^ Hot's not so bad: with sunshine you usually have the benefit of living among nice bright colours and a blue Simpsons sky.

Cold and wet climates, on the other hand, are the worst combination. Firstly, everything looks drab - painted with a pallet on which the only colours are black, white, brown and grey.

More significantly, though, cold is much more expensive and complicated to fix. You have to buy, and put on each day, a bunch of clothes, and my experience has been to live in houses that I couldn't afford to heat properly, on account of that too is very expensive. If you've ever had that experience, you'll never complain about heat again. The problems with a cold house begin from the moment you wake up and have to steel yourself for an icey run to the bathroom; and instead of relaxing at home, you find yourself confined to the one warm spot in the living room until you can justify getting back under the bedcovers again.

Give me hot-as-Hell anyday compared with the grinding misery of a British winter.

EDIT: @ Ziggy: Yeah, gypsies are a strange group of people who live by their own rules. Unfortunately for most of us, the rules include the idea that it's ok to steal from non-gypsies, and that leaving an environmental mess behind them is ok. When will they learn that they should export their environmental mess to somewhere where we don't have to see it?!

That explains my youngest step-brother and his family then. Don't get me started with that bunch.

I'm fat and I sweat like a pig. Heat can catch these hands.

^ I must be a nerd because I actually did some research into this. :o:

The usual temp of our skin is between 72-76° F, and that determines what's considered a comfortable room temp for most people: about 72°.

How expensive is A/C and heating? One factor must be how far the outside temp is from 72°:-

My experience has been of temps in London that go down to about 32°(Freezing point), and temps in Mexico that go up to about 92°F. So my idea of "cold" is 40° below "comfortable", but Mexico's "hot" is a mere 20° above "comfortable." So, without considering any other factors, it's twice as hard to make a London house warm than it is to make a Mexican house cool.

Obviously all this varies according to preference and location, so it's an argument I'm willing to conceed - but only to people living in Death Valley.

This assumes that the price of a degree of cooling = the price of a degree of heating. Don't know if they're the same but I'm assuming not.

^ That's true, but I feel I've done enough nerdy research for today, thanks. You are welcome to investigate that one yourself, Batlord, although your cred on the forum might take a hit!

Spent two minutes. Was hard and nobody compared the two. Gave up. Story of my life. Heating might be considerably cheaper but not sure.

^ :laughing: Well, that's certainly the story of the internet!

The bottom line is some people just don't like the cold, some people just don't like the heat and no one's gonna be dissuaded from their gut feeling by a chart or graph, or even a room thermostat.

In actuality there’s no such thing as “cooling”. You’re technically removing heat. The process of removing the heat and the moisture from the air and then blowing that out of the house PLUS the heat that is generated by the energy it takes to do that and blowing the cooled air back in takes energy for sure. BUT, you don’t create anything you’re just removing it. When you have to heat air you have to use considerably more energy because you’re actually heating the air not just moving it around.

In the south, we generally have very inefficient heating systems so a one week cold snap can cost you as much as a whole summer month of cooling.

I spent a little time on this post, thought about it, and then decided it wasn't thought out enough, or maybe I'm just hung-over. Screw it. Here's my thoughts.