How cold can you let your house or apartment get before it's unhealthy?

I know you might be able to survive like Eskimos swaddled in head to toe coats all day at very low temps, but for normal residential environments during the winter what is typically considered the lowest temperature that is considered healthy for day to day interior living?

How low can you go?

I don’t know a factual answer to your question, but I keep my house at 63-64 deg F when I am home and awake, and 60 deg F when I am away and/or asleep.

It is kind of cool while showering, I have a space heater.

If I am watching TV, cruising the net or reading, I am in sweats.

What risks do you want to avoid? I once lived in one of the strangest farm houses you have ever encountered in Vermont. It was mostly uninsulated :eek: and the temperature of the house could only get to about 52 F in the very cold winter that I lived there with the furnace churning and my commuter skiing roommates that came every other weekend didn’t even like to pay for that so it would drop into the 40’s sometimes. I bought the best electric blanket I could find and that kept me warm but there were no health issues just like there wouldn’t be for camping at that temperature. I kept my down parka on when I wasn’t in bed but the bed was toasty and I slept with my face under the covers. Nothing ever got below freezing and froze which I think is the key.

Old Iowans, like Bill Bryson and my dad, like to claim they slept in near-to-sub-freezing temps in years past, when unheated sleeping rooms were considered healthful for young people.

In my dad’s fraternity pledge semester in 1955, he and his fellow pledges supposedly took pride in bunking on the glassed-in porch, where they donned several layers complete with stocking caps, then pulled multiple woolen blankets over themselves.

How much of this is both-ways-uphill bushwa I don’t know. I myself grew up in a room with 3 exposures in Iowa, so I’m pretty used to bundling in.

With my (new!) down comforter and electric carpet, I manage to keep my heater off most of the time. The thermostat usually says it is around 10°C (50°F) and I have suffered no serious health effects (except for a cold that I actually caught while on vacation, staying at my friend’s apartment who does run his heater).

Considering that large number of humans have lived at tolerably high latitudes during the past 20,000 years or so, and that a great many of these had little to no ability to maintain warm ambient temperatures during winter, I think the notion is supect that failure to do so is “unhealthy” in any objective sense.

I live in Texas.

Since I’ve lived where I control the thermostat, I don’t turn on the heat until it’s in the twenties. I layer up.

I’ve turned the heat on twice over this winter. It wasn’t in the twenties, but now that I live with someone, I’m worried he will freeze to death. When Mr. Cold Nose snuggles in, I think, gee, maybe close the windows at least.

Also, I actually closed the windows a few times.

Well, you should at least keep things warm enough so your pipes don’t freeze and burst. Not only does that make a mess, but undetected water leaks could cause mold to grow in your house, which would be quite unhealthy indeed.

You keep your windows open during the winter? In sub-freezing temperatures? :dubious: Any particular reason why?

Hot flashes? (Just a guess. There’s a lady at my office who’s still wearing sleeveless shirts. In January. In Minneapolis. Today was below zero outside, so she finally had to wear a top with short sleeves.)

You’ve never experience cold air dorms? Way, back as an undergrad, the sleeping quarters in my fraternity were cold air dorms. That means the windows were always open. This was in Ames Iowa. The temperature dipped well below zero in the winter very regularly. An electric blanket was all I needed.

Yes, we did try closing the windows one time. It’s not a smell you want to experience.

Yep, Iowa sleeping weather. :smiley:

Tuberculosis patients, frail as they were, used to be regularly bundled up and exposed to winter cold. It was thought to ease their breathing as well as kick the immune system into overdrive.

A quick Google suggests the cold-air dorm concept is limited to Greek houses, and in fact, may be limited to the midwest.

The idea was to sleep as many residents as possible in a large room. Because of either fire or health regulations (stories vary), the windows had to be cracked open all year round.

I Googled it too - how utterly bizarre!!!

Well, what if the electricity and heat went off? How cold outside before its hypothermia? Here it is 0 tonight.
Reading those thermostat settings, wow. I keep mine at 72 in the winter (Oct- April)

I’ve stayed in old houses here where the rooms were around 0c. Once you’re wrapped up adequately in bed it’s really quite pleasant.

I have my 2 story house ducts set up so most of the forced air heat goes upstairs. Right now it’s 70 degrees upstairs to a setting of 66 on the downstairs thermostat. If I’m doing something downstairs I layer up or use a blanket.

both my parents grew up int he depression era when the cold bedroom was considered healthy, and i had a german nanny so sleeping in the winter with the bedroom window cracked a couple inches is perfectly normal for me and downright purgatorial for my desert rat of a husband … he likes to sleep in an oven.

My personal preference is to keep the rooms under 65 winter and under 70 summer, and I definitely like by bedroom so it is seriously cold so teh toasty warm bed is comfy. I compromise on the 65 for hubby. I have slept comfortably in Bavaria with the window cracked open a good solid 6 inches and had snow blowing in the window=)

Well, when I’ve got full clothes on, including down jacket and balaclava+thick wool hat, I notice that if it’s below 10-15F or so, I can’t stay warm just sitting around – I need to either keep exercising or get into a sleeping bag.
So, for me, if I want to be able to sit, 15F is probably a minimum.

Though that assumes that there’s no running water in the house, as the point about freezing pipes is valid.

I don’t know about the health aspect, but my Dad has mentioned more than once that as a kid, he slept on the unheated (but enclosed) porch all winter long. I think it had more to do with growing up in poverty than some sort of health thing - there just wasn’t space for him inside.

It gets cold here - right now it’s -7 out. It was at least that bad where he was living at the time.

He said it was no big deal. He didn’t like getting out of bed in the winter to pee in the middle of the night, but other than that, he got used to it.