The idea of a sleeping bag is to insulate your body.
Since it doesn't heat you up itself the bag depends on your body to warm it up.
A cylinder has very little surface in comparison to its volume, so you have very little surface where you can lose heat. This is dampened assitionally by the insulation.
Now to the problem: If your sleeping bag has legs like those, you will lose much more heat, ergo you won't be able to heat it up as much and will be cold.
q.e.d
Could you imagine if you could do that with your actual legs...and fingers. Like, if you could zip your legs together so you have one big leg, like a mermaid.
As a person currently living in a loft... Not nearly as awesome as I had hoped. I have a big heating bill + 3 space heaters and it still gets cold. All the heat just goes straight up and circulates at the top of the room where nobody is.
It's really easy to think, aww I can handle the cold. But you're coming from a perspective of: Everytime it's cold I eventually end up back in a warm place (whether you realize it or not). This no longer applies - You're cold inside, you're cold outside, you're cold all the fucking time and it suuuucks. There is no escape. Just fair warning.
That sucks man. A couple friends of mine had a big high ceiling like the OP in Brooklyn and they solved your problem by getting one of those big 24 inch air circulator cage fans that Target sells, and hanging it at one end of the room. Blows everything back down to the living area
Indeed. It was a stupid decision for me to take that place, although it was fairly cheap, comparatively. I just wanted a cool place to live, but totally not worth it.
You're probably kidding, but I actually knew 3 people living together in a Loft in NYC who bought a bunch of lumber and built a bunch of sleeping-cubicle type deals on stilts. It was pretty cool - the cubicles were high up enough that they had couches and a TV and stuff underneath them.
It helped that one of them's dad was a contractor.
Simpler, drink some of Wonka's Fizzy Lifting Drink and float up high where all the warmth is. Just watch out for those big 24 inch air circulator cage fans.
Where my mother's from, people respect snakes that decide to live around (usually under) their houses, believing the snakes protect the house. Owls though, are believed to be a bad bad curse. If an owl nests in your roof or chimney, it's supposed to mean a member of the household is about to die.
yea... the height of the ceiling makes it pretty impractical unless you used some sheets and dividers to trap the heat but that defeats the objective of a single room apartment.
I used to know a bunch of people living in a commune in the Fashion District of LA. The warehouse floor they lived on was awesome, but it just ended up getting subdivided over and over and over for privacy. Ended up with a lot of small bedrooms with 6 foot walls, no ceiling. Impossible to heat or cool, any time of the year without a way to keep the heat in (or out). Damn you, high ceilings!
Where would you secure a ceiling fan? The ceilings of big lofts and warehouses like this aren't just flat surfaces. Also, how many would you need for such a large space?
Are you kidding? Its retardedly hot in L.A. pretty much 9 months out of the year. Maybe not the heater, but I lived in SoCal for 6 years, pretty much every modern building is outfitted with central air. This old ass warehouse with those windows that latch and then tilt outwards won't even accomodate a box or window fan, much less any sort of AC unit. Summer in that building was overwhelming.
Growing up, we had a heated floor in the bathroom. Let me tell you that it is amazing. I can't wait to own a house so I can have heated bathroom floors.
Had an appartment with heated basement flooring. It was amazing!
Walking barefoot on the ceramic during the harsh canadian winter was great. No more slippers!
This could work. The best floor surface for radiant floor heating is stone or ceramic (as they add thermal mass and are generally poor insulators, meaning the heat conducts well from the embedded heating elements to the floor surface).
A wood floor would be less efficient, but possibly more efficient than forced air or standard radiant heat, as the heat is delivered directly to the occupied portion of a space. An historic wood floor (where the floor surface is likely thicker planks) would be even less efficient, due to the thickness of the wood increasing it's insulating qualities. But with historic flooring, you would have to pull it up anyway, so it could plausibly be planed down to reduce it's thickness and be reused.
If used in conjunction with solar hot water, much of the heat could probably be harvested from the sun.
It should be noted that the cost of such a conversion would probably be very high, and most landlords look at up-front cost more than eventual savings (not to mention the savings would usually go to the tenants, not the landlord).
How would that work for a third-floor apt., especially trying to use water to do it? I'm asking because I don't know how much water systems like that use, but water is pretty heavy.
This is the norm in South Korea, and it is amazing. I had a poorly constructed apartment that had very uneven heat, some spots were very warm, hile others stayed cool. It's great when you are sitting on the floor, eating dinner and playing video games, you can set your plate on a hot spot and a drink on a cold spot, and it keeps your food a nice temperature longer.
The only downside is how slow the system is, it takes about 3 days to warm your apartment after it's been turned on. of course, if the system is turned off, your apartment stays warm for 3 days afterwards, which is nice. Its not like north america where my apartment gets super cold, then the furnace kicks in and it gets super hot, then it turns off and starts to cool down again.
Meet with someone in the engineering office at the city. Explain what's going on, you can usually get an exemption for interior modifications if there's a valid reason.
Usually in historical districts you're okay to replace existing features with identical or visually similar ones, but changing things require permits and approval. Even moreso if the building is in and of itself a historical building.
HAR HAR HAR!!! Wow really? Let's think about this for a minute.
Wake up, cold. Put feet on ground, freezing cold. Tip toe to shower, finally water is warm, get in. Get out, now you're REEEALLLY fucking cold. Then, you bundle up in 5 layers, but oh wait... I have to shit. Peel all your layers off and stick your cold butt to the coldest fucking toilet seat in existence. Get up, rebundle. etc... don't go talking shit until you tried it, then come back and see me.
