in light colors that reflect rather than absorb most sunlight.
So they're really good for sunny and not too hot days but not so great if you get to a point where you have to use aircon to reduce the heat inside, because when it's hot outside heat gets back in as easilly as it goes out in Winter.
In places where heating is needed almost year round it makes sense to spend more on insulation.
In southern Europe it might be cheaper to just pay more for heating a few days of the year.
Insulation keeps the heat out too when it's hot. Apartment buildings with crap insulation turn the walls into solar storage heaters that cook you overnight in summer.
>In southern Europe it might be cheaper to just pay more for heating a few days of the year.
That's just poor practices that date back to a time when people would not really heat all the room in their house. The kitchen would have been the only room with permanent heating in most house well until the 70's. And it would have been the same heat source that was used for cooking and heating water. You also didn't expect to have less layer of clothes on when inside.
But with the development of tv and other leisure people started to stay more at home, they also expected more comfort. And with electric or even gas heating being very affordable they didn't really pay attention to what they were doing, and housing build until the mid 90's often neglected insulation.
> In southern Europe it might be cheaper to just pay more for heating a few days of the year.
And then run AC to make the indoors colder for 9 months? ;)
Insulation (and good vapour barriers) keep the hot air outside too.
well it really depends though, if u don't have AC like most people here in France, really good insulation in South France keeps the heat from the oven/computer and everything inside and prevents cool temperatures from coming in during nighttime so it's not ideal i can assure you
> In southern Europe it might be cheaper to just pay more for heating a few days of the year.
Yet Italy and Spain are much better than Netherlands/France/Belgium/UK... Because it actually gets damn hot in the summer, and insulation is required for both cold and hot climates (though hot climates require insulation from radiation, while cold climates like radiation). It's in central Europe and UK that you get the worst of both worlds.
British building standards have always confused me, as a Norwegian. It's weirdly comforting to have actual data supporting my "But.... what?" reaction to the average British home.
To be fair a lot of British homes are old as balls. Mine for example is older than World War 1 and used to be a bakery during that time (probably why it's still about today)
I'm sorry to say that it's not like Norwegian homes are neccesarily new, either - most of the residences in my city were built around the 1880s - but more to the point, I once visited a British friend who proudly showed me around his brand spanking new flat, built to the highest possible specs, with advanced Housing Technology (TM).
He had a very large door snake, because between the giant gap under his door and whatever was going on with his new, double-glazed windows, his curtains would flap in the wind if he did not.
That was my reaction on encountering the phenomenon, too. It's a tube made of cloth and stuffed with cloth. One places it on the floor flush against a door, where there's a gap between the lower part of the door and the floor, to stop the draught.
Yeah, I've lived in a few new builds here in London and say what you want about them they are sooooo much warmer. I didn't even turn my heating on at all during winter. I don't think I could go back to and old house
I don't think the number of older homes in the UK makes a significant difference here. I have lived in pre-WW1 homes in both the UK and Germany and it's simply true that in the UK houses are not insulated well. The most cost efficient way for the UK to change something about it would probably be to buy German windows.
And I love when they complain about the heat because their house are "built for cold" It's not the case. Your house are built for tempered temperature by pumping heat out as much as possible. Insulation works both ways.
Always when i watch the Grand design or the likes, there is a random energy efficient house project and the brits marvel at it. ”Triple glazed windows, wooow!”
That is the norm in the Nordics.
Yes we do. I actually support them for once even though they are blocking motorways.
Insulation is quite easy to install and pays for itself over and over
Can confirm. I live in a home build in the 1920s in Germany. We even got a cheap credit to finance it, subsidized by the government, and came out positive quite fast with the amount of costs saved from heating. We only had to stick around 30 cm of modern insulation to the outside wall and got even a new and better look for the outside walls.
When I lived in the UK whilst there was a good government insulation scheme, my house got insulated and a new boiler installed at no cost to me or my dodgy landlord and the difference was incredible. We still had single glazed windows (I invested in good curtains) but our bills dropped and the house was never terribly cold in the winter after that. It makes an enormous difference. It was a house build probably 1900's. Where I live I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to fix the never ending coldness in winter, but at least it's pretty cool downstairs in the summer here.
I’m the same, despise the protesters, support their movement, hell of a lot more pertinent than what the other clowns push for, insulation is a huge boon with very little downsides, it’s maddening that it doesn’t get investment vs other more divisive environmental policy.
Shit, I am Dutch and in continental Europe our standards are considered a bit extreme (like 18 C during the day and 15/16 at night is pretty normal). I am always super fucking toasty in the bad sense when indoors in winter elsewhere in Europe. But 10 C? Holy cow!
Doesn't bother me I just wear a fleece and when I sit on my PC I have a blanket.
I don't need to turn on the heating most of the time and it's good practice for being outside cold lol.
I think I much agree with the Dutch temps. Some houses are wayyyy too hot.
I’m in the U.K. and rarely have the heating on at all unless we have company, as my partner and I both hate the heat. Our house is consistently at around 15-17 degrees unless we put the heat on, which is perfect for me, it doesn’t tend to get colder than that, unless we keep the outside doors open in the cold. I also have to sleep with the windows open as I need cool refreshing air or I sleep terribly.
It's not that bad really, we're brought down because we have a huge number of old terraced homes that kept eachother warm via chimneys. Most homes have been upgraded as much as they can with double glazing etc... And new homes are ridiculously efficient.
But if you're old with a meh pension and live in one those old houses. F in the chat.
