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Daylight Saving Time

iBlue said:
Easier said than done. I'm a native Californian living in England. It's not an easy adjustment. It can be very gloomy here and I have an implacable hatred of the cold.
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Be glad London is this far south in the UK. I remember the true gloom of winter from growing up in Aberdeen. There is a quite a while with less than 7 hours between sunrise and sunset. So maybe 5 hours of actual daylight. On stormy/heavily overcast days it basically did not get light at all. And of course our Norwegian members have it worse than that!
 
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KnightWRX said:
Daylight savings time or not "Doing things after dark" in winter is a fact of life. Let's face it, it gets dark around 4 P.M. at EST, that's 5 P.M. at EDT. So you can do everything between 4 and 5 if we kept everyone on EDT ? :rolleyes:

Again, all in your heads guys. In winter, I get to work and its dark in the morning and when I leave work it's dark again. 1 hour here or there is not changing that simple fact. That's just how winter is. Learn to enjoy all the other pleasures of winters (skiing, the holidays, the warmth of a nice home after a few hours outside in the snow with the kids) instead of dwelling on your lack of vitamin D.
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Gosh it would be awesome if I could have an opinion without you rubbing your over-simplified, presumptuous and abrasive attitude all over it. You really have some nerve.

Mac'nCheese said:
Its not all in our heads and we aren't dwelling or AHEM, losing any sleep over it. Its called a conversation and its no big deal. I personally do try enjoy the winter and try to get the kids on the slopes as much as possible. All things being equal, I simply would prefer to have that extra hour of light after school so the kids can stay out and play more. You can always bundle them up more if its cold but once its dark, most parents want their kids inside.
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Indeed.
 
iBlue said:
Gosh it would be awesome if I could have an opinion without you rubbing your over-simplified, presumptuous and abrasive attitude all over it. You really have some nerve.
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If you lived in Canada, you would know how to dismiss "The Frog" behaviour better.

Just think "The French", and you are on the correct path.

All of their Gallic charm, and more. :)
 
robbieduncan said:
Be glad London is this far south in the UK. I remember the true gloom of winter from growing up in Aberdeen. There is a quite a while with less than 7 hours between sunrise and sunset. So maybe 5 hours of actual daylight. On stormy/heavily overcast days it basically did not get light at all. And of course our Norwegian members have it worse than that!
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Damn right we do! ;)

Street lights are already on by the time I get home from work now, though it's only twilight out. And come midwinter, the sun will only be up from 10am to 3pm in my city. All the worse for my relatives up north who don't get to see the sun for months...
 
Twice a year, I let forth a stream of abuse at whoever will listen (and those who won't) to just leave the **** clocks alone!!

If school kids need more light on the morning or evening or whatever, then change the opening hours of the school. If farmers want more light, then let them get up earlier, and leave the rest of us out of it!

The number of appointments I've missed (who remembers the hilarious iPhone DST debacle last year? It automatically put the clocks forward, and handily moved every appointment in the calendar forward one hour), the number of people who are late for work, the chaos on the roads as everyone is rushing because they overslept, and crashing because they're exhausted and had to get up an hour earlier...

Where I live (in Aberdeen, Scotland) in winter there can be, as a previous poster noted, fewer than 5 hours of light, and when it's overcast, it's basically dark all day. Tweaking the clock back or forward doesn't make it any less dark, it just makes people tired, irritable, and late.

Let our body clocks adjust naturally, slowly, as they have evolved to do. I hate jet lag, I hate it most of all when I haven't even travelled.
 
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I do not like the time change and I'm one of those people who get up early, 630-7 to go to work. It's kind of depressing when I get off 5-6 and it's dark out.
 
heehee said:
I do not like the time change and I'm one of those people who get up early, 630-7 to go to work. It's kind of depressing when I get off 5-6 and it's dark out.
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But the teachers are happy. They don't have to change if the school day is shifted later as Sunrise gets later. :rolleyes:
 
I just hope my power is back before the time change. That will really mess with my head.
 
Here at lattitude 33 degrees, the earliest sunset happens around Dec 1st at 5:21pm. If things were left at "summer time" aka Daylight Savings Time, sunset would instead be 6:21pm at the expense of moving sunrise from 7:11am to 8:11am. (The earliest, around Jan 3rd, would be 7:30/8:30am.)

Assuming my work schedule doesn't changed as measured against the clock, I'd find the extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day far, far more useful (and supportive of a good mood) than at the beginning of the day.
 
rbrian said:
If school kids need more light on the morning or evening or whatever, then change the opening hours of the school. If farmers want more light, then let them get up earlier, and leave the rest of us out of it!
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Despite the popular myth, DST was never adopted in the US for the benefit of farmers. Most farmers would wake up before sunrise anyway, so it did them no good.

It was really to accommodate city-dwellers who started doing more driving, shopping, and visiting on weeknights. They could take advantage of daylight in the evening instead of sleep through it in the morning before work. There was also the economic advantage of using less electricity.

