I’m trying to figure out something. In Taiwan, the apartments are freezing cold at about 12C or below. In Korea, I stayed in what I think was an older building without heat. The temperature was 0 C and the inside of the room was nowhere nearly as cold as in Taiwan. In fact it was actually a little warm that I had to open the window at night.
What building construction does Korea use that causes the rooms to not be as cold as in Taiwan?
It’s the humidity that makes the difference. In Korea, the winters are fairly dry, so you don’t feel as cold. Taiwan is very humid throughout the year, so the cold feels colder and the heat hotter than it would otherwise. It doesn’t even help to get in the shade in summer, because the humid air still feels hot.
Korean buildings are all (or almost all) built with heated floors. Pipes in between floorboards contain heated water. The heat rises through the floor and helps keep the living space warm.
(I lived in Korea 6 years)
Sorry, but that’s balderdash. OP is talking about apartments specifically. It is true that Korea is drier, but Korea outdoors is about a hundred times colder in the winter than Taiwan’s “winter” (I put that in quotes, because it’s not so much a winter as it is a less hot summer). The reason for why Korean apartments are warmer in the winter is due to the ubiquitous (and traditional) floor heating.
Presumably they insulate the buildings properly too?
Taiwan construction is very crude. They put some shuttering up and pour concrete into it. No attention paid to thermal performance: no cavity insulation, no double-glazing, usually only a token level of shading. The net result is that buildings heat up like ovens in summer and equalize at the outside temperature in winter.
There’s a greater need for it, as the winters are truly brutal. South Korea probably lands somewhere between Taiwan and Japan in terms of overall industrial development. That said, they still have a way to go. My old workplace there still had asbestos packed into the walls.
That would offer a logical explanation. There was no visible source of heat in the room, but it was warm.
I once owned a 100-yr old farmhouse in the US that had been retrofitted with good insulation and hot-water heating (located on the baseboards on the inside of exterior walls). Probably the most comfy house I’ve ever wintered in. Hot water heat provided remarkable comfort.
true but theres becoming a need for heating in the winter too with all the old people dying every year.
and there is absolutely a need for better built housing to handle the heat. to me its just a huge fail. the houses retain the heat in summer and are freezing in the winter. i’m not sure taiwanese are too bothered with it though - like many of the problems here.
I’ve found the newer, taller buildings to be fine in winter - I’m almost never cold in our place. Admittedly we’ve got big windows with open views facing both east and west, and that exposure to the sun makes a difference.
But the older six-floor buildings: wow. The in-laws’ place is cold in winter. There’s some kind of untapped thermodynamic potential there, with a building that somehow manages to get even colder than the outside air temperature.
i suspected as much with the newer ones. how do they fare in summer? do they cool down in the evening? my place just soaks up all the heat from the day and seems to release it at night. no relief.
My 50 year old gongwu is already a hot house where fungus and mold thrieve. It is amazing to me how little air circulation we get. Still it us freezing cold in winter and as soon as the heat is on, it feels more like a sauna. An unhealthy one.
Summer: it depends how much I value sunlight on a given day, and the curtains in that room. Good closed curtains, and the temperature’s OK. If I let in sunlight, or the curtains are a bit crap, it heats up fast. But we’re lucky because I can open windows on both east and west sides, so we’ll often have a nice breeze going through. If I recall correctly, we got air conditioning in the bedroom as soon as we moved in, in the computer room a few years later, and in the living room and second bedroom a few years after that - so while air conditioning of course makes things better, I didn’t consider it critical. That through-breeze was a giant factor in keeping summers bearable.
Overall our place cools down OK in the evening. I know both summer and winter I’m more comfortable here than in the in-laws’ gongwu, but, um, two big advantages at home are 1) unlike a startling number of Taiwanese people, I like having a fan blow on me; 2) I don’t need to wear a shirt at home.
I’ve lived in a lot of places. In the apartment blocks you don’t want to live on the top floor they are like ovensz the concrete roofs just heat up in the daytime and emit heat throughout the night…
Whether they are hot or cold often depends on how any walls are exposed to the exterior and it the building is exposed (such as on top of a hill ).
Only one of the apts Ive lived in had double glazing and it did make a difference of course but not enough due to the exposure on a hillside.
Oh you guys have sunlight? You are so lucky. I live in the eternal shadows.
OP mentioned his apartment didn’t have heating, so I would interpret that as having no floor heating either. (Though I haven’t seen a lot of apartments in Korea without heating.)
I also don’t doubt that Korean winters are colder.
(I had my fair share of cold Korean winters too.) It’s just that it feels warmer indoors at the same temperature than it does here, because of the humid temperature. That’s why 0C here can feel like -10C in Korea.
The building quality in Korea is equally poor, because they both countries use primarily reinforced concrete, poorly insulated windows and no building insulation. This holds true even if you live in an expensive Samsung Raemian or Daerim AcroStarTower. At least the floor heating keeps your feet warm!
Looked like similar building approach to me in both countries with concrete. Definitely no use of two by fours and insulation going in between the space created with this. But the ondol (floor heating) in Korea is magnificent. Boxers and no shirt all winter. Small apartments so also not too pricey with the gas bill.
Another way to stay warm in Korea. Yes, eating this now.
온돌 (Ondol). Koreans have always heated their floors. Years ago they ducted the smoke through the floors which wasn't a good idea as CO commonly leaked in. Many Koreans died of CO poisoning or were just dumped down. By the time I arrived in Korea they had switched to circulating hot water under the floors.
Very few Korean buildings will not have central heat these days. And a lot of buildings do not have thermostats. Many are on a central system where steam is funneled in form a central boiler in the city. So you have to open the windows to cool it down at times.
Interesting thing is that I grew up with Ondol. My Dad was in the Korean war and experienced Ondol heating there. When he bought our first house he installed hot water heating and ran copper pipes under the floors. So I grew up not wearing socks in the freezing winter (when inside).
People here say concrete is necessary because of quakes. That is understandable. Just wished the windows were better insulated.