On 24/11/2010 20:57, Tim Streater wrote:

Which has very little to do with human comfort. I find 18C to be a
comfortable temperature for my car in summer, but in winter, that
feels cold and it is set to 24C at the moment.

Well it could be all in the mind but I don't think so. I think it is
mostly physiological rather than psychological.

If I spend most of the day outside when I come in for a break the
daytime set temperature of 17C seems warm. Stay in all day and I have to
push the temperature up to the evening setting of 19C.

I find, especially nowadays, that my body switches from automatically
being "too hot" (summer) to "too cold" (winter). This happens sometime
in spring and autumn as appropriate. There's some hysteresis in there
somewhere, which accounts for having to crank the thermostat up and down.

I find that as I grow older I have less and less tolerance to the cold.
I am looking after a neighbour's dog this week and when I take her out
my top half is OK in a big padded jacket but my legs seem very cold even
though there is not much wind and the air temperature is still
marginally above zero.