Why are Australians in denial about how cold our homes really are? ‘Winter stoicism’ is partly to blame | Reena Gupta
Why are Australians in denial about how cold our homes really are? ‘Winter stoicism’ is partly to blame | Reena Gupta
I work from home with a hot-water bottle on my lap, wearing a dressing gown over my many layers of clothes. We do what we’ve got to do
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Yep ... it's total bullshit. Talking to foreigners, migrants, tourists etc will sober you up on this. They'll tell you how they've never been as cold as they are in Aus, despite coming from Northern Europe or Canada, and that our houses are made of cardboard.
Then we have a landlord based housing system and a totally inflated market just to ramp up the absurdity.
Massive gap under the front door? No worries mate chuck a door snake in front of it.
Seriously I think you're absolutely right it's one of those things everyone is so used to we don't even realise how bad it is compared to other places.
Seriously I think you’re absolutely right it’s one of those things everyone is so used to we don’t even realise how bad it is compared to other places.
Yea ... and apart from obviously dilapidated or traditional housing ... just about no one else is just powering through the cold like we do. Which is weird, because we love our homes and houses (apparently).
Japanese houses are also mostly uninsulated and they just use space heaters. More modern homes are starting to use mini splits, which sometimes have heat, but that's kind of just a better space heater.
Interesting. I’ve never spoken to someone from Japan about it.
I'm not from Japan but I lived there for a bit and have visited since.
My back door has a weirdly elevated door frame so I can’t even chuck a door snake on it. It has to be a giant rolled up beach towel and still doesn’t work
It doesn't help that any trade related work is both bullshit expensive, and terrible quality.
Go ahead and try and get a price on installing insulation. It'll be infinite dollars and the blokes that turn up (in a dual cab Ranger) to do the job will be in and out in 15 minutes having done the barest possible minimum and leaving you to deal with all the issues they've created by half-arsing it.
Yep. Been dealing with tradie problems just like this the past few months. Was sometimes shocked at what they’d leave behind for me to clean up.
Checks weather in Australia...
Checks weather for January in Virginia...
I'm going to press X to doubt.
I see where you're coming from and understand why you're dubious. Thing is: Your Virginian house probably has a basement. Maybe even a boiler or floor heating?
We have none of those things. We have no frost line, so we don't ever need to dig below it. Hardly any of our homes have basements or any sort of central heating. So, people from colder climates come here and are amazed at how cold our homes are, even when the temperature is above freezing outside, because our homes are simply not built for even mild cold.
That makes sense, I was just poking fun at the exaggeration. My wife is a desert lizard and she'd say the same thing about a drafty house in 50F weather.