Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher writes:
Yesterday, I noticed that despite me being stripped to a T shirt, in a
workshop type room I have, the thermostat that controls the winter
heating in that room, was ON..Ok it wasn't actually controlling anything
because that whole zone is switched off for the summer, but it seemed to
say that the temperature was a mere 16C.

Now in WINTER that room needs to be up around 20-22C for comfort..

Is it merely that the rain was puring down, and the humidity was
shockingly high?

Very likely -- humidity (and wind chill where present) are much
more important than temperature for human comfort percention.

It occurred to me that a dish of water in each room in winter, would
make the place SEEM warmer by dint of raising the humidity to the point
where sweating would not cool the skin so much.

This is done in large computer rooms where people are required to
work on a long/continous basis. The temperature is typically 21, but
the aircon cooling makes the humidity low and there's quite a draft,
which means you can end up shivering in such rooms even when you've
you're dressed for, and comfortable in, an office which might be
slightly cooler. This is handled by using humidifiers in such rooms,
which make a dramatic difference to the perceived "room temperature",
although they don't in reality change it at all, of course.

The trouble with doing this in something like a house which wasn't
designed for artificial humidity control is that you are bound to
have some cold spots, and you will get condensation at those points.

Those are called windows. ;-)

With UFH most of the rest of the house is pretty even temperature wise.


I may simply put some vases full of flowers around the place.