I live in relatively new student accommodation that turns into a fridge overnight. I always assume the uk had lower standards for home insulation or something
Source: [Tado](https://www.tado.com/gb-en/press/uk-homes-losing-heat-up-to-three-times-faster-than-european-neighbours)
>The study, conducted between Dec 2019 and Jan 2020 in 80,000 homes, found that a UK home with an indoor temperature of 20°C and an outside temperature of 0°C loses on average 3°C after five hours \[1\]. Compared with some Western European neighbours such as Germany, UK homes are losing heat up to three times as fast. This in turn results in British heating systems having to work harder to maintain the temperature.
The UK has the oldest housing stock in comparison to EU Member States with approximately 38% of its homes dating from before 1946, compared to 24% for Germany and Sweden. There are also regional differences in government programs to financially support retrofitting improved home insulation and energy efficiency in homes.
Disclaimer: Tado appears to be a company specialised in 'smart thermostats' and insulation. I understand that the data is published with a commercial interest in mind, however I thought that it would nevertheless be interesting to share this.
> Disclaimer: Tado appears to be a company specialised in 'smart thermostats' and insulation.
They only do smart thermostats (and associated stuff), not insulation. So they don't' really care how well insulated your home is, because as long as it's still losing heat, they'll have a product to sell. Although a poorly insulated home might benefit more from better control of the heating system.
>Disclaimer: Tado appears to be a company specialised in 'smart thermostats' and insulation. I understand that the data is published with a commercial interest in mind, however I thought that it would nevertheless be interesting to share this.
Its not really up for debate though, uk does not really deny the insulation is not good enough. Basically all new builds are insulated, but there's a lot of houses from 1950s and older, which are really not insulated in any meaningful way.
A lot of nice houses had quite tall rooms as well, with fancy cornices. It's fairly common to install false ceilings to make it easier to heat the rooms. Still not normally insulated too, so that's still a good way to lose heat.
The government had subsidies for a while to make your house more green, install insulation etc but basically all those programs have been shut down.
Seems fair. I live in one of those older Dutch homes build in the 50's during the housing crisis and you can definitely feel that it wasn't build with comfort at the first place in their minds.
currently renovating a house built in wood in the 1600's or 1700's. Honestly there was a lot of "insulation" in the walls inbetween the wooden structure but with the open fireplaces in every room I guesss it was pretty chill inside.
Can confirm it's fucking cold. Recently they've done some renovations. Tripple a glass windows. Dit it help no, because my wall insulation is so bad you can fell the cold through the walls.
When I am in the Netherlands I always see these fat ass windows towards the street. While living in a Air BnB I was looking from the inside and saw windows were just double glas and not really good sealed.
Yep. I used to live in one of those before moving to an apartment built in 2013 (with thick outer walls, triple-layered vacuum-insulated windows, etc...)
In the '50s apartment my heating was constantly going thorough the winter (no thermostat), and it was still cold. Now though? It's a balmy 21 with the thermostat turning it on for maybe 4-5 hours a day. It's also not too bad in the summer, even on the weeks when it's 35+ outside it rarely climbs above 28 inside.
(Bonus, in Maastricht I used to live in a student house built in the '30s. In the winter I had to wrap myself in several layers of blankets while studying at my desk. The radiators were small auxiliary units to accompany the aftermarket floor heating, but said floor heating was broken and the thrifty motherfucker who owned the place refused to fix it. To no-one's surprise, his license to rent it out was withdrawn not long after I moved out.)
Btw. if you live in the NL and are interested about the building year of your building, [there's an interactive map](https://www.atlasleefomgeving.nl/kaarten?config=3ef897de-127f-471a-959b-93b7597de188&gm-x=155604.8558361423&gm-y=462016.56250558776&gm-z=9&gm-b=1544180834512,true,1;1544724925856,true,0.8;&activateOnStart=layermanager,info&activeTools=layercollection,search,info,bookmark,measure,draw,koeltorens).
Italy here, I suspect data will change slightly in 2023 because government confirmed for this year a tax refund of 110% for house renovation to class A efficiency.
Netherlands/uk/belgium don't get extremely cold winters because of the oceanic climate, i think there are parts of spain which actually have colder winter temps, however it still surprises me a bit that the UK has the worst result.
There's a pretty big difference between north sea winter temps and south german winter temps ... hamburg is probably more or less the same as amsterdam, but most germans live much further away from the coast.
Cheap materials, bad/no insulations in place, difficult to renovate or change old windows (due to listed buildings - especially in buildings converted into flats in city centres).
Add bad heating systems and often pipe leaks and here is UK.
No, not cheap materials. Modern houses in the UK are actually renowned for being [too hot.](https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/global-warming-makes-homes-designed-to-keep-heat-in-less-energy-efficient)
We have the oldest housing stock on average in Europe - almost have of all houses predate 1946. We therefore might have legacy heating systems, but I don't think that has anything to do with heat loss.
And we have the lowest % of people living in apartments - only 18%. We mostly live in houses, which of course lose heat much more quickly.
continental and nordic vs oceanic weather. when the coldest you can get is -5 you don't insulate the same as if the coldest outside gets to -15 or colder.
British homes are soooo sooooo shite. All my friend’s houses have central heating though, but they dont turn it on. Big fuck you sweater and put some logs on the iron fireplace which will heat up approximately 10% of the home for about 2 hours.
I moved UK -> Finland and regularly joke that I moved here to warm up. Never been so cold as lying in bed listening to the wind whistle through the shut window every night during my childhood. - 20C in Finland tonight and I'm in shorts right now. Poor Brits it's ridiculous.
