Hey, a thread about the UK that has zilch to do with Brexit! How fun.
I was in the UK for business last week, at my companies office just off Oxford Street. I, and about 12 of my colleagues spent the week in a conference room going over some stuff that would likely bore you to tears. In attendance:
[ul]
[li]Me, 50 year old guy from Atlanta GA[/li][li]3 30 something guys from London[/li][li]2 30 something, maybe close to 40 women from UK[/li][li]1 late 20s guy from Germany[/li][li]1 mid 30s woman from France[/li][li]2 30 something year old guys from Dubai[/li][/ul]
To me, the conference room was uncomfortably warm all week. When I was sneaky and nudged the thermostat down a few notches, everyone started whining about how cold it was. The thermostat was one of those goofy ones that doesn’t actually show the numbers, but I’m going to guesstimate. I was comfortable if the setting was around 70 Fahrenheit. they all wanted it about 74 Fahrenheit.
Just to head off the possible assumptions, I am not obese. I’m basically a 50 year old guy in pretty good shape. As an example, my hotel in London is about a mile from the office, and I walked there and back everyday without breaking a sweat.
So, why the difference in what we find comfortable? I travel there 5-6 times a year, and would really like to feel more comfortable. Actually, hoping to move there in a few years. How long would it take me to “adjust”?
Well, as a European I can tell you 74 degrees is way too hot. 23 degrees would be on the warm side for me, I’d say I like 18 - 21 degrees depending on season, weather, clothes and time of day.
I’m not surprised that the women and the guys from Dubai were cold, dus it’s unusual that the other guys agreed.
Atlanta is pretty warm in the summer, right? When I was there in november in 2002 I think it wasn’t much above freezing early in the morning…
I’m American, and I always keep the thermostat at 74 in the summer. Maybe it isn’t a nationality thing at all, you just coincidentally happened to draw a group of people who like warmer temperatures? (Or, if you’re the only outsider and the others are accustomed to working in that room, maybe they’ve gotten used to it being a particular temperature and always dress accordingly?)
I’ve been told that lots of buildings in Europe don’t even have air conditioning. I’m not surprised that they’d consider Americans to be wimps for wanting a perfect 70 degrees and complaining about 74. Plenty of times I’ve been to Florida or Texas and froze my ass off because I was dressed for summer weather but the inside of all the buildings had the AC cranked down to 67. Now I remind myself to always bring a jacket when traveling someplace hot in the US.
Air con is fairly rare in the UK. We don’t often get the prolonged spells of hot weather that would warrant the expense. Average temperatures in summer are less than 20C with the occasional peak of 25C.
The thermostat in my house is set at 21 in the evening and 20 during the day (That is for heating not A/C) We have ceiling fans if it gets hot, and we can open the windows.
There is some concern about the health risks of office buildings with recirculated air and sealed windows:
None of the people attending were from that particular office. They came from other UK offices and Europe and the Middle east for this training class. And they were not dressed any different from me. If anything, they had on more layers. I noted that three of the guys kept their jackets on the entire time. Meanwhile I shed my jacket quickly, and was still too warm.
The office we were in definitely had air con. When I could be sneaky and nudge the thermostat down, it cooled down quickly. Until the whining started.
USA guy here. Live way, way up in the mountains of Colorado.
It’s odd… My wife and I open windows at night and get the bedroom to 60f or so. The rest of the house is ‘anything goes’. It’s passive solar. And we get incredible sun. Temp fluctuates a lot.
I’m in San Diego now at a Conference. So far, shorts and sandals are the norm. With a few poor guys wearing suits. Conference center temp is, I would guess, 72f.
In summer, ,I turn on the AC when it hits 90 in the house, and set it at about 87. Then I turn it off and open the windows at bedtime. But in winter, I am very intolerant of the cold, shiver bundled up all winter, and hate the feeling of a heated house. I feel downright cold anything below about 72. I think its an age thing.
Can you open the windows much, though? My (admittedly limited) experience with British windows is that you don’t have screens over there, and as much as people protest that screens aren’t necessary because your island doesn’t have things that fly in windows, you actually do need them because you actually have quite a lot of things that fly in windows. Enough (again, in my limited experience) to make it a pretty miserable experience to try to cool a room by opening the window.
I’m not sure if this is bad luck, a cultural difference about the level of acceptable infestation indoors, or just me being a prima donna, but I’d rather swelter than have to deal with bugs flying in.
My experience in those parts is (I suspect) more extensive than yours, and in my experience the risk of things flying in is not often a material factor in decisions about opening windows for ventilation. Opening a window is the default method of indoor climate control; you only use other methods when that one isn’t appropriate, and the usual reason it might not be appropriate is that you’re trying to warm the space up, not cool it down.
You do get the occasional wasp flying in an open window during the summer, but you just hit it with a newspaper. You can buy a newspaper for anywhere between 60p and ₤2, so it’s much more cost-effective to solve the wasp problem by swatting than by installing air-conditioning.
You install air conditioning where, because of the size or height of the building, opening windows is either an ineffective or an unsafe way of cooling the interior.
I am happy with 78 in the summer and 68 in the winter (although I would prefer 72). Of course, I dress for those temperatures. I do not have AC but use window fans to cool during the night and close up during the day.
I’m in the USA and dislike the frigid temps most offices, businesses, and stores keep themselves at. You’re wearing summer clothing, it’s 104 outside, and you go into a 68 degree building. What do you think happens? You’re cold. Some of my former co-workers used to wear parkas and gloves indoors in the summer.
I casually glanced at a study some time ago that did blind tests and it found that most people seem to prefer an 80 to 85 degree 50% humidity environment.
Ideally, I prefer it be cool enough indoors that I can wear an undershirt, a dress shirt, and a sports coat or cardigan without sweating, and I think humidity is rather key as to what the upper temperature bound for this is. Currently, I live in a coastal city in Denmark which has relatively high humidity year-round, and anything over 20 centigrade indoors starts feeling uncomfortably muggy to me. On the other hand, when I was younger, I lived in a suburb of Budapest, and even temperatures approaching 30 or more centigrade were perfectly tolerable because the humidity was quite low.
Once we were vacationing in France, and the air conditioning in our hotel broke down. It was in the hottest part of summer, and it was very humid, which we as Californians weren’t used to. When we asked when they estimated it would be fixed, we got the French shrug and were advised to just open our windows. We did, but French cities are infested with very noisy motorbikes and sleeping was out of the question.
Every time I go to the US in winter, it seems every building and shop I enter is stiflingly hot. I feel like I spend half my time taking clothes off and putting them on.
Europe too, to a lesser degree (sorry!).
In summer though, the US seem to chill their spaces to just above fridge temperature. I suspect - can it be? - that they (**ThelmaLou **excepted of course!) set the thermostat lower in summer than in winter?
I’ve lived in London for 12 years and have never worn my winter coat or boots (my children don’t even own them) and my thermostat never goes above 20. British women wear UGG boots and puffy coats in September. Go figure.
