Save money by turning off the lights early; Eiffel Tower

I have an 18-day trip planned to visit Christmas markets. I hope at least some of the lights will be on some of the time. I'm still going and looking forward to it. Certainly curtailing energy usage wouldn't be a reason to stop traveling. Every time I visit the US I am reminded again of how wasteful so many Americans are, overcooling in summer, overheating in winter, wasteful lighting, packaging within packaging within packaging . . .

My hope is that the Europeans hang in, it's going to be a hard winter.

Looks like the tip of the iceberg of ever stricter conservation measures.

I would be surprised if "Christmas markets" are lit up, barring some stunning change in the Ukraine situation.

Does Putin feel enough of a pinch in the pocketbook to withdraw, or does 'Europe" just say we need heat/power and wish the Ukranians good luck and finance putin's war with energy purchases.?

Curious what 'overcooling' ( summer) and 'overheating' ( winter) is happening in the US

Well, in fact the last sparkly light show will be at 11 pm. Then they will turn ALL the lights off (not those for the planes !) at 11:45, and therefore the tower won't sparkle at midnight and 1 am.

Curious what 'overcooling' ( summer) and 'overheating' ( winter) is happening in the US.

My household is pretty frugal when it comes to overcooling and overheating. My daughter and son-in-law are diehard environmentalists (as am I) and we have never minded being a little warmer in the summer or chilled in the winter (we're all in the habit of just adding layers when we're cold - and it gets VERY cold in Duluth). :) But I find that many people turn their A/C on as soon as the temps change in the spring and don't turn it off again until the first freeze. My brother and his wife in southern Ohio are like that.

Part of the problem is that many houses today aren't build for the outside air to come in. I've been lucky enough to live in older houses with windows that encourage cross breezes, but the newer houses just don't seem to be like that. And I get that there are some areas of this country where people would be miserable without A/C. But it doesn't have to be set to freezing - I've gone into houses in the summer where it was so cold that I had goosebumps.

I do hope that it's getting better, though, and that more people are conscious of the energy usage.

I have friends who keep their home at 68F in summer (he wears shorts, she wears sweaters). I have friends who keep their home at close to 78F in winter and lounge around in short sleeves and shorts. I do a lot of shopping on my US visits and I'm always cold in big stores. I have to remember to take a sweater when I go to a restaurant in warm weather, too.

I know very few people who heat their home higher than 68F aside from several seniors. We've always kept our AC at 76F as well.

New homes are built airtight because that's the most efficient means to keep them warm in winter and cool in summer. It's not wise to constantly turn AC on and off because you will have to re-cool every item in your home. It's wise to have newer efficient HVAC equipment. It also helps to dehumidify basements. I like to keep informed on home building and construction trends and techniques as my uncle and father owned and operated a construction company since the late '50's which is now my brother's venture. Our newer home is highly insulated which keeps our consumption very low.

Michigan has a very high number of people who suffer allergies and it makes perfect sense for them to keep their homes sealed and air conditioned. Even in the biggest cities there's far too many people building recreational fires and their irritating and possibly disease-causing smoke is best kept out of the homes. It actually saves money by reducing the load on the already overworked medical system, expense of medicines and missed work. We have friends in the UP who have been near forest fires for long periods where they dare not have any outdoor air circulating into their home.

Likewise you don't want dry cold air entering your home in winter. It costs to heat it and you'll run your humidifier more often. Dry air is bad for the skin and sinuses and causes viruses to more easily enter the body.

It's not really a good idea to paint with such a broad brush since there are so many different environmental conditions and concerns in such a vast country.

Turning the Tower's lights out earlier would not affect our travel style; we're back in the hotel well before 11:00, as a rule, and sometimes even in bed!

Mardee, you're right about newer houses not built for outside air. We live in an older house, a little over 100 yrs old (Don't laugh, Euro-friends; for Oklahoma, 100 years old is ancient!) Our house has lots of windows, and most of them are open most of the year. We have what used to be called an attic fan, sometimes now called a "whole house fan," that we use last thing at night and first thing in the morning to pull cool outside air through to cool down the house. It's very effective. We don't even have a/c, and there are only a few hours a day in the hottest days when the house is uncomfortable. (Well, for me. YMMV)

Chani, we have one relative who has been known to set her heating/cooling temps at 65 in the summer, and 95 in the winter. She's somewhat of an outlier, but a lot of people set their temps pretty low in summer and high in the winter. And at least here in the southern part of the country grocery stores, libraries, hospitals, and most restaurants are downright frigid in the summer. I keep a sweatshirt in the car, and carry a sweater if I know I'm going to be one of those places longer than a few minutes.

Even Rick, in his guidebooks, suggests setting the hotel a/c low. "20 degrees Celsius is comfortable." 20 degrees C is 68 F!

We stayed at a B&B in Siena this past June. The previous occupant of our room had set the a/c to come on somewhere in the wee hours, with the temp set to 16 or 18 degrees C. I woke up shivering, with my feet and legs cramping from the cold. We had our windows wide open, and I thought a major freak storm had blown in. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, and then to figure out how to turn the unit off. Fortunately, our hostess had show us how to use the remote control when we checked in. I didn't pay much attention, being sure we would never use it. Hah!