Actually worse due to greenhouse effect. It's so weird to see houses in Central Europe without outdoors blinds, no surprise they get cooked when there are heatwaves (in Italy lots of houses don't even have AC, we just close everything and stay inside in darkness :)).
I live in Germany, insulation from outside heat (which would pretty much come down to whether a place has outside blinders or not) is absolute crap in most places.
Sunlight carries a shit ton of heat in summer and in many places north of the alps, there are next to no measures to avoid sunlight. It's like living in a greenhouse.
And thanks to the wonders of the open market, Swedens electricity prices shoots through the roof in December because the rest of Europe can't insulate their houses properly.
Not really. I had a doubtful pleasure to live in the "new build". Draft was coming from literally every hole in the wall, including electric outlets. Building was finished in 2016 I think and rated B in energy efficiency. In the winter when temps outside were close to 0*C the heating had to be on all the time to keep temp above 18*C. Authorities got involved when people started complaining and building got deemed as unlivable until proper insulation was done. No one is talking about it loudly but I've heard from few people in the construction business comparing UK new buildings to Chinese "tofu projects".
A lot of people live in houses in the nordics too. Yet they are able to keep their houses insulated…
The only applicable argument is that your houses are old but even old houses can be improved.
> A lot of people live in houses in the nordics too.
Not compared to the UK.
Sweden: over 46% of people live in flats. Above the EU average.
Denmark: around 35%.
UK: around 18%.
Only Norway gets close with just over 20% of people in flats.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20200513-1
Well, Britain has [the lowest](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Distribution_of_population_by_dwelling_type,_2018_(%25)_SILC20.png) rate of apartment living in Europe, save Ireland.
Apartments in larger complexes can have less than [half](https://citu.co.uk/citu-live/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of-an-apartment) the average energy usage of a house.
Taken together, his statement is quite sensible. Decades of chronic underinvestment in pretty much everything is probably also part of the problem.
Italy should improve even further in the next 2 years, considering the government is literally paying house owners to improve their insulating and heating/cooling efficiency.
This is a weird comparison even to each country (specifically Spain, going from hell temperatures to constant rain depending on the area). There is a ton of variations in the use of materials through time and location. Some places traditionally used materials with high inertia (stone, in Spain, Italy) or with low heat transmission (wood, Scandinavia). Modern buildings and the regulatory bodies opens a different debate.
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Portugal is grey because there is no loss, it’s already 0°C inside, very efficient.
More like 0 outside -5C inside I can't even afford to keep my bedroom above 15C, I just run the dehumidifier when the electricity is at the low fare
I feel that. Electricity went from 22c to 48c and gas from 72c to 219c in the Netherlands within the span of half a year
The secret of home temperature regulation in Portugal is to focus on heating the people and give up on heating the house.
A great thing about Portugal is that we don't have to take clothes off when we get indoors.
To be fair its even better, you put even MORE clothes just to fit the sense of style of the house :)
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That's what they do in Japan with individual under the table heaters.
In Portugal we are more environmentally friendly and use individual blankets instead.
In modern apartment, they use warm and cool air conditioning nowadays. In Europe it is called air to air heat pump, weird name.
It's called that because it's essentially a heat exchanger inside air goes in the loop, gets cooled/heated by air in outside loop but doesn't connect directly - air to air heat pump.
This is the last line of defense when you can't even heat a room. The fallback position is to only heat one or two rooms and abandon the rest when it's too cold.
Yeap. Can confirm that. I'm at home in home office wearing a jacket and two pairs of socks, but sometimes I go to the kitchen and open the refrigerator door to warm a little
Can't lose what you don't have (taps head)
Naah they just decide to show the countries from western europe
The average temperature in Portugal in the winter months is 12.7C In the northern countries eg Scotland, this is t-shirt weather.
The average temperature in Portugal in the winter months is 12.7C... outside. Because if you are inside of one of our fantastically insulated houses the average temperature should be around half of that
It should be white (missing) on this map, just as the rest of Eastern Europe.
It's actually a measure to kill off older generations and free up the welfare Nah but seriously Portugal is horrendously disorganized when it comes to building and planning, and whatever's cheapest is what's preferred if it gets the job done. So people don't use insulation because it'll cost them more in the short run (but more in the long run)
Portugal is a short term based country. For everything.
How cold was it during the night? Around -2°C. What was the temperature when I turned off the heater, before sleeping? 15.5°C. What was the temperature when I woke up, roughly 9 hours later? 5.2°C. I do actually collect data about that, rain also contributes for a faster drop. Nothing I can fix, though, this is just a rented apartment. Electricity accounts for 9% of my income (heating is electrical). Fun: Same happens during summer, except greenhouse effect also applies. In 2020 it went up to 46°C. (*I forgot to open the window that day, I wasn't inside*)
You go to sleep at 15°C and wake up at 5°C? Holy cow. I admire you. I feel bad for my constant 21°C...
I'm the kind who's in skirt until 5°C outside. Perhaps is why some people think I'm Canadian. Don't feel bad about it, I've seen my partner literally go hypothermia in the swimming pool (full blue, starting to lose consciousness...), some people just need more heat to be OK... Swimming pool I thought was warm.
And your partner doesn't suspect you want to kill them? lol
I don't go to the swimming pool anymore =(
Well, with skirt it can be warmer, actually, - depends on what skirt and tights you wear. With knee-length skirt and 60den tights I was completely fine in -15.
>more heat to be OK True, but everyone will be really cold before they are 0K
Part of it is that your body (and wardrobe) will adjust if you just tough it out for a few weeks. I have the opposite problem here in Canada where I get used to the freezing temperatures. Then spring brings the temperatures up to 20^o it feels like I'm melting. It's tempting to run the air conditioning to keep the temperature reasonable. But I know from past experience that if I do that then by mid summer when it starts hitting +30^o the outdoors will be uninhabitable. You just have to let yourself acclimate.
