The Control of Indoor Climate

Abstract

This chapter discusses the need for the control of indoor climate. The requirement of any dwelling is to enable people to rest, eat, and sleep. In cold and temperate climates, some means of warming houses is essential in winter. However, it is not always realized that the object of lighting a fire, or the turning on of a radiator in a cold room, is not to add heat to the bodies of the inhabitants, but to control the rate and the modes of their cooling. It is a physiological necessity that a healthy person should continually be giving out heat to his surroundings. This heat arises from the burning, or metabolism, of the food taken in, much of the resulting energy of which is converted in various muscles into the mechanical work needed to walk, work, or to move the body or objects. The only occasions when heat should be directly added to the body of a person are after prolonged and profound chilling, such as the results from long immersion in the sea, exposure in a blizzard, or when old persons, generally indigent and poorly nourished, are found suffering from hypothermia in unheated houses. The rewarming of such sufferers might be dangerous if not carried out under medical direction.