Conversation

It's still absolutely wild to me that airing your apartment/house at least once a day is apparently not a normal thing outside of Germany. One of the culture shocks the pandemic brought me. Lüften Leute!

Quote Tweet

SwiftOnSecurity

@SwiftOnSecurity

Mar 25, 2020

NOTE: Your house’s CO2 levels are likely skyrocketing. You need outside air, it’s not dangerous! Turn on bathroom vent fans (what I do)/open windows to refresh the air inside your sealed box. Internal circulation is important but it’s not enough. High CO2 has cognitive impacts. twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurit…

Show this thread

208

Replying to

and

It's a large cost/energy usage increase in most places. Even if not for heat reasons (maybe not a problem if building has lots of thermal mass), it requires re-removing humidity from scratch.

Replying to

and

It's -12C outside here and this condo still doesn't normally need heating beyond computers, lights, cooking, a human, etc. Could partially open the door and then run the heat for hours along with having the humidifier needing to put 5L of water into the air to compensate...

Replying to

Ontario power is almost entirely clean energy but I'd rather not unnecessarily spend a hundred dollars per month on heating. Our electricity isn't exactly cheap (unlike Quebec) and electric heating like what's deployed here costs a lot more than natural gas (like most houses).

Replying to

and

you can do it, just be smart about it

Quote Tweet

Timon

@timonsku

Jan 30

People, pls. Germany gets deep negatives temp too. You can air when its cold, you just change the air, not cool down the objects in your house that hold the thermal mass. Do it short and quickly but with windows wide open. Air temp recovers in no time.

Show this thread

Replying to

and

I can believe that solves the temperature problem but not the humidity problem (likely only an issue in warm climate case).

Replying to

In that case I would think you'd want some sort of condensing setup where you let the fresh air in to remove all the humidity locally rather than having to run AC a long time once it's spread thru whole living space.

Replying to

and

It gets very humid in Toronto in the summers so having a dehumidifier is very worthwhile. It's the humidity and poor air quality in the summer which would stop me wanting to cycle out all the air. I do usually have both huge sliding doors open for most of the spring and fall.

Replying to

There's the opposite problem in winter. If you let inside the 40% relative humidity -15C air, it ends up being 4% relative humidity once you've heated it to 20C. I opened the doors for a bit to test and dropped it from the 40% humidity the humidifier is set at to 30% quickly.

1:22 AM · Jan 30, 2022Twitter Web App

Who can reply?

People @timonsku follows or mentioned can reply

Replying to

and

Same here! The air is super dry. Even without airing I would have ~30% without the humidifier. They use barely any energy tho. no problem to leave that running in winter.

Replying to

and

I'd still like a plant based solution. A couple years back I looked at the numbers and most were not significantly beneficial, but there were a couple ~maybe~ candidates in indoor trees.

Replying to

and

It'd be a lot more practical in a detached house where you could set up getting a ton of sunlight. I get very little sunlight despite floor to ceiling glass windows/doors along the whole exterior wall since it's south-facing and there are a bunch of other high buildings around.