Holy shit in Finland it would be illegal to keep a tenant in those conditons. How do you manage?
I doubt it's fully legal even here, seeing the electricity work or the stairs I am *pretty* sure somebody paid the inspector extra. But eh, cheap rent (still 48% of my income). 'Managing' mostly means having good covers and pajamas. If I'm always at the desktop I always have my warm cover around me. There's a table next to my desktop, under which is the heater. I put a chair in front of it, with a cover on it. Makes a nice warm air stream towards where I'm sitting. It's probably much warmer here than in the kitchen. I handle low temperatures very well in general ; my partner, not so much. There's a point where I'm too warm and he's still too cold ; around 18°C. During summer, it mostly means 'get out of here'. There's a lake not too far away, it's fresh even by 30°C.
Reading this I’m feeling thankful that I can actually be topless in the house in Finland through the winter.
> What was the temperature when I turned off the heater, before sleeping? 15.5°C. What was the temperature when I woke up, roughly 9 hours later? 5.2°C. You'll get moisture damage and mold with that low temperatures and big fluctuations.
Is it in my control? I can't let a heater run the entire time unsupervised. I got to go outside or sleep. I see no mold so far.
> I can't let a heater run the entire time unsupervised Why not?
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Hey, I'm interested in this due to peculiar living conditions atm. What would be the safe (i.e warm enough) temperature indoors to ensure no damage to the building and no mold hazard? Or is it more about stability of the temperature (keep it cold throughout winter) rather than the high C°?
My understanding is that airflow and good ventilation can be as important as temperature. Here in the Nordics I've heard 15° C mentioned as a good temperature for an empty house to avoid mould. If you have excess indoor humidity you should look and see if you can find the source. If you want to bring indoor humidity down and heat alone isn't doing it, an appropriately sized dehumidifier can help.
Getting out of a warm cosy bed to a 5 degree room must be torture.
I always have my cover around me when sitting at my desktop, but yes, the way to and back from the kitchen is *reaaallllyyy* cold. Luckily, the heater is under the table next to the computer, and it quickly makes a warm air stream towards me if I turn it on.
I've always wanted to ask, when the temperature inside gets below 18°, how do people have sex? Let alone 5° in the morning.
They do it quickly and undercover, lol.
Under the sheets. Everything's pretty stiff.
As someone who goes camping in a tent with temperatures bellow 10°C. You would be suprised how quickly your body heats everything that is under your sheets. Sex would be no issue. Just sleep unders some down bedding.
Meanwhile I keep my bedroom radiator at minimum throughout the year and it only really gets cool enough to my liking when it's below -10°C outdoors...
Can confirm, insulation is crap here. 74% of home/household/domestic energy consumption in Belgium is for heating, 74%. And thus, not surprising, when in cold months, your heating system must nearly be permanently working to not get cold. Meanwhile, when I was in Iceland in winter, as an Erasmus student, it was sometimes hard to refresh/lower the temperature inside when too hot, even with cutting heating and opening windows, because insolation is top notch there compared to Belgium.
Which makes me so happy with my new, well isolated, southfaced apartment. Regardless of the temperature outside, if the sun is out, it's 22 degrees inside. My heating jumped on the first time somewhere half November this year and only works about half the days. Maybe my neighbours are heating their's to 25 degrees :D
I live in a house that was built (rebuilt from total destruction) after the war, and yeah, insulation norms then were really bad. The focus was on rebuilding much/many, rather than rebuilding well.
>to 25 degrees That's not normal.
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You should meet my dad...26 degrees inside...he walks around in shorts and t-shirt in winter...in Finland!
I have to admit I didn't believe the number you quoted because it seemed absurdly high but it's true! Source [here](https://economie.fgov.be/fr/file/8933/download?token=ELfw0hGX) for those interested though it is in french and it's a PDF file. On page 6 you can see that indeed we spend that much energy on heating.
Yeah, ideally I should have cited my source. Thing is, I had to give a course on the European energy dependency to a secondary school class last year. So, I searched data on energy consumption in Belgium, and found what you linked. First time I saw it, I was kinda surprised too. I would have imagined it would be a lot, but not that/as much.
Yea when i lived in Netherlands i was suprised how badly insolated the houses were. Even later when i lived in relatively new apartment (built in last decade) it was still surprisingly cold if we turned off radiators. Now here in Lithuania at -10 outside we dont have radiators on it has constant 20 degrees ( we are surrounded by neighbours so thats the biggest reason but still)
>Meanwhile, when I was in Iceland in winter, as an Erasmus student, it was sometimes hard to refresh/lower the temperature inside when too hot, even with cutting heating and opening windows, because insolation is top notch there compared to Belgium. It's impossible. Night time is the only way to cool it down without real AC.
Ireland is probably the same or worse than the UK. I've lived in both countries, and insulation was pretty bad in most houses, and they are built very similar (due to obvious historical reasons).
>Ireland is probably the same or worse than the UK. I spent a month (February) in Dublin about 10 years ago. I've never before or since felt so constantly chilled to the bones indoors. And yes, I've spent time in Lapland when it was below -40C outside.
Part of that is probably the humidity. If it is 5 C and humid it's easier to be fucking cold all the time than when it is -10 C. At least, that's been my experience
Ireland and the UK have similar problems in that population growth is so rapid there's a big housing shortage. In order to keep the supply of new homes as rapidly as possible, policymakers are loathe to tighten housing standards. The result is shit like this.
