Comments on: Professor Ole Fanger, the Father of Room Temperature

By: tikaro

tikaro — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:25:07 +0000

Hmm, that’s interesting. Some Googling for “thermal comfort bmi” returns results for climate-control papers checking whether particular car-seat covers actually do make you cooler, but BMI doesn’t seem to be something that’s tested, just mentioned:
http://bit.ly/GeonJ

But isn’t it a truism that well-insulated chaps like me don’t mind being LOW on the Fanger Box, while triatheletes and ballet dancers don’t mind being RIGHT on the Fanger box? So far, I have a sample of one triathelete and one ballet dancer to corroborate this. So I don’t think that will be Science until we have about 1,498 more reports

Wow, I wonder how many jillion kilowatts could be saved if we could develop climate-control systems with things just like you’re describing, with multiple zones and shutters on the airflow vents, that would accept votes…

By: mcglinch

mcglinch — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:05:25 +0000

i really don’t think BMI figures into the equation (or at least I wasn’t thinking it would). Now that I ponder some more, I probably would have also installed a red/blue button that users would press (too cold, too hot) instinctively when they were uncomfortable. graph their pressings against their usb thermostat readings to find natural groupings. Graphing it all against their BMI would probably been on a strictly voluntary basis.

btw, though i subscribed to comment notifications, i didn’t get one! sort that out, ok?

By: tikaro

tikaro — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:39:33 +0000

McGlinch, organizing desks based on personal climactic preferences would have been a really interesting experiment. Would you have had all the fatty boomalattys (like me) all clustered in the Arctic corner, and then all the 2% body-fat runners over by the windows, where the sunlight streams in and warms things up?

By: mcglinch

mcglinch — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:04:04 +0000

Excellent info and great work you all are doing in the lab there @superscoop!

at my next to last job i had the burden (or the God-like power) of having the thermostat for the A/C inside the enclosed bookshelf over my desk (we’ll save discussions on the efficiencies of that setup for the coworkout).

It was up to me to control the weather. However I was also the lightning rod for my “I’m cold” and “I’m hot” dissatisfied coworkers. I spent one afternoon researching USB thermometers that everyone would plug into their desktops that would read into a central dashboard that would allow me a more visual read on the temperature fluctuations and perhaps assist in reorganizing desks based on personal climatic preferences. My concept and proposal were summarily dismissed.

By: Kate Young

Kate Young — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:52:35 +0000

The “Ole” in Ole Fanger is a two syllable name, I believe. In Kodiak there was a road named after the Swedish man Ole Johnson (Ole Johnson Ave) and it was pronounced Oley Johnson Ave. I bet the Danes don’t say Oley, but they probably don’t say Ole either.

By: tikaro

tikaro — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:53:21 +0000

Oh, man, it gets better:
“fcr = ratio of clothed/nude surface area”
In a summertime office, fcr is assumed to be 0.5, and in “Swimming baths with rest places”, it is assumed by researcher to be 0 (nude.)(!)

I always thought of “Room Temperature” as something immutable, eternal, handed down by our ancestors. Not carefully calibrated by an awesome, mustachioed Dane in the 60s!