Personally, I'm very skeptical that it saves money anymore for most Americans in the middle of summer for one reason: air conditioning. AC consumes far more energy than lighting does, so by creating an hour of daylight in the evening when we don't need as much artificial lighting, we've also created an hour of warmer weather when we need more artificial cooling.* I don't know if anyone has ever studied it, but I'll bet the AC issue easily makes up for lighting savings in much of the country for at least parts of DST. In places where the summer heat is especially brutal (Texas, Arizona, Las Vegas, etc.), I'll bet DST costs people more. It made much more sense before AC became widely available than it does now.


*I don't mean literally "creating" an hour, obviously. And I could be completely wrong now that I've read that about 90% of people don't program their thermostats to change at different times of day. If that's the case, then it doesn't matter because everyone is wasting energy all the time anyway!
 
aloofman said:
Personally, I'm very skeptical that it saves money anymore for most Americans in the middle of summer for one reason: air conditioning. AC consumes far more energy than lighting does, so by creating an hour of daylight in the evening when we don't need as much artificial lighting, we've also created an hour of warmer weather when we need more artificial cooling.*
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This is true, but it's even more prevalent that commercial air conditioning costs more than residential air conditioning. You're not creating an hour of warmer weather when you need more artificial cooling, you're transferring one of those hours from the commercial world to the residential world, where less energy is actually being used.

You also touched on lighting - there's a LOT more light in an office building per square foot than in a house. By sending everyone home an hour earlier (on the solar clock), you're making one less hour of lighting an office and one more hour of lighting a home. :cool:
 
Tomorrow said:
This is true, but it's even more prevalent that commercial air conditioning costs more than residential air conditioning. You're not creating an hour of warmer weather when you need more artificial cooling, you're transferring one of those hours from the commercial world to the residential world, where less energy is actually being used.

You also touched on lighting - there's a LOT more light in an office building per square foot than in a house. By sending everyone home an hour earlier (on the solar clock), you're making one less hour of lighting an office and one more hour of lighting a home. :cool:
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I hadn't thought of the commercial vs. residential issue. But how much difference does that make, do you think? I know that in the offices I've worked in, the AC runs more hours than in a lot of houses, simply because there are many machines (mostly computers) that don't turn off and require cooling during darker hours too. And aren't commercial air conditioners more efficient for similar spaces? I guess I'm wondering how much less businesses run their AC because of that.

As for lighting, it seems like a lot of businesses leave their lights on at night, especially in high-rises. (What's with that anyway? Is it just to preserve a lovely nighttime skyline?) Maybe DST needs keeping and it's the old habits of leaving things running at night that need throwing out?
 
I propose a very simple solution, which could put an end to all this messing about with the clocks - make the standard working day 8-4 instead of 9-5.

Assuming noon is when the sun is highest in the sky, in winter you'd lose light from both ends of the day simultaneously, making shifting the clocks fruitless. As it is where I live, at 57 degrees north - in winter a day lasts barely 5 hours - it's dark morning and night!
 
aloofman said:
I hadn't thought of the commercial vs. residential issue. But how much difference does that make, do you think? I know that in the offices I've worked in, the AC runs more hours than in a lot of houses, simply because there are many machines (mostly computers) that don't turn off and require cooling during darker hours too. And aren't commercial air conditioners more efficient for similar spaces? I guess I'm wondering how much less businesses run their AC because of that.
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Part of my job is actually doing this very thing for clients. Some things to consider are (1) the density of cooling is much higher in a commercial building than it is in a residence, and (2) the efficiency of the cooling equipment is lower than it is for a residence. Also, consider that except for extremely cold climates, a typical office building uses some degree of air conditioning year-round because of internal heat gains and solar gains through all the windows, even if the perimeter zones might be heated.

For a commercial business, the HVAC efficiency might run anywhere from 1.2 - 1.8 kW per ton for air conditioning, taking into account fans, refrigeration, pumps, etc. and depending on the type of systems used (water cooled, air cooled, etc.), at a density of 350-400 sqf per ton. A residential unit's efficiency is closer to 0.8-1.2 kW per ton at a density of 500-600 sqf per ton. The only downside is that residential electric rates are usually higher than commercial rates - but the government's imposition of DST is about saving energy, not saving energy costs.

As for lighting, it seems like a lot of businesses leave their lights on at night, especially in high-rises. (What's with that anyway? Is it just to preserve a lovely nighttime skyline?) Maybe DST needs keeping and it's the old habits of leaving things running at night that need throwing out?
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Depending on the jurisdiction, it's likely for nightlighting. Some cities require it for security reasons, others don't. And sometimes people just work late. :cool:

rbrian said:
I propose a very simple solution, which could put an end to all this messing about with the clocks - make the standard working day 8-4 instead of 9-5.
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I would love either of those workdays - for my entire professional career the standard work day has been 8-5. We don't get paid for lunch. :(
 
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