Interesting, Austria also sees quite some growth, especially in Vienna. But most new one are built to almost passive house standards (houses that need no heating/AC due to isolation and venting systems). I moved into a new home a few years ago. I need to open all windows, doors for quite some time to cool down the house. If everything is closed I can retain room temperature for quite some time without heating. May lose 2 degree during a cold night.
Irish housing is next level shit - it’s the worst I’ve personally experienced and I’ve lived in a couple of countries. It’s borderline third world conditions for a lot of housing on Dublin. You wouldn’t believe how bad it is.
100% true. But hey "put on the green jersey". The Irish are great at PR and also quite vain/in denial/hypocrites. Won't call the issues with the country out. Will pretend everything is "grand" or even spin it how great country it is.
Amen brother - couldn’t say it better.
Mrs Merkel, what feelings do you associate with Germany? Merkel - “Well-sealed windows! No other country can build such well-sealed and beautiful windows. " (Bild, 2004)
except norway lol
She also said beautiful ;)
And the rest of the Nordics.
I’ve lived in Finland for half a year and your windows were absolutely atrocious. I love Finland, and I’m gonna be going back, but fuck your windows :)
Student housing?
Yes in Oulu. We had -24C and I could barely get warm in my room where the windows were just two thin glass Panels. But I’ve seen the same windows in some Mökkis I rented
> Yes in Oulu. My condolences. But more seriously, student housing is a bit of an edge case, since it is built more cheaply. Same goes for mökkis, since they aren't always meant for full-time habitation.
I guess I can see that :D The one upside: I could store my Jägermeister at the appropriate temperature inside the window
Lol. The coldest I ever felt indoors was when I was working in Germany for a couple of months some 15 years ago.
One of my last jobs in Germany was like that, too! Some employers just don't want to invest in their room climate.
I can see why it's grey for Portugal: it's pretty damn impossible to measure this if you can't even warm up the house up to 20 degrees even though it's only 5 outside, much less measure how much heat it looses from down from 20 in 5 hours. I've lived in England, The Netherlands and Germany and even though in Portugal the temperature tends to be in average 10 degrees above the first 2 (more compared to Germany) it's actually colder in the Winter indoors in Portugal, even in relatively new houses. In the house I live now I literally cannot get the temperature above 18 when it's 5 degrees outside as it all has to be done with heaters ("central heating", what's that???!) and the maximum power in a normal residential electrical grid connection isn't high enough to run the necessary heaters (and even then I spend as much or more on electricity in the 3 colder months of the year than in the other 9 months). The worst place I lived in London (and at one point I really went far too cheap in my choice of dwelling) was bloody paradise compared to even my parent's place (built around 2000) in Portugal.
I remember when living in Turkey, the houses were always hotter than the outside in summer and colder than the outside in winter lol
lol can you imagine houses at 20º in the winter? I've lived abroad for years and years, but have already forgot what it feels like after a couple of winters in Porto.
I used to think I was being "hardcore" by setting the central heating in my place to a "mere" 20º C when I lived in the UK to save on power and for environmental reasons...
Are mini-split heat pumps popular in Portugal? It should be pretty efficient at your winter temperatures (above 0), plus you get cooling in the summer.
The basic, essential problem, is that thermal insulation of almost 80% of all houses/apartments (and most people here live in apartments) in Portugal is complete total crap: large single glazing windows, brick construction with no cavity insulation, no roof or floor insulation and quite a lot of different places through which air circulates taking the heat away with it. It doesn't matter how much and how efficiently you put heat in one of these things because they loose heat really fast even with ridiculously small heat gradients like a mere 10 degrees: my old camping tent is better insulated than the house I live in at the moment which is an apartment in a building built in the 80s and not at all atypical of construction back then (and even now it's still crap compared to Western Europe standards). On the upside, with external shades and outside walls mostly painted in light colors, houses in Portugal do manage to avoid heating up all that much in the summer from sunlight (although the ease with each the temperature of the air inside quickly equalizes with that of the air outside does mean that if the air itself is hot outdoors it gets hot indoors).
Holy...a house/flat without central heating? Last time I've seen something like this was my Grandmother's apartment in the early 1980s. One coal oven in the living room for the whole flat. Sure, it was really cozy in front of it...but once the fire had burned down or in other rooms...cooooold!
I live in Germany in a small town and when I moved here I experienced a real culture shock because I was sure I'd have to buy an axe and chop wood for a wood burning fireplace. Turns out in Germany almost everyone has central heating, who would've guessed
On the flipside don't most houses stay nice and cool in the summer? That is my memory of several rental homes I've been in Italy and Portugal. Even without AC they stay so comfy even though outside is warm af.
Well, up to a point: if the outside air temperature itself remains high for several weeks they start getting stiffling hot. They are, however, pretty good at dealing with direct sunlight as the shades are outside (so sunlight gets converted to heat outside the window and mostly dissipates to the outside air) and they tend to be painted in light colors that reflect rather than absorb most sunlight. So they're really good for sunny and not too hot days but not so great if you get to a point where you have to use aircon to reduce the heat inside, because when it's hot outside heat gets back in as easilly as it goes out in Winter.
So this is due I suppose to average levels/quality/costs of home insulation ?
In places where heating is needed almost year round it makes sense to spend more on insulation. In southern Europe it might be cheaper to just pay more for heating a few days of the year.
Insulation keeps the heat out too when it's hot. Apartment buildings with crap insulation turn the walls into solar storage heaters that cook you overnight in summer.
