How to live on $432 a month in America

Heating a space is easier and cheaper than cooling one. I find the midwest is plenty dry and plenty warm, even with multi-month snowy winters.

> Heating a space is easier and cheaper than cooling one.

Not really no. Cooling always uses heat pumps (air conditioning) while heating only sometimes uses heat pumps. And cooling usually has a smaller temperature delta than heating. It comes down to the relative costs of natural gas and electricity where you live.

It's not though. Even though fuel to heat is vastly cheaper than electricity to cool, the winter thermal difference in a cold climate is an order of magnitude more than the summer thermal difference in a hot climate.

https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-does-it-take-more-...

The way Seattle affects some people isn't about temperature. It's the long dark.

I also grew up along the Gulf Coast and live in Seattle now. I've had a bunch of other friends and family who have moved to the Pacific Northwest. Some love it and are still here and some lose the will to live and wilt like sunflowers in the dark. I don't know of any way to predict how the gloom will affect you. You just have to come here for a year and see how it goes.

If you are living near New York im not sure how dry you can consider it. You are East of the Great Lakes which makes it rain. In the middle of summer it might be dry, but both the spring and fall i expect to be very wet and humid, and unless the Great Lakes freeze over in the winter, which is happening less and less by the year, you will have a wet slushy winter.

That article is misleading because it only considers outdoor air temperatures.

Every electric and mechanical device we use produces waste heat. Humans and pets produce waste heat. The sun shining on a roof and through the windows heats a house.

Take the example of DC with average summer highs of 87 and winter lows of 28.

If it’s 87 outside a house with no AC full of people and pets, running appliances computers and lighting with the sun coming through the windows will easily get up to 100.

You AC needs to effectively move the temperature from 100 to 74.

The same thing applies in the winter. If it’s 28 outside a well insulated house full of people and residual solar heat would likely never drop below 48 or so.

Also the article picked 74 degrees which is fine for the summer but insane for the winter. Especially at night when the low temperatures hit.

If you pick something more reasonable like 68, you now have 20 degrees of heating and 26 of cooling.

Then when you consider that adding 20 degrees to the outside temperature means that in the summer you will need to run the AC pretty much all day. While in the winter day time temps + 20 degrees puts the indoor temperature right around 70 with no heat.

>> Heating a space is easier and cheaper than cooling one.

> It's not though.

It always has been, for humans. Energy cost != financial cost (or ease).

ie You can't settle on the bright side of mercury surface, but you can on the dark side of the moon.