[QUOTE=Autolycus]
In all the Japanese houses I’ve been to, there is no central heating or cooling, only space heaters and fans. I still can’t wrap my mind around it…
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Seconded. Even in the ultra-modern downtown condos brushing up against the million-dollar mark, central heating is not standard.
I’ve gotten used to it, I guess. Why heat a room I’m not in?
[QUOTE=Solfy]
…in really cold weather they’d sleep on a stone slab that had been heated on the stove. (this confuses me a bit still - I chalk it up to a culture/language gap, but would love to hear more about it from anyone here in the know)
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That description sounds like they slept on a big stone griddle - I don’t know for sure, but I would imagine it was something a bit more portable - like a hot water bottle, only made of stone and heated on the stove.
Yeah, it was only very recently (like within the last 20 years or so) that they started having buildings with enough ductwork to support centralized enviromnental controls. And with most people in the city living in dinky apartments, it’s “cheapter” (in the short term) to buy a wall-mounted unit. (This results in the inevitable buildup to EVERY room having its own unit, to the detriment of the environment.)
In Yon Olde Days, people had fireplaces (often under their beds so they could sleep in warmth) or little portable coal containers, and the really really poor folks had to make do with each other, and given that multiple generations and what you Western folk consider extended family tended to live under one roof this meant you had a lot of warm bodies to snuggle against.
[QUOTE=Solfy]
My coworker related to me a few winters ago that he keeps his thermostat around 58degF all winter. I found that shockingly cold. He shrugged and said he just put on a sweater. Where he grew up in China there was no central heating. Some people had a central wood stove, and in really cold weather they’d sleep on a stone slab that had been heated on the stove. (this confuses me a bit still - I chalk it up to a culture/language gap, but would love to hear more about it from anyone here in the know)
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I keep my thermostat at about 58 degrees all winter and I’ve never been to China. Of course, my reasoning is because of fuel oil that costs over $3 a gallon and a boiler older then I am…
[QUOTE=phall0106]
I keep my thermostat at about 58 degrees all winter and I’ve never been to China. Of course, my reasoning is because of fuel oil that costs over $3 a gallon and a boiler older then I am…
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Don’t worry, pretty soon your winters will be nice and warm…
I remember that until we moved into our new apartment a few years ago, all the houses we lived in (in Korea) had no thermostats - the heat was either on or off. We’d leave it on at night in the winter but by morning the floors would be so hot I could barely stand to walk around with bare feet (the heating pipes ran under the floors).
At school the woodstoves were done away with by the time I was in 8th grade, but instead we got gas heaters in the back of the classrooms, which kept half of the room so hot we’d be stripping and the other half just a little bit above freezing. Plus those things leaked fumes all over the place. We’d be in a stupor by lunchtime.
[QUOTE=Sublight]
I’ve gotten used to it, I guess. Why heat a room I’m not in?
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Well, (in the US, anyway) houses have things like wood framing, plumbing, etc., that don’t usually care for extreme temperature swings. Of course, I live in Minnesota, where it was 8F/-13C when I got up this morning, and my pipes would burst if I didn’t heat the entire thing.
[QUOTE=Autolycus]
In all the Japanese houses I’ve been to, there is no central heating or cooling, only space heaters and fans. I still can’t wrap my mind around it…
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They also have these low tables that you sit at, and the table has a skirt, and there’s a heater under the table. Keeps half of you warm, anyway.
[QUOTE=Autolycus]
In all the Japanese houses I’ve been to, there is no central heating or cooling, only space heaters and fans.
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The fans that, if left on at night, will kill you? 
(I know, fan death is mostly a Korean belief, but I’ve heard it has started to spread to other Asian locales… :smack: )
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
That description sounds like they slept on a big stone griddle - I don’t know for sure, but I would imagine it was something a bit more portable - like a hot water bottle, only made of stone and heated on the stove.
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My mom got something similar to that out of a catalogue: not a stone, but a bag about two feet by one foot, stuffed with buckwheat, that she’d microwave until hot, and then sleep with. I got to try it out when I was laid up at my parents house after surgery, and it was quite pleasant.
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
They also have these low tables that you sit at, and the table has a skirt, and there’s a heater under the table. Keeps half of you warm, anyway.
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Oooh yeah, although I think that’s mostly in old houses. I forget what they’re called.
As for the fan thing, I’ve heard of it but not in Japan. I dunno though… I’ve never lived there for an extended period of time (yet!)
I’ve lived in various apartment buildings in New York City since moving out of my parents’ house, and haven’t had a thermostat yet. My current apartment has these little knobs behind doors in the radiator covers that we can use to change the amount of steam flowing through when the heat is on, but when it isn’t, (late at night, for example) I have no way of increasing the heat. Don’t assume that everybody has a thermostat!