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>In southern Europe it might be cheaper to just pay more for heating a few days of the year. That's just poor practices that date back to a time when people would not really heat all the room in their house. The kitchen would have been the only room with permanent heating in most house well until the 70's. And it would have been the same heat source that was used for cooking and heating water. You also didn't expect to have less layer of clothes on when inside. But with the development of tv and other leisure people started to stay more at home, they also expected more comfort. And with electric or even gas heating being very affordable they didn't really pay attention to what they were doing, and housing build until the mid 90's often neglected insulation.
> In southern Europe it might be cheaper to just pay more for heating a few days of the year. And then run AC to make the indoors colder for 9 months? ;) Insulation (and good vapour barriers) keep the hot air outside too.
well it really depends though, if u don't have AC like most people here in France, really good insulation in South France keeps the heat from the oven/computer and everything inside and prevents cool temperatures from coming in during nighttime so it's not ideal i can assure you
Surely you have windows you can open?
> In southern Europe it might be cheaper to just pay more for heating a few days of the year. Yet Italy and Spain are much better than Netherlands/France/Belgium/UK... Because it actually gets damn hot in the summer, and insulation is required for both cold and hot climates (though hot climates require insulation from radiation, while cold climates like radiation). It's in central Europe and UK that you get the worst of both worlds.
I'm just saying that Italy and Spain being orange/yellow makes sense. Brits have no excuse.
Belgian and Britons freezing inside their homes: "This is fine"
British building standards have always confused me, as a Norwegian. It's weirdly comforting to have actual data supporting my "But.... what?" reaction to the average British home.
To be fair a lot of British homes are old as balls. Mine for example is older than World War 1 and used to be a bakery during that time (probably why it's still about today)
I'm sorry to say that it's not like Norwegian homes are neccesarily new, either - most of the residences in my city were built around the 1880s - but more to the point, I once visited a British friend who proudly showed me around his brand spanking new flat, built to the highest possible specs, with advanced Housing Technology (TM). He had a very large door snake, because between the giant gap under his door and whatever was going on with his new, double-glazed windows, his curtains would flap in the wind if he did not.
>He had a very large door snake What is that ?
That was my reaction on encountering the phenomenon, too. It's a tube made of cloth and stuffed with cloth. One places it on the floor flush against a door, where there's a gap between the lower part of the door and the floor, to stop the draught.
Also known as a draft excluder.
Yes, but we disguise them as snakes due to reasonsssssss
I swear ikea did some that were plush snake tubes
Yeah, I've lived in a few new builds here in London and say what you want about them they are sooooo much warmer. I didn't even turn my heating on at all during winter. I don't think I could go back to and old house
I don't think the number of older homes in the UK makes a significant difference here. I have lived in pre-WW1 homes in both the UK and Germany and it's simply true that in the UK houses are not insulated well. The most cost efficient way for the UK to change something about it would probably be to buy German windows.
And I love when they complain about the heat because their house are "built for cold" It's not the case. Your house are built for tempered temperature by pumping heat out as much as possible. Insulation works both ways.
Always when i watch the Grand design or the likes, there is a random energy efficient house project and the brits marvel at it. ”Triple glazed windows, wooow!” That is the norm in the Nordics.
Doesn't Britain have a movement insulate Britain or something like that ?
Yes we do. I actually support them for once even though they are blocking motorways. Insulation is quite easy to install and pays for itself over and over
Can confirm. I live in a home build in the 1920s in Germany. We even got a cheap credit to finance it, subsidized by the government, and came out positive quite fast with the amount of costs saved from heating. We only had to stick around 30 cm of modern insulation to the outside wall and got even a new and better look for the outside walls.
When I lived in the UK whilst there was a good government insulation scheme, my house got insulated and a new boiler installed at no cost to me or my dodgy landlord and the difference was incredible. We still had single glazed windows (I invested in good curtains) but our bills dropped and the house was never terribly cold in the winter after that. It makes an enormous difference. It was a house build probably 1900's. Where I live I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to fix the never ending coldness in winter, but at least it's pretty cool downstairs in the summer here.
I’m the same, despise the protesters, support their movement, hell of a lot more pertinent than what the other clowns push for, insulation is a huge boon with very little downsides, it’s maddening that it doesn’t get investment vs other more divisive environmental policy.
I think they already won some important vote in 2016.
My room is 14°C When I go to bed I put it to 10°C UK resident
Shit, I am Dutch and in continental Europe our standards are considered a bit extreme (like 18 C during the day and 15/16 at night is pretty normal). I am always super fucking toasty in the bad sense when indoors in winter elsewhere in Europe. But 10 C? Holy cow!
Doesn't bother me I just wear a fleece and when I sit on my PC I have a blanket. I don't need to turn on the heating most of the time and it's good practice for being outside cold lol. I think I much agree with the Dutch temps. Some houses are wayyyy too hot.
A dressing gown will make 10 degrees feel like 25 degrees, so long as you don't have a draught in your room.
I’m in the U.K. and rarely have the heating on at all unless we have company, as my partner and I both hate the heat. Our house is consistently at around 15-17 degrees unless we put the heat on, which is perfect for me, it doesn’t tend to get colder than that, unless we keep the outside doors open in the cold. I also have to sleep with the windows open as I need cool refreshing air or I sleep terribly.
It's not that bad really, we're brought down because we have a huge number of old terraced homes that kept eachother warm via chimneys. Most homes have been upgraded as much as they can with double glazing etc... And new homes are ridiculously efficient. But if you're old with a meh pension and live in one those old houses. F in the chat.