I don’t know if this is the norm, but I just returned from Italy yesterday, and we had a couple of hotels/B&B’s that just had a top sheet on the beds - no comforter, duvet, etc. It sure helped to have a comfortable sleeping temperature without the need for a lot of air conditioning. Personally, I usually have to remove the inner part of a duvet anyway, because they’re too hot.

When my husband is out of town, I set AC on 78-80. I love my ceiling fans. I can't open windows because my husband doesn't like the way screens look.

EDITED: My husband says he doesn't like the way screens look from the outside, so there are none on the windows.

I can't open windows because my husband doesn't like the way screens look.

cala, I started to laugh but I have a feeling you're serious. I must admit - that's a new one for me. 😊

I can't open windows because my husband doesn't like the way screens look.

Umm....., can't you see the screens through the windows? How does opening the windows affect the view of the screens?

Edit-- Oh. I suppose if I had had my 3rd cup of coffee I would have figured out the message being " I can't open the windows (as we have no screens) because my husband doesn't like the way screens look"

Maybe she doesn’t have screens on the windows.

We had our share of mosquito bites in Italy - another effect of no screens.

Just how bad is the financial situation in Marseille that saving €30k/year is going to make a dent in the budget in a city of 1.6 million? But to answer the question, even 11pm is way past my bedtime so it makes no difference to me.

I will be in Paris again in early Dec. and in bed by the time they turn the lights off at 11:00….. I do hope at least some lights are on in Strasbourg and Colmar. 8:00 would be nice. :)

Well this thread took a couple of unexpected turns, and it has me wistful yet again for the voice that Emma would bring to our postings. She kept us on the ball regarding generalizations, and from several angles. I think it's a bit of an odd habit of mind to react to a generalization that doesn't apply to oneself as though it was an iron rule applied to all and every. I'm not too too noisy in restaurants but I don't think that it's unfair, therefore, to say Americans tend to be noisy in restaurants while traveling abroad. For instance.

So, I want to stir the pot a little bit -- have you noticed that people sometimes are less tolerant of criticism that comes from outside than they are of criticism that comes from inside, even when it's the same exact criticism? My kooky brother-in-law has a lot of half-baked notions but if someone from outside the family rolls their eyes at one of his whoppers I will find my dander getting into a bind. It's ok for me to laugh at his nonsense, but not ok for you to do so, know what I mean? This is what I imagine is behind some of the backlash against entirely reasonable criticism of American habits, generally considered. We have to do our own policing and our own mockery -- it's not ok when outsiders do it for us. The strange part of this for me is how quickly we seem to be categorizing our dear Chani as an outsider, and then taking her experience and observations as somehow not so welcome. Hmm.

[Let me also mention that some posts haven't remained on the thread]

@Allan regarding saving a mere €30K in Marseilles: Spending priorities are a reflection of the values that the spenders want to exhibit and promote. That's money that can go towards something else, like keeping a cooling center open for more hours next summer during the next record-breaking heatwave, and the one after that, and so on for the rest of our lives.

Wait, people were dissing Chani? To arms!

Lol, avi, stir the pot…..

Had to return to say that Chani made me laugh when she posted about the weird temp stuff for inside buildings in the U.S. Yes, possibly an over generalization- but spot on where I live. Malls, offices, church buildings, and lots of homes - cold in the summer and hot in the winter!

Thanks, Avi, but I didn't feel the least bit slighted - in fact I was pleased that one or two folks backed up some of my assertions.

I learned a lot about energy savings from friends in Phoenix who relied on ceiling fans and desert-coolers. When they bought a new house they had AC (by then Phoenix had become very humid), but kept it at 78F and had ceiling fans in every room.

But, indeed, we have digressed.

Back to the point. Energy cutbacks aren't going to stop my visiting Europe as often as I can. OTOH I did get sticker shock looking at hotels in Belgium and Netherlands for next April-May. The prices in $$ (my travel currency) aren't bad because the exchange rate is favorable, so where I go may depend more on hotel rates.

I stand with Chani! We are insane users of A/C and heating in the US. Sure, if you live in Phoenix you may need A/C from April-October, but in Portland, OR, you do not and yet many of my neighbors turn it on at the first blush of warmth and don’t turn it off until they need the fireplace in the fall.

As to lighting of tower and other notable architecture, I would love to see darker skies. Maybe an hour after true dark the outdoor lighting could be cut back so we can see the stars even in cities In Switzerland in small villages they seem very tuned into dark skies. In one US seaside town we lived in there was a dark skies initiative that discouraged unnecessary street lamps. No one was supposed to have bright yard lights, either. It was delightful.

Laurel, I don't think it's only light pollution, but air pollution too. I can remember as a kid, standing on the sidewalk next to the street lights and finding it hard to identify the constellations because of all the other stars "in the way." A few years ago I went to one of the most isolated spots in Israel in the desert to watch the Perseids meteor showers. The small nearby town turns off all the lights every night during the showers and the closest city is 50 miles away. Even there, while I did see a number of meteors, many more just weren't visible.