wildiowa

A reminder to check the date daylight savings time begins and ends in Europe it is not the same as the US. We woke up last Sunday morning to catch our flight from LIS and all our devices said different things. I panicked and called the desk and thankfully we were ok. We thought we were an hour late but the clocks changed and we had no idea. The clocks fall back one week later in the US so we were totally baffled. The worst that can happen in the fall is you arrive at the airport an hour earlier, not always bad. In the spring you would have been totally and completely hosed you would be an hour late. No one alerted us at the desk, nor should they I guess, it’s on us. But be aware! Thx.

hetismij2

We live in hope of them putting an end to it all, but no signs yet. Put on the back burner for many reasons it seems.

Anyway next March it is the 26th when the clocks go forward an hour.
An easy way to remember is it is always the last Sunday of October and March.

Back in the day, before it was coordinated across Europe we were caught out by it a couple of times.

VANAARLE

It is doubtful if it will change in the near future. It looks as if the EU has a bit more to worry about.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2...time-will-tell
https://abcnews.go.com/International...ry?id=80925773

hetismij2

I'm OK with it, it means we still get long summer evenings. Come the continuous time zone it will be dawn at 4am. No use to me.
I do wish if they are keeping it they would go a week later in autumn and at the beginning of March in spring. like the US.

Heimdall

There used to be talk about permanent daylight savings time in the UK to put it in the same time zone in winter as western Europe, making it easier for companies to communicate with their EU counterparts. I haven’t heard much about that idea since Brexit.

Traveler_Nick

I hate the time change. It's dark already at 5pm. The fact it's sunrise a little earlier doesn't do me any good.

Worse since many of us have moved to heat pumps having it get dark earlier and therefore colder earlier means higher heating requirements. Around here during the day there is no need often for heat but in normal years temperatures drop pretty quickly when the sun sets.

Long days in the summer have the same issue with cooling.

Heat pumps heat better if the outside air is warmer. That means turning the heat on earlier . Cool better if the outside is cooler.

Luckily this hasn't been a normal year and we haven't needed the heat at all.

Heimdall

Traveler_Nick, I agree about early darkness when clocks go back to GMT here in the UK, and that makes a case for permanent BST. Some would argue that children would have to go to school in darkness in the winter were clocks kept on summer time.

Good point about heat pumps. I live in a village with no natural gas, so rely on heating oil to fire my boiler. My next door neighbours recently installed an air sourced heat pump to replace their boiler, and I am interested in how they fare this winter. So far it looks like they will have to rely on electricity to supplement the heat pump when the weather gets cold. Recently built homes in our village have heat pumps with underfloor heating, but that would be expensive to install in an older home.

bvlenci

The idea of eliminating daylight savings time doesn't really fly in southern Europe. In our climate, it would already be scorching hot at 9 AM in July. People already get up very early to get their shopping, exercise, gardening, and housework done before it gets too hot. We, for instance, get up at 6 if we want to take a walk. Getting up at 5 AM doesn't appeal.

Also we eat supper late to avoid the heat, and enjoy having half an hour or so of daylight after supper. I can understand that Scandinavians don't appreciate daylight savings time, with their very late sunset, but theirs is an entirely different situation from ours.

Italy is considering staying on daylight savings time year round, which would be the same as changing time zone. However, that's not so great in the winter. I myself like it just the way it is.

Traveler_Nick

A heat pump is electric. Unless they installed an underpowered system it makes no sense to run an expensive electric heater in addition.

One problem I see is people don't get explained how the things work. All summer here I'll have neighbors running them during the day and then turning them off at night. That forces the unit to work at the worst possible time with the high heat.

Heimdall

Yes, Traveler_Nick, everything (except a fireplace or wood burning stove) needs electricity to run, including my oil fired boiler. Ground source heat pumps are more efficient than air source heat pumps, but are more expensive to install. My neighbours needed to fit larger radiators when converting from a system similar to mine to account for the lower water temperature produced by the air source heat pump.

My neighbour, as a climate change expert, was interviewed by BBC and Sky at COP26 in Glasgow, so is well educated on systems that produce less CO2. They did lots of research before deciding on what to install.

annhig

Fun fact - at the same time as the clocks in the UK went back an hour last week, the England women's rugby team was playing a World Cup match in NZ. In UK time it started at 1.30am, with the first half lasting 40 mins and therefore ending 20 mins earlier than it started as at 2.00 am the clocks went back one hour.

nyse