Thermal
Temperature is only part of comfort. Radiant surfaces, humidity, drafts, solar gain, and air movement determine how a home actually feels.
Explore Thermal
A thermostat reading is one of six variables
What shapes thermal comfort. Each factor anchors into the flagship guide — the guide covers the full system today.
Air Temperature
The measured temperature of the air — what the thermostat reports, from one spot on one wall.
Surface Temperature
Walls, floors, ceilings, and windows exchange heat with the body directly. Cold glass reads as a cold room.
Humidity
Moisture decides how a temperature feels — and where it condenses, mold follows.
Air Movement
Drafts, ventilation, fans, and supply-air velocity. The same breeze is welcome in July and mean in January.
Solar Gain
Heat entering through glass and the envelope. Heat kept out of a room costs nothing to remove.
Personal Factors
Clothing, activity, metabolism, and preference — why two people in one room disagree and are both right.
Operate it
Thermal protocols
Practices in the directory that run on the home's thermal environment.
Wind-Down
A fixed pre-sleep sequence that removes light, heat, and stimulation in order, so the end of the day looks the same to your body every night.
Sleep Temperature
Using room climate and bed temperature to support the natural drop in core body temperature that comes with sleep onset.
Indoor Humidity Control
Holding relative humidity in a band that avoids condensation, mold, and dust-mite growth without over-drying the house in winter.
Sauna and Heat Adaptation
A weekly sauna structure that builds heat tolerance progressively instead of repeating the same session forever.
Evening Sauna Wind-Down
Moderate heat two to three hours before bed, used to deepen the body's natural pre-sleep temperature drop.
Cold-Water Immersion
What cold plunging does, what it doesn't, and how to run it at home without ignoring the risks.
Build with it
Materials that do thermal work
Entries in the materials library that insulate, buffer, shade, or store heat — the enclosure side of thermal comfort.
Mineral Wool Insulation
Insulation spun from molten basalt and slag into fiber batts and boards. Non-combustible to around 1,000°C, unusually dense, and indifferent to water — it sheds bulk moisture rather than absorbing it.
Wood-Fiber Insulation
Insulation made from wood chips and sawmill residuals pressed into vapor-open boards, batts, or loose fill. It insulates like conventional products while adding two things foam cannot: humidity buffering and serious summer heat delay.
Cellulose Insulation
Insulation made from at least 80% recycled paper fiber, treated with borates for fire and pest resistance, and installed loose-blown in attics or dense-packed into walls. Dense-packing is the trick: it slows air movement through the cavity, doing air-sealing work most insulations cannot.
Hempcrete
A bio-composite of hemp hurd (the woody stalk core) bound with lime, cast or sprayed around a structural frame. It is insulation, thermal mass, and humidity regulation in one monolithic wall — and it is not structural.
Electrochromic Glass
Glazing with a ceramic metal-oxide coating that tints electrically on demand — from clear to deep shade — controlling glare and solar gain without blinds or shades. Tint states are programmable by schedule, sun position, or sensor.
Cork
Bark stripped from living cork oaks every nine years without felling the tree — one of the few genuinely renewable building materials. Its sealed-air-pocket cell structure makes it warm, slightly sprung underfoot, and an excellent impact-sound absorber.
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