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How Cold and Hot Creates a Comfortable Living Environment
- 1. How Cold and Hot Creates a Comfortable Living Environment All Air Services 2/1 Opportunity Street Wangara WA 6065 (08) 9303 9881
- 2. Cold is the cornerstone of comfortable. When people want to stay in one place, they request it to be colder rather than hotter; they prefer the chill instead of the sweat. In Mexico, when their siesta tradition was no more, air conditioner use increased. This is the Mexican version of a three-hour break at the hottest portion of the day and, in a way, it acted as a kind of air conditioning. People can make of that what they will, but when it comes to comfort, cold is the perennial choice. Yet, Elizabeth Shove, a professor of sociology at Lancaster University in England, insists that hot and cold both works to provide optimum comfort. Her study did not revolve around the use of cooling and heating systems, but how societies deal with what they have weather-wise. Combining Perspectives Shove and Susan Mazur-Stommen of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy both stated that people react differently to temperatures. Two decades’ worth of research amounted to one thing: what is comfortable to people is what’s common. In American metrics, the research subjects found comfort in all settings of the thermostat, from the smouldering to the bone chilling. Mexico, Norway and Japan are good examples where people use different methods of dealing with hot or cold climate. Siesta was for the Latin Americans, while the Norwegians had a strict sense when it came to comfort. As a wintery country, they established a mindset that everybody must be comfortable in anyone’s home. Leaving the heater on even when they leave, there is no room for displeasure.
- 3. In Japan, it is a little different. People have to deal with the weather without heating assistance, and when it gets chilly in the evening, they wrap themselves in blankets. What they had were bright fluorescent bulbs, because they value visibility over comfort. A Society That Interferes Dress codes have changed from decades before. Men are to wear long sleeves and closed-toe shoes all year long, while women have to revert to thin blouses and even shorter skirts. That means women have to deal with colder temperatures with less clothing. Mazur-Stommen said that if dress codes did not exist, people would not have to alter indoor climate so often. The cold gives respite in hot weathers, just as the warmth does in winter. It was never more complicated than that. People make do with what they have, no matter how dreadfully cold or scorching that is.