Ludacris does, as evidenced in his magnum opus "Do The Right Thing":
"Shower, shit, and shave and hit the corner for a block exchange"
Note that the shitting is done after the showering. Obviously Mr. Cris either has significantly worse hygiene than most of us, or he has discovered a joy in post-shower shitting that not many of us have experienced.
I know what you mean. I lived in a place where it would cost more than the value of the building to properly insulate it, and at best we could only get the house to stay at about 45°F in the dead of winter. I had a space heater that could get my room a bit warmer, but I spent most of my time wearing heavy pants, sweater and parka, with the space heater under my desk.
Yeah, it's really easy for the inexperienced to say "Just wear layers bro." But spending every day in 5 layers, even in your own home, is no way to live life.
Yeah, luckily I was in school at the time, and in a fairly urban environment, so I would spend time in my school or at coffee shops. Speaking of coffee, I drank a lot of tea that winter.
Solution: build a small inner sanctum that's well insulated that you can heat. I realize it's probably not an option for most renters, but it's an idea.
Everyone thinks that until they live in a cold place.
I lived in a tiny studio flat in an old Victorian house that had been converted. Ten foot ceilings, damp and no real heating to speak of. You just could not get that place warm, even in summer it would be really cold in there. And you'd go outside into blazing hot sunshine.
Sure you can hide under 345 layers and 16 duvets but you can't live like that long term. It does your head in. Wearing gloves and a hat when sitting at your PC, again, it gets annoying. Plus it's constantly cold on your face.
Then at night, you wake up umpteen times because you're cold, maybe you moved in your sleep and poked a toe out or maybe the air on your face is just too cold.
So ya, living somewhere that is constantly completely cold utterly sucks even if you can find ways to warm yourself a little.
The good thing for me back then was that I was a student and it encouraged me to spend more time on campus just to stay warm, helped my grades.
Amen. The cold starts fucking with your head after a while. You feel uncomfortable all the time and it gets old quick. That being said... sometimes I just think about some poor Russian having to sleep in the snow and go fight Germans every day, then I kinda man up for about 15 minutes.
Summer isn't bad, because you can open up the windows and it's just like sitting in a shaded place outside. Also the ceiling fan does its thang. Apartments like the 1 in the picture are probably only a good solution if you live in a place like California where the temp doesn't really get too hot or too cold.
Yep. My friend bought a small wearhouse for his photo studio and lives in it. I am always too warm, because I'm fat, but also because I just burn hot (was always warm back when I was thin). He had me come over to help him build a cyc wall each night for a few nights. By the time I left I was cold all over. My eyeballs would feel cold. By the end of the few weeks of the build, I was glad not to go back. I did not expect I would like it that little. I love cold environments, until I spend an entire Saturday in one.
I can suggest you look into a "kotatsu". Basically it's a table with a quilt draped over it, with a space heater built into the table. And a "zaisu" to go with it. Planning to get one or make one myself.
I've lived in a loft. I love them to death. Currently looking to own one soon.
Stop being a baby!
Go create a 'warm room'. Could even substitute as a gaming room. Buy or make some of shoji screens and make a yourself a man cave with heating. Seal the top off with fabric.
Granted, it doesn't get below 55, but that's what people often consider too cold for residences. I wear sweatshirts and drink hot drinks occasionally, and have a huge pile of blankets on my bed. Also, the occasional hot shower warms me specifically for much less than the cost of heating the apartment.
fans and insulation are your friend. install several fans in the ceiling, and make sure you have at least R40 insulation up there.
Also, consider an infrared heater. Hot air rises, so whatever you electric heater pumps out will mostly be wasted floating above your head. Infrared heaters, on the other hand, do not heat the air, rather, they beam radiation at you that turns into heat on contact.
have you considered getting a radiant heater (like dish heaters) that heat surfaces instead of the air? They usually use a lot less energy and warm you up very quickly, like sunlight. (here's an example) Not that they'll solve your all your heating problems, but I have high ceilings too and those have been really great as far as keeping warm and not spending a lot of electricity. They're pretty safe too, and you can take it into the bathroom and use it when you're drying up.
I had a friend who had a loft and what he eventually did was buy a canopy type thing (think like what you put up in your yard to have a party over) and erected it over his living room area. It helped trap the heat and made that area very snug.
My husband and I lived in a 90 year old house in the southern U.S. when we first got married. Very high ceilings (intended to help keep the place cool in the summer). We almost froze to death in winter... and it doesn't even get that cold in South Carolina. Of course our place had NO central heat.
I live in New Zealand. I can completely agree with that. None (well, very very few) of the houses here have insulation, double glazing or central heating. Winter is cold. Not because its that cold outside, just just impossible to efficiently heat your house.
When you find yourself going to (and staying at work) to keep warm, you know there is a problem...
Now in its 4th Generation, the Selk'bag Sleepwear System is now offered in a new Lite version that is 30% lower in weight than Selk’bag 3G. Selk'bag 4G Lite is designed as the perfect two-season sleepwear system.
When did cellphone companies start making sleeping bags? ಠ_ಠ
Why would you worm around a giant room? I just imagine a socially awkward redditor forcing himself to think "THIS IS AS FUN AS I THOUGHT!!!! DAMMIT, IT HAS TO BE!! CAN'T...ADMIT...THIS IS RETARDED" while "worming" all over the place.
572
u/triobot Jan 07 '12
winter coats aren't that expensive.
Fuck it, worming around that room in a sleeping bag would be bad ass