On Thu, 2006-09-21 at 17:59 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> hgraf wrote:
> 
> >> I've always wondered how you can live in a house that has not a controlled
> >> temperature for every individual room. (At least in an area with cold
> >> winters.)
> > 
> > I'm not sure what you think makes living in a house with a single
> > control more difficult, we just end up wasting energy heating the whole
> > house. 
> 
> Besides the waste, it's exactly the fact that it heats all rooms with the
> same temperature air that I find very uncomfortable. I like it that my
> sleeping room is cooler than the living room, the kitchen (which often has
> additional heat sources) doesn't need as much heating, and so on. 

But that's why I have a programmable thermostat, the furnace is
basically off all day, turns on when I get home, and turns down to 19
degrees C again a few hours before I go to sleep so by the time I go to
sleep my room is nice and cool. A few hours before I wake up the
thermostat goes back up to 23C and the bathroom is nice and warm by the
time I wake up.

As for rooms that have their own sources of heat, that's what the
louvres in the vents are for, rooms like the kitchen or the "sun" room
have their vents almost turned off. It takes a while to figure things
out the first time, but once you have everything set it works quite
well. Of course in the cooling season all the settings are inverted.

My "problem" with individual controls is that it can take quite a while
to warm up a room, so if your plans change one evening you are stuck in
a cold room for a few hours (admittedly if I get home from work early
for some reason I'm in the same boat).

> Individually controlling each room's temperature may not be popular in
> North America, but I think it's quite comfortable. (And wastes less energy,
> of course.) I don't think you have to abandon forced air to do it.

It becomes quite difficult with forced air to dynamically change things.
The reason being any setting change in one vent will affect many other
vents. It's very common that turn off one room results in another room
going 3 degrees above the rest of the house. I'm not saying it's
impossible, but with a well insulated house I don't think it's worth the
effort.

TTYL

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