GreenSpace: Saving this winter by degrees
After a glorious autumn, with no heat or air-conditioning, it's time for winter's thermostat sweepstakes: How looow can you go?
Turning down the heat certainly is an eco-plus, given that 30 percent to 50 percent of a home's energy use in winter is for warming it.
Every degree lower can save roughly 2 percent of the heating bill.
Energy efficiency experts recommend 68 degrees in the daytime, 60 at night, governed by a programmable thermostat, which is especially important. It will keep you from waking up at 2 a.m., realizing you've forgotten to turn the accursed thing down.
But if anyone still doubts global warming, I can say one place it's definitely happening: In our homes.
In 1993, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, 29 percent of U.S. households set their thermostats at 71 degrees or above in the daytime when someone was home.
By 2005 - the most recent data - those high setters had risen to 40 percent.
This could hardly be a worse time for people to be bingeing on heat.
How can humans stay comfortable? The human body has a core temperature of 98.6 degrees.
To explore the thermal comfort zone, researchers studied nearly naked people in bikinis and Speedo-style bathing suits, sitting quietly in a draft-free room for three hours at 50 percent relative humidity.
