What makes a home comfortable in the winter?
Surprisingly, there’s no simple answer to the question. Every homeowner experiences “comfort” a little differently, and the comfort of a home can be affected not just by the temperature of the air but by a variety of factors, including personal preference, the clothing people wear, the insulation of the building envelope, and even psychology.
Kansas State University professor Frederick Rohles helped stumble upon the subjective nature of comfort in a study he was running, when he found that participants felt colder in one test chamber than another, even though the two chambers were kept at an identical 74 degrees Fahrenheit.
However, he quickly identified the problem: One of the chambers was a walk-in commercial refrigerator, so the study participants felt psychologically colder there. After outfitting the room with carpeting and furniture, Rohles ran the study again. Not only did participants now feel warmer in the redesigned chamber, but simply adding the embellishments was the equivalent of raising the temperature 2.5 degrees.
For builders and remodelers, the findings mean that simply heating the air in a space to a set temperature isn’t the only path to comfort. The way homeowners experience the heat in their homes will also play a role in their satisfaction with their home’s HVAC.
Propane-fueled heating systems such as furnaces and boilers offer a range of solutions that make the air and surfaces in your homes feel warmer, so your customers will be comfortable year-round.
In The Ultimate Guide to Comfortable Heating, we’ve collected our most valuable resources on heating comfort, identifying a variety of options you can choose to improve the comfort of your projects while also improving your home’s energy efficiency, carbon footprint, and overall cost. Let’s put together a heating strategy for your home that banishes the chill from even the coldest days of winter.