How often are your windows open? What about during Winter? or during Summer? Do you open windows to let in fresh air?
How often are your windows open? What about during Winter? or during Summer? Do you open windows to let in fresh air?
Daily, all year roun,for a short time.
Let me introduce you to Stoßlüften.
Stale air contains high levels of CO₂, which can make you feel tired
Oh… no wonder why my circadian rhythm is fucked up… I feel so tired in the day and now its 1AM and I’m wide awake… 🫠
Central heating, no AC.
Heat is not carried by air, but by those pipes with hot water running to radiators… so I don’t know if there’s any airflow.
Built before 1978, might have lead paint under there… but it was painted over once before we moved in so its probably lead safe(? I hope lol, i’d be lame to lose a few iq points to something stupid like lead)
Ah, then no forced air through ventilation ducts to move air around.
My current house doesn’t have vents either, but I have fans that move air around the important bits that get occupied the most. With my dogs needing to go out, and work, the doors are open enough, and there’s enough leakage to not worry about co2 levels. Except my wife sometimes trips the sensor in the hallway when she takes a long bath while burning multiple candles…
Dies ist der einzigste Weg.
This is the only way
I try to open my bedroom window as little as possible because the air outside is usually poor quality and I have an active air filter monitoring my room and removing crud from it. I LOVE living in a car centric city in a country who’s government has been partly captured by oil companies and dealerships at all levels.
I like to think the plants I have in my room help with the CO₂, but I don’t feel they make that much of a difference.
This foreigner made a video out of their experience
(I was looking for a different one I thought they made, but this is where I ended up.)

Stoßlüften!!
(aside from rooms having ac, those don’t need it)
Oh wise German Airbender, what do I do if I live in a small apartment with no windows across from each other to create a cross draft? My windows in are in two rooms on the same side of the apartment. Save me from ventilation sin!
For real tho if you have any ideas I love fresh air and would love to hear them!
Open them both and then the door, would that help?
Fans are fine, actually, we are not the koreans! You might get a stiff neck from the Zug, but no fan death, probably.
Pretty temperate here.
Doors and windows open at least some of the day all year round.
I love sleeping with the windows open in the summer.
Hehe
Also, Linux is really quite nice nowadays 😉
How to install Linux in my house?
Can I do “sudo circulate air” without losing warmth?
Your parents are right in terms of energy waste, im sorry to say.
I’m quite similar though and air about five times a day but with a timer so that the air gets circulated completely without cooling out the house itself.
The breathing struggle is most likely a mix of dust sensitivity and psychology. For me an air cleaner made a huge difference in my comfort level.
I’d you want to go the scientific approach get a CO2 monitor (the most important element for brain performance when talking about home air) and a PM2.5 sensor for dust levels.
Lol mom told me to “go outside if you can’t breathe” 🙃
So what do I choose, freeze to death or suffocate to death?
I dont think we ever circulate the air… felt like I lost a few iq points… from the lack of oxygen
Haha I feel you!
Perhaps try to be a bit less extreme in your language in front of your parents - or offer them a bet: if a CO2 monitor is yellow or red at the evening they pay for it and you can air whenever it’s getting yellow. If it stays green you pay for it and shut up about the windows!
I live in the Pacific Northwest, which means temperatures don’t fluctuate too much into extremes.
I personally like having the window cracked at night in the winter. I like to have fresh air, even if it’s cold. I feel sick if a room feels too stuffy.
Spring, summer, and fall the windows are definitely open at least at night if not during a larger part of the day. If it’s ~15-25C outside, I’ll usually have at least one window open. More likely two in the 20s. I just don’t tolerate heat well, so I will close my windows during the heat of the day when it approaches 30s.
Otherwise they’re only closed if outside is gross (smoke, people talking, hazy) or if I want total silence.
Canada here. Winter never, unless we have a rare warm (above -10c/14f) day. Spring as often as I can if/when it’s nice enough outside. Summer usually open until the temps get around 27c/80f then closed and the air conditioner on.
I live in a roughly 100 yr old house though, so with all the cracks etc this place tends to self-ventilate anyway.
Ventilation is very important to keep the air inside breathable and to keep things like mold outside.
I like to show the importance of this by lighting some incense (or vaping a bit) to show how the smoke just does not go away with the window closed. The same happens with the CO2 that comes out of your mouth, you just don’t see it in that case.
Exceptions would be when your building has some other ventilation system built in, but the smoke would show that.
It’s not a building, its a townhouse. I don’t think the air circulates unless you open windows.
My house always feels so suffocating since windows never get opened so I have to open it in my room, then I get yelled at and I begrudgingly close it then be sad that I struggle to breathe.
Sometimes its warm outside (spring/summer/fall) and I open windows on the living room areas, then next day I find it closed again… and I just get tired of opening the windows…
As soon as the air feels stale you gotta turn off your heating and open all windows for like 5-10 mins in the cold seasons. Air is bad at carrying heat anyway, if you close your windows it’ll get warm again quickly.
German “Stoßlüften”
I live in a forested countryside in the Northern Midwest. Leaving the windows open invites in bugs and other small critters. Even with screens on the windows, insects crawl through the cracks, and I’ve definitely had several field mice chew their way through screens. I also have rabbits and possums who tend to nest up against the foundation of my house, and if a lower window is left open for prolonged periods, I sometimes find babies nesting in the window frame.
If I open my windows, it’s for a limited time to get some fresh air moving through the house. I’ll turn on strategically placed fans in various rooms to encourage rapid airflow through the house so I can close the windows sooner.
I only open windows in the winter if I need to cool a room quickly. For instance, I’m renting my first floor to a friend and I live on the second floor. But I only have one HVAC unit and thermostat for the entire house. The first floor always stays a few degrees cooler than the second floor (heat rises), so I keep it a little extra hot upstairs to ensure I’m not freezing out my friend. But I’m always hot in general, so I’ll either have fans on me all winter, or I’ll occasionally shut myself in a bedroom and open the window for 15-20 minutes, just to lower my body temp a bit and help me tolerate the hot house.
There have been a few winter nights where my wife and I have left the bedroom window open to cool down our bedroom, while burying ourselves in thick blankets. We don’t sleep well if we’re sweaty and stuck to the bed. I usually get up a few hours later and close the window, so we don’t freeze overnight.
Every day.
We use an estufa during the colder months so we crack open a window so we don’t die of CO poisoning
This is an estufa:
Forgets to open window one time
“Mommy I don’t feel so good, I wanna go to sleep…”
💀
My body runs like an oven when I’m asleep. To that end, I have the heating off by the time I’m in bed (winter), and if the air still isn’t crisp enough, I’ll open the window a crack.
In the warmer months I straight up cannot sleep if the windows are closed.
I basically never open my windows. This winter, I don’t think I opened them at all except maybe during a big cleaning day.
In Japan, ventilation is required by law, and most modern houses are equipped with a 24-hour ventilation system. Because of that, we don’t really need to open the windows to get fresh air — the system continuously circulates air for us.
At the same time, it doesn’t make the house noticeably colder in winter or hotter in summer. The air also goes through filters, which is especially nice during pollen season.
So I don’t really feel suffocated even with the windows closed, since the air is still being exchanged constantly.