[QUOTE=MN_Maenad]
Well, (in the US, anyway) houses have things like wood framing, plumbing, etc., that don’t usually care for extreme temperature swings. Of course, I live in Minnesota, where it was 8F/-13C when I got up this morning, and my pipes would burst if I didn’t heat the entire thing.
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True. Tokyo doesn’t get significantly below freezing in the winter.
[QUOTE=Sublight]
True. Tokyo doesn’t get significantly below freezing in the winter.
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I have a friend who lived in Japan in several different places for a few years. I don’t remember where it was where his breakfast banana would be frozen when he woke up in the morning, but it wasn’t too far north - not Hokkaido or anything. He said he’d never been so cold in his life, and then the “magic date” happened and everybody started wearing their summer uniforms and such, and it was still butt-ass cold! He didn’t take his sweater off for a few more months.
ETA - it wasn’t in Kyoto, that’s where the slugs came up through the floor. Each place he lived had a different horrible awful Dante-esque problem. I can’t decide whether cold or slugs would be worse.
[QUOTE=Donna Gedde Mistarted]
Do Chinese heaters all have direct control knobs? Or simpler on-and-off switches?
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The hotels I’ve stayed in in China have had thermostat controls in the rooms. I assume the homes would, too.
I asked a coworker today who hails from Beijing and she said that she is used to having thermostats in rooms. When I described some of the stuff in the OP she said “Where are these people from??”
As I mentioned recently in the thread on how to keep warm in a sleeping bag, my first winter here was the coldest. Heck, according to locals, it was the coldest winter in the region in about 15–20 years. Boy do I have some stories. I didn’t even live way out in the countryside. The city has a population of about 40,000–50,000. I lived in a 60 year old house that had less insulation than a yurt.
During that first winter, the inside of the house was about 5 ºC warmer than the outside, and quickly returned to that equilibrium if you turned off the kerosene heater. My heater was an old-style unpowered burner, and the only safety feature was a mechanical cutoff if it got jostled. Due to the danger of suffocation and fire, you pretty much couldn’t use it while you were sleeping. Best investment I ever made was a sleeping bag from REI. I woke up with frost from my breath frozen on the outside of the bag many mornings, but I was nice and warm most of the time.
After a couple of months of dealing with an old boiler that cycled water from the tub — it was the only source of hot water in the house — I asked someone to come and give me an estimate on what it would take to get a shower and updated water heater in the place. Up to then I’d had to get up half an hour early to heat the tub water, and then sluice myself with a bucket to get clean. If I waited too long the water would be dangerously hot and I’d have to mix it with water from the hose, which was connected to a pipe outside the house and run in through the window. The guy told me that it would be a really good idea to get a new boiler in any case since that one was likely to explode sometime :eek: Of course, it took several months to get the shower put in (after negotiations with my landlord) and it promptly froze solid during the first month of cold weather.
On the other hand, I didn’t have to burn wood for heating my bathing water, unlike a couple of people I met out in the countryside. And I had a flush toilet. A couple of people I knew in that city still had pit toilets. Most of the places I’ve been in here aren’t that much better than that first house, though. Housing here sucks ass. Even a nice high-rise apartment that’s probably worth about $1 million seems plasticky and cheap.
The only houses I’ve seen here with anything like decent insulation are in Hokkaido, or the north of Honshu, where people would probably literally freeze to death if they didn’t build well. It’s telling that a girl from Saskatchewan said that the coldest she’d ever felt in her life was when she lived here.
interface2x, she’s a city girl. People who live in big cities in any country don’t realize how a significant part of the rural population lives. My wife didn’t believe some of the stuff I told her until she moved here to live with me. And like I said, I’m not even really country here. This is semi-urban by US standards.
[QUOTE=Autolycus]
Oooh yeah, although I think that’s mostly in old houses. I forget what they’re called.
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You’re thinking of kotatsu. ^^
I understand that, at least by the Joseon period, the nicer Korean houses apparently used a heating system in which floors would be fashioned from stone tiles that had deep grooves carved in them. Apparently wood heaters built below the floor would heat the stone, and heat would radiate up from the grooves into the room proper.
[QUOTE=Omi no Kami]
You’re thinking of kotatsu. ^^
I understand that, at least by the Joseon period, the nicer Korean houses apparently used a heating system in which floors would be fashioned from stone tiles that had deep grooves carved in them. Apparently wood heaters built below the floor would heat the stone, and heat would radiate up from the grooves into the room proper.
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Ooh, a yukadanbou, even if the modern ones are electric, I love them! It was available as an option on our condo but we decided (with reluctance on my part) not to get one. I swear those things count as narcotics; the first time I encountered one during the winter, I’d sit down on the floor and just pass out for the rest of the day, that’s how good they felt.
[QUOTE=dotchan]
In Yon Olde Days, people had fireplaces (often under their beds so they could sleep in warmth) …
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You mean the traditional Chinese Kang, or bed-stove.