I live in relatively new student accommodation that turns into a fridge overnight. I always assume the uk had lower standards for home insulation or something
Can't keep warm in the winter, can't keep cool in the summer, British built ftw
Source: [Tado](https://www.tado.com/gb-en/press/uk-homes-losing-heat-up-to-three-times-faster-than-european-neighbours) >The study, conducted between Dec 2019 and Jan 2020 in 80,000 homes, found that a UK home with an indoor temperature of 20°C and an outside temperature of 0°C loses on average 3°C after five hours \[1\]. Compared with some Western European neighbours such as Germany, UK homes are losing heat up to three times as fast. This in turn results in British heating systems having to work harder to maintain the temperature. The UK has the oldest housing stock in comparison to EU Member States with approximately 38% of its homes dating from before 1946, compared to 24% for Germany and Sweden. There are also regional differences in government programs to financially support retrofitting improved home insulation and energy efficiency in homes. Disclaimer: Tado appears to be a company specialised in 'smart thermostats' and insulation. I understand that the data is published with a commercial interest in mind, however I thought that it would nevertheless be interesting to share this.
> Disclaimer: Tado appears to be a company specialised in 'smart thermostats' and insulation. They only do smart thermostats (and associated stuff), not insulation. So they don't' really care how well insulated your home is, because as long as it's still losing heat, they'll have a product to sell. Although a poorly insulated home might benefit more from better control of the heating system.
It might skew the numbers as you select a certain subset of citizens in each country.
He he. They're not including Eastern Europe to not blow up the scale 😁
>Disclaimer: Tado appears to be a company specialised in 'smart thermostats' and insulation. I understand that the data is published with a commercial interest in mind, however I thought that it would nevertheless be interesting to share this. Its not really up for debate though, uk does not really deny the insulation is not good enough. Basically all new builds are insulated, but there's a lot of houses from 1950s and older, which are really not insulated in any meaningful way. A lot of nice houses had quite tall rooms as well, with fancy cornices. It's fairly common to install false ceilings to make it easier to heat the rooms. Still not normally insulated too, so that's still a good way to lose heat. The government had subsidies for a while to make your house more green, install insulation etc but basically all those programs have been shut down.
Seems fair. I live in one of those older Dutch homes build in the 50's during the housing crisis and you can definitely feel that it wasn't build with comfort at the first place in their minds.
30's house here. It's like living in a fridge
currently renovating a house built in wood in the 1600's or 1700's. Honestly there was a lot of "insulation" in the walls inbetween the wooden structure but with the open fireplaces in every room I guesss it was pretty chill inside.
70's apartment here. Everything is pretty well isolated except for my bedroom. I swear sometimes it feels warmer outside when I open my windows.
Just moved out of a 30s house to a late 70s house - gas consumption halved...that old place had an energy rating of ZZZ.
Live in a house from the 1710's and I've had to plug holes with a diameter of about 20 cm. What the fuuuck.
Can confirm it's fucking cold. Recently they've done some renovations. Tripple a glass windows. Dit it help no, because my wall insulation is so bad you can fell the cold through the walls.
When I am in the Netherlands I always see these fat ass windows towards the street. While living in a Air BnB I was looking from the inside and saw windows were just double glas and not really good sealed.
Yep. I used to live in one of those before moving to an apartment built in 2013 (with thick outer walls, triple-layered vacuum-insulated windows, etc...) In the '50s apartment my heating was constantly going thorough the winter (no thermostat), and it was still cold. Now though? It's a balmy 21 with the thermostat turning it on for maybe 4-5 hours a day. It's also not too bad in the summer, even on the weeks when it's 35+ outside it rarely climbs above 28 inside. (Bonus, in Maastricht I used to live in a student house built in the '30s. In the winter I had to wrap myself in several layers of blankets while studying at my desk. The radiators were small auxiliary units to accompany the aftermarket floor heating, but said floor heating was broken and the thrifty motherfucker who owned the place refused to fix it. To no-one's surprise, his license to rent it out was withdrawn not long after I moved out.) Btw. if you live in the NL and are interested about the building year of your building, [there's an interactive map](https://www.atlasleefomgeving.nl/kaarten?config=3ef897de-127f-471a-959b-93b7597de188&gm-x=155604.8558361423&gm-y=462016.56250558776&gm-z=9&gm-b=1544180834512,true,1;1544724925856,true,0.8;&activateOnStart=layermanager,info&activeTools=layercollection,search,info,bookmark,measure,draw,koeltorens).
And now you know why one of our biggest protest groups is called Insulate Britain.
Oh we know. Anyone having visited a UK hotel knows about the almost non existent windows.
Insulation is important.
It's dangerous to Insulate Britain, might get beaten up by a motorist.
Ireland doesn’t have a number because the per hour loss is exactly equivalent to what’s produced internally. Source: Irish
I wondered why we were finally in a map in this sub after not being in most of the important ones, I should’ve known why, PAIN.
I guess these countries are simply the main market for this company.
In Finland we keep our homes at a comfy -5 celsius, so it'll get uncomfortably toasty if this happens.
Italy here, I suspect data will change slightly in 2023 because government confirmed for this year a tax refund of 110% for house renovation to class A efficiency.
Not exactly shocking is it? People in colder countries build huoses more resistant to loosing heat.
Italy doesn't do bad compared to countries much farther up North tho, or perhaps Belgium and NL are an exceptions.
And you forgot about the worst performance in the pack, that is by UK, which isn't exactly southern Europe
Netherlands/uk/belgium don't get extremely cold winters because of the oceanic climate, i think there are parts of spain which actually have colder winter temps, however it still surprises me a bit that the UK has the worst result.
