quote:Originally posted by Rhiandmoi: It also depends on the size of your hearth. My grandparents used to live in a midcentury modern with a fireplace where the hearth was basically a wall of bricks with a brick bench. That sucker heated the house even with the giant picture windows in the livingroom and multiple sliding glass doors. The brick bench was so hot that we had to have special butt cushions so we wouldn't burn our legs sitting next to the fire as kids.
I live in a similar sort of house. No bench, but a wall of bricks. I can heat the entire house for a night by lighting a fire for a few hours. Come morning, the bricks are still warm.
Lovely.
-------------------- There are people who drive really nice cars who feel that [those] cars won't be as special if other people drive them too. Where I come from, we call those people "selfish self-satisfied gits." -Chloe Posts: 6995 | From: New Mexico | Registered: Oct 2004
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We always thought of a fireplace as being a luxury until our area got hit by an ice storm in 1999. If my FIL had not had a fireplace he'd have been without heat for almost 2 weeks.
-------------------- If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation. - Jean Kerr Posts: 18428 | From: Ontario, Canada | Registered: Nov 2001
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I guess it really depends on how you define a luxury. I grew up in central Texas where the summer temperature is regularly about 100 degrees. We didn't have air conditioning until I was about 13 and were obviously able to survive without it. It isn't strictly a necessity, but it makes such a huge difference in quality of life that, while the word is tecnhically accurate, I would hesitate to call it a luxury.
I suppose that goes for a lot of things, really. I can remember doing without a lot of things that we take for granted today. While these things are not strictly necessary to survival and I got along perfectly fine without them for a long time, they have become so central to my life that I'd really hate to give them up.
We had wood heating, by the way. Central Texas winters aren't anything like what you get up north, but we did need heat fairly frequently for a few months of the year. My parents had the stove put in during the same remodel where they had the air conditioning installed. We had central heat, but my father liked the wood stove so we pretty much always used that. I hated it with a passion. Using the stove meant we had to go cut firewood in the summer and fall to build a stockpile for winter. When it came time to use the stove, it became my job to constantly haul wood into the house to keep it burning. To add insult to injury, it only heated the main living area and left my room icy cold whenever it got cold. Basically, it meant a lot more work for me where none had existed before and a cold room in winter where it had once been warm. I hated that damn stove.
The first full winter we had it, we had one of our extremely rare snowstorms. We got a foot and a half of snow at our house and school was closed for a week. I spent much of the holiday trudging out to the wood pile to find dry wood and haul it in for the stove. I hated that stove.
I suppose the ability to use wood heat means that central heat is a luxury, but I'd really hate to have to do without it and go back to a stove (even assuming my apartment had provisions for wood heat).
Posts: 716 | From: San Antonio, TX | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by MaxKaladin: I suppose the ability to use wood heat means that central heat is a luxury, but I'd really hate to have to do without it and go back to a stove (even assuming my apartment had provisions for wood heat).
Modern homes have plumbing that, in cold climates, would freeze without central heating.
-------------------- How homophobic do you have to be to have penguin gaydar? - Lewis Black Posts: 8322 | From: Columbus, OH | Registered: Aug 2005
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I always thought of it as a luxury simply because of the cost. My wife and I use trac phones because they are cheaper and we can manage to keep our conversations limited to 30 seconds or less. So I have to laugh at the number of people who say they can't live without them.
A local junior high school here recently banned cell phones use and you would have thought by the uproar from both students and parents that they had just committed mass murder.
Posts: 39 | From: Kettering, Ohio | Registered: Mar 2006
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Older houses were built without a/c in mind and were designed for cross ventalation. However, newer houses are built with a/c in the design so the need for cross ventalation because unnecessary. SO, if your a/c fails in a home that is designed for it, well, you have my sympathy. It's also a matter of being acclimated to the climate. Leaving the middle east in August, when the temperature is hitting 120F plus and then heading to visit my wife's family in Thailand, where the temperature is a mere 99F, sitting outside is enjoyable whereas, here, I would be miserable (Bahrain in not a dry desert country, but humidity hits 90% or higher daily in the summer). Climatizing yourself has a lot to do with the needing or not needing a/c. IMHO
-------------------- Just singin' in the Bahrain Posts: 49 | From: Manama, Bahrain | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by MaxKaladin: I suppose the ability to use wood heat means that central heat is a luxury, but I'd really hate to have to do without it and go back to a stove (even assuming my apartment had provisions for wood heat).
