> A 3kg cat has a heat output of 14.8 watts, or 129.65 kilowatt-hours I don't get it, how is 14.8 watts equal to 129.65 kilowatt-hours?
They forgot to specify per year.
(129650 WHr/14.8 W)/24 hr = 365 days
Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?
121–130 of 163 posts
Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?
#122Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?
#123I was once desperately poor. Too poor to turn on the heat. But I did have access to friendly cats, so I've been through this experiment in real life. One cat stuffed under the blankets at night is a significant improvement. But as you add more and more cats, the improvement becomes only incremental. I eventually learned that two cats was really the best one could hope for. Best positioning is between the legs, and wi…
Electric blankets were pretty awesome for this circumstance. Incredibly cheap to operate, extremely effective. (I always had trouble washing them properly though)
I remember having one... It had no ground wire... Thinking about it now, I'm really surprised I never got electrocuted or that it didn't catch on fire, it was really flimsy.
Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried just adding more blankets. I never run heating at night because I find that even at 0c outside I can just stack up 4 blankets and still be warm.
Having slept outdoors a lot in the past, I think many people underestimate the importance of the ground/floor/bed in keeping from freezing. If you have excess blankets, it could make more difference to put them under you as opposed to above you. Even spruce branches or cardboard will lift you from the ground enough to make a difference in a pinch.
I discovered this on my annual backpacking trip during a particularly cold winter. I sleep in a zero degree bag in a hammock, but my bag has most of the insulation on top so my back was freezing. Next year I brought a nice thick blanket to line the hammock and I’ve always been comfortable since.
Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
wouldn't it be more efficient to ban humans?
Not unless you extirpated the cats first. At which point, why ban the humans?
In the Anthropocene around 90% of all macro-organisms will go extinct. Banning cats does not change this overall figure. Even for New Zealand cats are a lesser problem compared to the rats and possums brought there by humans and those are just a drop in a barrel compared to the overall effect of humanity. For example, New Zealands best solution to the rat and possum problem is bio-chemical warfare¹.
The whole "ban cats" movement is nothing but humanity shifting blame towards one of their oldest allies. New Zealands native birds are not endangered by cats, but because someone removed almost all of their forest homes during the last two centuries².
If you want to prevent the Kōkako and other native birds from going extinct, instead of protesting against other peoples pets, go and fund some breeding program or forest preserve.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080_usage_in_New_Zealand 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_New_Zealand
Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?
#126Not sure where they got their cost estimate from, but I spend a lot more than $250/year on each of my two cats (and 250 NZD is only ~160 USD). Still, fun article :)
I recently had to choose between these two options: 1. Removal of splinter from pet cat's eyeball: $1,650 2. Removal of cat's eyeball: $1,400 Blew out my pet budget for a long while. I have the photo that the vet ophthalmologist took - they were cool enough to send it to us.
Apologies if it's insensitive, but I'm curious what the financial cost of "putting cat down and acquiring new cat" would be; mere intellectual curiosity.
Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?
#127Tough to say. All I saw was a blank white page with no text or images. After jumping through some hoops I saw all that javascript was for a couple paragraphs of text. So I'll just mirror it here for others. As an aside about the actual content: cats come with vet bills you have to be able to pay if you want to ethically own one. That's a huge expense. Cat v panel heater: Which is better? 6:34 AM, 24 Aug 2020 James Po…
In addition to vet bills there is grief at their passing. Nobody talks years later about that wonderful heater they had back in 1998 and how despite the furnace repair bills, they’d do it all over again just because of how it made the most pleasing sound when it ran, almost like a cats purr.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone does reminisce about such a thing!
Bizarrely I was thinking recently about an extremely lamentable performance of a storage heater 20years back. It wasn't even my heater!
Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, for some reason I decided to use a regular duvet. With a sleeping bag it would probably have been less of an issue.
I was going to say, I never really understood why sleeping bags seem to be the default for camping but I get it now.
They're warmer, more comfortable, easier to carry...
Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having slept outdoors a lot in the past, I think many people underestimate the importance of the ground/floor/bed in keeping from freezing. If you have excess blankets, it could make more difference to put them under you as opposed to above you. Even spruce branches or cardboard will lift you from the ground enough to make a difference in a pinch.
I discovered this on my annual backpacking trip during a particularly cold winter. I sleep in a zero degree bag in a hammock, but my bag has most of the insulation on top so my back was freezing. Next year I brought a nice thick blanket to line the hammock and I’ve always been comfortable since.
Your weight compresses most of the insulation beneath you, and the hammock itself provides less than no insulation. If you aren't, you should put the blanket on the outside of the bottom of the hammock (suspended beneath it), so it has more volume and thus insulation.
Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?
#130I was put off by the following sentence:
> ... 14.8 watts, or 129.65 kilowatt-hours - the metric commonly used by power companies ...
It should say 129.65 kilowatt-hours PER YEAR. Without the time, it's like saying "a car goes at 50mph or 1000 miles". It's just nonsense.