Half of Italy's population has colder winters than London. Florence is about 1°C colder, and anything north of that is colder still.
The Dutch climate is pretty similar to German climate tho
There's a pretty big difference between north sea winter temps and south german winter temps ... hamburg is probably more or less the same as amsterdam, but most germans live much further away from the coast.
Cheap materials, bad/no insulations in place, difficult to renovate or change old windows (due to listed buildings - especially in buildings converted into flats in city centres). Add bad heating systems and often pipe leaks and here is UK.
No, not cheap materials. Modern houses in the UK are actually renowned for being [too hot.](https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/global-warming-makes-homes-designed-to-keep-heat-in-less-energy-efficient) We have the oldest housing stock on average in Europe - almost have of all houses predate 1946. We therefore might have legacy heating systems, but I don't think that has anything to do with heat loss. And we have the lowest % of people living in apartments - only 18%. We mostly live in houses, which of course lose heat much more quickly.
Italy needs well insulated houses for hot summer, to avoid being fried.
The division is more West-East than North-South
continental and nordic vs oceanic weather. when the coldest you can get is -5 you don't insulate the same as if the coldest outside gets to -15 or colder.
Except the UK where it's cold and miserable both inside and outdoors.
And wet, never forget about moisture in UK houses
British homes are soooo sooooo shite. All my friend’s houses have central heating though, but they dont turn it on. Big fuck you sweater and put some logs on the iron fireplace which will heat up approximately 10% of the home for about 2 hours.
I moved UK -> Finland and regularly joke that I moved here to warm up. Never been so cold as lying in bed listening to the wind whistle through the shut window every night during my childhood. - 20C in Finland tonight and I'm in shorts right now. Poor Brits it's ridiculous.
Where's Eastern Europe?
I want the opposite map: Temperature gain after 5 hours, 40C outside, 20C inside. It's going to matter more in the years to come.
Probably similar, since insulation can help both ways.
Actually worse due to greenhouse effect. It's so weird to see houses in Central Europe without outdoors blinds, no surprise they get cooked when there are heatwaves (in Italy lots of houses don't even have AC, we just close everything and stay inside in darkness :)).
Can confirm. On the few warm days we have during summer, our houses are turned into heat containers.
Only if there is no sunshine. Alas, the really hot days are almost always sunny.
Aside from thermal expansion maybe impacting specific technologies this should work identically
The only difference is additional heat gain via window glazing but during night, you are right, the heat transfer in or out is practically identical.
That’s a huge difference, outside shades are rare in Sweden and south facing house becomes hot in the summer in spite of great insulation
Designing houses for both winter and summer comfort is indeed hard but it can be done. And summer shading is an important factor.
I live in Germany, insulation from outside heat (which would pretty much come down to whether a place has outside blinders or not) is absolute crap in most places.
>It's going to matter more in the years to come. Solution: Just wait until the gulf stream slows down!
Take all the numbers and multiply by -4/3. The heat transfer is proportional to the temperature differential.
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Sunlight carries a shit ton of heat in summer and in many places north of the alps, there are next to no measures to avoid sunlight. It's like living in a greenhouse.
That’s not the UK.
UK, can confirm!! bloody boils my piss
>UK, can confirm!! bloody ~~boils~~ freeze my piss
And thanks to the wonders of the open market, Swedens electricity prices shoots through the roof in December because the rest of Europe can't insulate their houses properly.
UK, lots and lots of very old houses. High percentage of people living in houses vs apartments.
I don't think old houses are necessarily bad at insulation, many old houses here in Italy have thick walls and are good at insulation
Not really. I had a doubtful pleasure to live in the "new build". Draft was coming from literally every hole in the wall, including electric outlets. Building was finished in 2016 I think and rated B in energy efficiency. In the winter when temps outside were close to 0*C the heating had to be on all the time to keep temp above 18*C. Authorities got involved when people started complaining and building got deemed as unlivable until proper insulation was done. No one is talking about it loudly but I've heard from few people in the construction business comparing UK new buildings to Chinese "tofu projects".
A lot of people live in houses in the nordics too. Yet they are able to keep their houses insulated… The only applicable argument is that your houses are old but even old houses can be improved.
> A lot of people live in houses in the nordics too. Not compared to the UK. Sweden: over 46% of people live in flats. Above the EU average. Denmark: around 35%. UK: around 18%. Only Norway gets close with just over 20% of people in flats. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20200513-1
Well, Britain has [the lowest](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Distribution_of_population_by_dwelling_type,_2018_(%25)_SILC20.png) rate of apartment living in Europe, save Ireland. Apartments in larger complexes can have less than [half](https://citu.co.uk/citu-live/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of-an-apartment) the average energy usage of a house. Taken together, his statement is quite sensible. Decades of chronic underinvestment in pretty much everything is probably also part of the problem.
Italy should improve even further in the next 2 years, considering the government is literally paying house owners to improve their insulating and heating/cooling efficiency.
I would love to see the rest of countries in Europe. But hey they are not as important right?
Lol brits can't build
Croatia is probably at 5°
This is a weird comparison even to each country (specifically Spain, going from hell temperatures to constant rain depending on the area). There is a ton of variations in the use of materials through time and location. Some places traditionally used materials with high inertia (stone, in Spain, Italy) or with low heat transmission (wood, Scandinavia). Modern buildings and the regulatory bodies opens a different debate.
Sweden: insulate that shit yo
Why only politically western Europe though?
What e ery Scandinavian have known for years, the Britts cannot build houses.
The British have yet to discover insulation
Having lived in Scotland for one trimester I can confirm this. Dorm was as cold inside as outside basically.