Modern homes have plumbing that, in cold climates, would freeze without central heating.
I meant it's a luxury around here.
That said, central heat is only "necessary" because of modern plumbing and doing without it would mean that wood heat would be prefectly adequate in colder climes. It just wouldn't be pleasant. That's the real story with a lot of luxuries that have become necessities. They may not be strictly necessary, but life without them is so much less pleasant most people consider them necessities.
ETA: Come to think of it, it has been mentioned earlier in the thread that wood heating is popular in Canada. Presumably they have modern plumbing ( ). Perhaps they're using some modern method to distribute the heat, but they seem to get by with wood heat in a colder climate.
Posts: 716 | From: San Antonio, TX | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by MaxKaladin: ETA: Come to think of it, it has been mentioned earlier in the thread that wood heating is popular in Canada. Presumably they have modern plumbing ( ). Perhaps they're using some modern method to distribute the heat, but they seem to get by with wood heat in a colder climate.
I think the people Callee was talking about were using the woodstoves as supplements to central heating. He did say that his FIL uses the woodstove "almost exclusively."
-------------------- How homophobic do you have to be to have penguin gaydar? - Lewis Black Posts: 8322 | From: Columbus, OH | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lainie: I think the people Callee was talking about were using the woodstoves as supplements to central heating. He did say that his FIL uses the woodstove "almost exclusively."
That's possible, but may not mean that they're using the central heat when it's colder. My father would let the central heat warm the house when it was merely cool and we really just needed a bit of extra heat now and then. He fired up the stove when it got cold because that's when it saved the most money (Normally, the central heat would be running a lot more in that weather but with the wood stove it didn't).
Another possibility is that they keep the central heat on at a low temperature just to keep the pipes warm when they're not home but use the wood stove to actually heat the place when they're home. You can keep enough of a fire burning to accomplish this without central heat but it's a lot more trouble.
Posts: 716 | From: San Antonio, TX | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Archie2K: I'd personally say that AC is less a luxury than heating is. In the cold there are things you can do to keep warm. Granted that might involve wearing five layers, gloves, hat, curling into bed and watching Trisha re-runs, but you can at least stay warm. With heat there is only so much you can do to keep cool. I'm fortunate enough to live in a country in which the temperature rarely gets that unbearably hot. I feel for those of you who do. Not a big fan of the heat me. My pasty English skin doesn't like it. I had two distinct tan lines from a six day holiday to the East coast in May this year!
In my little corner of the world, we really, really need heat for at least three months a year or pipes start freezing. We need it for about two more months at night for comfort. A/C, while I'd love to have it, is really only needed here for maybe two to four weeks a year. This past summer, the thermostat pegged at 90 degrees and we hightailed it to Mom's.
-------------------- "No Biblical hell could ever be worse than the state of perpetual inconsequence." Beatrice in Dangerous Beauty Posts: 1816 | From: Cayuga County, NY | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Archie2K: I'd personally say that AC is less a luxury than heating is. In the cold there are things you can do to keep warm.
I disagree. Indoor plumbing is also a necessity, at least for me. And without heat there is no indoor plumbing.
-------------------- "My neighbor asked why anyone would need a car that can go 190 mph. If the answer isn't obvious, and explaination won't help." - Csabe Csere Posts: 1225 | From: Wichita, Kansas | Registered: Nov 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Archie2K: I'd personally say that AC is less a luxury than heating is. In the cold there are things you can do to keep warm.
I disagree. Indoor plumbing is also a necessity, at least for me. And without heat there is no indoor plumbing.
I'd say that anyone who thinks that heating is less necesary than AC probably hasn't lived far enough north for at least one winter.
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). Perhaps they're using some modern method to distribute the heat, but they seem to get by with wood heat in a colder climate.
