Reduce heating costs - use you body's adaptability!

I live off grid, no electricity. Heat my small house with a wood stove. When I am away for a while or during nights, the house chills a lot. You basically should light the fire every 8 hours as a minimum.

Sometimes I have arrived to a home just above the freezing point. Or when I was sick, just could not be bothered to go lit the fire until my breath was steaming in the bedroom chill.

But now I have noticed, that my body has adapted. I woke up and checked the thermometer reading (40'F) and decided it must be broken, because I felt great standing there in my pajamas. Turns out there was nothing wrong with it.

I went to the local swimming hall to enjoy the sauna and pools. The water was really warm - I was a bit puzzled because energy prices have been really high lately. Then I heard somebody complaining that the water is TOO COLD because they are saving energy?!?

Went to the sauna. As I am from Finland, the home of sauna, I love sitting there. But this time, the sauna was unbearably hot. I managed a couple of minutes!! I went to the lobby to say your sauna thermostat must be broken can you please check it. Returned, and found several happy ladies sitting in the very hottest corner and throwing gallons of water on the stones 🙄

Today, I carried firewood to the newly built shed. Weather was a bit freezing, but I had to take off my jacket because it got too hot. After that, I did laundry. Being lazy, I did not heat the rinsing water, just used ice cold water from the spring and rinsed &wringed my laundry with bare hands.

Unless I have been secretly jinxed, this is just amazing. The body has adapted in a month to constantly being in cold.

We have a woodburner to heat our house as well.The fire goes out in the middle of the night and it gets colder.What we do though is sleep in a -35 degree sleeping bag.Layered blankets as well.I have experimented in Montana with not having a fire in the dead of winter on how to stay warm.If you have structure built you can set up a tent inside and put sleeping bags or blankets on top of the tent.Lay cardboard on the floor or mats.Then sleeping bags.Then have a sleeping bag or blankets to sleep in.When your doing this make sure there is a small hole in tent so that fresh air get's in and carbondioxide doesn't build up.Your body will heat the whole tent up and you will be able to read inside without gloves in negative degree weather.I have survived multiple days like this in dead of winter in Montana.I thought this story related to reducing heat cost using your body's adaptability is why I shared.I think it's interesting your body is adapting almost reminds me of buddist monks or  Wim Hoff but in your own way of course.

I agree. A few years ago I switched from heating with natural gas to a rocket mass heater. With gas, it's easy to set a thermostat and leave it. With wood, the less I burn, the less I have to harvest and bring in. A common selling point of RMHs is how stably warm you can keep a place using a renewable fuel. But I have found my way is not just changing fuels from a poorer one to a better one, but also using much less of the better one. I have always been rather cold-natured (don't know if I could survive Finland) and have noticed keeping the house 55-63ish Fahrenheit helps with this. I feel more robust and healthier in general. I believe the sudden temperature swings are not good for us going in and out on a regular basis, and I suspect it may trigger a lot of illnesses. I do recall from viking literature reading where they seemed to casually swim in the water and climb out on the ice as though it were normal. I'm not sure I could adapt that much!

In Scandinavia and Russia, swimming in a small hole drilled into a frozen lake is an old tradition. All cities provide a hole, dressing rooms and a sauna. All swimming halls have a 4'C (40'F) pool.  There is even a special word for it, but I cannot find an english equivalent (unless you want to call it shock therapy!)

It helps you adapt to cold, fight winter flus and so on. But is is pretty awful if you ask me 😆 Many people say it gives you an adrenaline rush. Well, yes. Like benji jumping.

Now my body has done it without the shock therapy. Slowly, nicely. Thank you, my dear albeit not so fashinably beautiful body ❤️

Yep, it adapts…

We just moved to a house with an insane heating system and feel amazingly warm. That is crazy because we have the whole house set at 60 degrees. We love it because it stays that temp 24/7 and does not fluctuate like our old house.

But for sure we have adapted to the cold.

Jordan Holland wrote:I agree. A few years ago I switched from heating with natural gas to a rocket mass heater. With gas, it's easy to set a thermostat and leave it. With wood, the less I burn, the less I have to harvest and bring in. !

Exactly! I have no machinery. And I am an 55y woman. So fall a tree, chop it into logs, the chop those into small ones, stack... It is not a resource you waste if you do it all by yourself!

Steve Zoma wrote:Yep, it adapts…we have the whole house set at 60 degrees. We love it because it stays that temp 24/7 and does not fluctuate like our old house.

But for sure we have adapted to the cold.

The human body is amazing. If we just accepted that seasons change the temperatures, we could cut heating or cooling drastically.
Without any effort.

Kaarina Kreus wrote:
The human body is amazing. If we just accepted that seasons change the temperatures, we could cut heating or cooling drastically.
Without any effort.

I believe if this one thing could be understood by everyone, it would be the biggest improvement possible in the stewardship of the world. From the arguments on Reddit, it seems that many people think they need a 3,000sq\ft. house and that all of it must be kept at 72 degrees in the winter and 68 in the summer. Suggesting that it is perfectly fine to do with less makes one an outcast who must be crazy.

The thing is, the idea that we do not have to live like kings spans so much more than heating. It can affect every aspect of life. If we could get people to stop seeing such exorbitance as standard, they could be so much more open to new ways of doing things. Sadly, we're stuck with the rather high bar of trying to make everything permie meet or exceed the standard. Not that it isn't possible, but things could be much simpler and much faster if we didn't have to.

Totally totally agree. I had to adapt from a central heat/air, constantly climate controlled indoor enviornment in a typical cooler temperate part of the US to the barely insulated, room by room heat pump indoor environment in a warm and humid temperate part of Japan.

It took something like 8-10 years until I could just be there in the ambient temperature. Now I LOVE that there is only a small difference between indoor and outdoor temperature. The shock moving from cold AC to hot and humid summer outdoors is really harsh on the body. And with temperatures that barely go down below 0 C in the winter, I hardly use heating at all anymore.

I think good building design and community planning makes a big difference here too though. Some places are just unbearably uncomfortable for non climactic reasons - too much sun, not enough sun, no ventilation, damp, etc.

Although I agree with all of you in principle, there are exceptions. I have a very narrow frame with not a lot of weight and blood pressure on the low side. I not only get cold easily, but when I do, my hands and feet literally feel like ice and stop moving well and if I bang them, the pain is intense. I'm *far* more likely to injure myself if I'm cold enough that I stiffen up as a result. If the house is 62 F, and I'm doing something quiet like sewing, I will likely be wearing an A shirt, under a turtle neck, under a vest, under two long sleeved sweaters.  My husband laughs about it, but I am who I am and I'd rather dress in extra layers than hurt myself.

That said, I suspect that part of the issue is that I live in a very damp climate which tends to "feel" colder than a drier climate.

However, on the flip side, I *hate* air conditioning! I want to enjoy what little hot weather we get. Maybe if it was 98F all of a sudden, I'd appreciate a bit of it in one room to bring it down to 85F, but I totally don't want to wear a sweater in the summer as well!