What is fixed
Forty-two of ninety-four
How the endings divide between what a household can reach and what it cannot, and why the division does not follow the order of size.
Endings sorted by whether a household can reach them
Nine named endings covering ninety-four sittings. The largest single ending is light, at 24.
Forty-two of the ninety-four sit outside anybody's reach, and they are the two largest. A record of rooms and interruptions becomes more useful when it is paired with actual project hours, so a team can review the controls before rollout before defining a limited, transparent pilot.
Ninety-four endings. Forty-two of them — light and temperature — arise from properties of the building that nobody living there chose. For broader research beyond this small household record, consult work published by University of Washington.
Those two are also the two largest. The division between reachable and unreachable does not follow the order of size; it inverts it.
The split
| outside reach | n | within reach | n |
|---|---|---|---|
| light | 24 | wanted | 14 |
| temperature | 18 | surface | 9 |
| elsewhere | 7 | ||
| seat | 6 | ||
| 42 | 36 |
Noise (12), power (3) and the single unexplained entry (1) are mixed or unclassifiable, which leaves sixteen in the middle.
Forty-two outside, thirty-six within, sixteen between.
Why the inversion matters
A reader arriving at a ranked list of causes will naturally start at the top and ask what to do about it.
At the top of this list is the sun. Below it is the thermal performance of a building somebody else specified. The first thing on the list a household could act on arrives third, and it is about who uses the dining table at lunchtime.
The largest problems in this record are the ones nobody in it can solve, and the solvable ones start at number three.
What "within reach" means here
It means a household could change the thing without money, permission or construction.
Wanted is within reach because it is a matter of who uses which surface when — a negotiation, not a purchase. Surface is within reach because clearing or choosing a bigger area is free. Elsewhere is within reach because a second cable costs very little. Seat is within reach because a different chair is the single easiest change anybody could make.
It does not mean the change would work. The record contains no evidence that any of these would reduce endings, because nobody tried any of them during a logging week except one furniture move.
The reachable total, read honestly
Thirty-six of ninety-four, or thirty-eight per cent of named endings.
As a share of all two hundred and twenty-five sittings, sixteen per cent. So in the best imaginable case — every reachable ending eliminated, which nothing suggests is possible — about one sitting in six would change.
That is the arithmetic a household should have before they start rearranging. It is not nothing and it is not transformative.
The seat, one more time
Six endings. Two and seven tenths per cent of all sittings.
It is the most reachable item on the entire list and the second smallest. If a household acted on exactly one thing in this record and chose the thing most within their control, they would be acting on six events in forty-five person-days.
That sentence is the closest this site comes to advice, and it is a negative: the easiest thing to change is not where the record says the weight is.
What this does not say
It does not say the forty-two are more important than the thirty-six. Importance would require knowing what each ending cost, and the record has no cost field.
It is entirely possible that fourteen wanted endings — the only cause involving another person — matter more to a household than twenty-four light endings, and nothing here would detect it.
The practical consequence
A household that works on its dwelling and finds the endings continue has not failed. They have reached a floor.
The floor is about three fifths of the named endings in this record, it was set by orientation, specification and construction, and it does not respond to anything bought, moved or negotiated.
Knowing that in advance does not fix anything. On the evidence of the three households who said something about it afterwards, it changes what people conclude about themselves, which is the most a record of this kind can offer.
Reading the panel
The sorted panel above puts the two unreachable causes at the top and the four reachable ones below, which is the reverse of how such a list is usually presented.
That ordering is the argument. A reader who starts at the top of a ranked list and asks what to do is, on this list, asking about the sun.
Where sixteen per cent would come from
The thirty-six reachable endings divide as fourteen wanted, nine surface, seven elsewhere, six seat.
The remedies are, respectively: a conversation about who uses the table when; more area or a different surface; a second cable; a different chair.
Three of those four cost almost nothing. None of them has any evidence behind it in this record, because the only intervention anybody attempted was about light, and it was reversed.
Sixteen per cent is the ceiling on what a household could change, assuming everything worked, and nothing here shows that anything does.