General Update

December 1st! Coming up: the twelve coldest weeks of the year [on average]. Hard to believe that in just six weeks, it will actually be getting warmer out [on average] and that in twelve it will be no colder than it is now [on average].

I guess it's hard to believe because we have, so far, had an unusually mild late autumn.

Nonetheless, I just checked, and the warmest it's been in the warmest part of our house this week was 60.2ºF (lowest, in the warmest part, 50.2º) Right now in here it's 57º, which has come to feel "warm" to me. We are routinely eating breakfast at about 54º (and hats) without too much trouble.

Still haven't managed to get the wood stove installed, so thus far we've just been heating, to the extent that we are at all, with one space heater, the electric blanket, lights, cooking, dishwashing waste water, crankin' the stereo, etc.

There was one amusing story recently: A relation of J's came up for a night last week, from southern New England. She knew about all this barely-heated-house crap and was, I gather, prepared to be miserable. On arrival, she remarked that it was f#*(ing freezing in here (I'm paraphrasing from a second-hand account) and noted that she is no softy, she keeps her thermostat at 62º, but this is just ridiculous. Then J went and found the thermometer and determined that in fact it was 64º inside. She was pretty pleased I think. Anyway, the moral of the story is that at least half the question of comfort is in one's head, and has as much to do with expectations as with reality.

New Cold House: Tour

Moving to the New Cold House has preoccupied me lately—so much to do, so little time to write blog posts. But I thought I’d at least give a quick tour of the heating features of the house, or lack thereof, so you can play along at home as winter approaches.

Firstly, so you may envision the living situation, here's a photo:

The core of the house is a 1950’s-vintage cape, about 800 sq ft downstairs (kitchen, living/dining area, bathroom, guest room) and about 600 sq ft upstairs (two bedrooms, second bath). The insulation seems average; certainly nothing special. No Tyvek wrap or anything fancy like that. Under the house is an unfinished concrete-foundation cellar. Attached off to the side is an enclosed but uninsulated breezeway, followed by a strange “extra room” with its own half-bath, and finally a garage.

Now, here's the thermostat for our heat:
Ha! Ha! Just kidding. As advertised previously, there is no central heat in the house—no furnace, no ducts, no radiators. We can turn the thermostat up to 80º, but nothing will happen-- here are the cut wires on the back of the thermostat:
There was a furnace, once, which almost certainly burned oil. Here’s the spot on the cellar floor where the chimney sat:
and where the chimney went up through the floor

and the second-floor closet where the chimney used to be.
Where did the furnace go, and why? It’s unknown—but our home inspector found some traces of soot on the underside of the roof boards, and hypothesized that there was some sort of fire in the chimney which resulted in its destruction. At some point, someone tore it out and decided to do without central heat— either because they were nutjobs, or because they were only using the place as a summer house, or because they had better ideas.

So what was left, for heat sources? There’s this small wall heater in the cellar, which runs on propane.
I’m sure it could get the cellar plenty warm, if desired, but who needs a hot cellar? We haven’t turned it on yet. There’s an identical propane unit in the Strange Extra Room, but we’ve decided not to even try to heat that area (I drained and winterized the associated bathroom so the pipes won’t freeze.) Next, there’s this semi-permanently installed mini electric baseboard unit in the kitchen, which just plugs into a wall outlet—we haven’t turned that on either.
The previous owner, for primary heat, had a pellet stove in the living room—but he took that with him, leaving just this 4-inch hole in the wall (R value = 0).

Notably in comparison to the old house, we do now get some actual direct sunlight. Even on a cold day, when the sun’s out you can feel radiant warmth coming in the windows—a fact not lost on Piper.
So, that’s it for heat sources which came with the house.We brought a few with us. We have two regular electric space heaters (max 1500 watts, when on “high”). So far we’ve used one on and off, and the second a few times. Piper has become best pals with the space heaters:
We brought with us the beloved electric blanket known affectionately as The Roaster (max 180 watts).

Truly, if I could only keep one source of heat in the house, it would be The Roaster. Unbelievable how much warmth you can get out of the equivalent of two lightbulbs, properly applied. As you can see, this blanket is of the good-old-fashioned kind: came from Sears back when the materials for such things were actually made in the USA.
(I tried a couple brand-new made-in-China probably-much-safer models last year, and found them woefully useless. I live in fear least The Roaster should quit on us.)

Oh, we also brought three cats. They put out quite a bit of heat, but it takes very expensive cat food to fuel that fire.

Lastly, we bought this woodstove from the scratch-and-dent inventory of a friend’s company (and with help from a federal tax credit for new, efficient biomass stoves.)
It will be a few weeks yet before we get it installed—hoping by Christmas, so we can have a cheery holiday fire. But, we’ve been doing okay without it. Generally it’s been in the mid-to-high 50º’s in the house, from general living waste heat and a bit of space heater.

Coming soon: A tour of New Cold House heat efficiency features, existing and planned.

New Cold House

We moved into the new, furnace-free house over the weekend. Utter chaos here, boxes everywhere, the usual. Detailed updates coming soon. This morning it's 29ºF outside, 58º in the kitchen (post oatmeal-and-coffee making). We're making do with a couple electric space heaters, ticking away on "low". Back soon.

Toilet Heaters, Personal "Offsets"

Back when I first wrote about the heat-wasting properties of toilets, I made a joke about "toilet-tank-water heaters", a device so inane it could not possibly exist. However, I was later notified that such a device does exist-- its purpose is to cure "problem condensation" on the toilet tank in summertime. The idea is that by mixing a percentage of hot water into the toilet tank, you prevent the sides of the tank from becoming cooler than room temperature after a flush, and thence prevent moisture from precipitating, dripping down, and causing problems. (In case you think I'm making this up, here's an article on how to install one, from This Old House.) Of course, this magic comes at a price: unless you have solar hot water, you're probably burning some sort of fossil fuel to supply hot water to the toilet tank. In summer.

Of course I was horrified to learn that people do this, doubly horrified when I learned that some of my own friends were already doing it, and triply horrified when I learned that another set of friends are installing the gizmos during their current bathroom remodel. To be fair, these last friends had a real problem. They live in Vermont, where it is fairly humid in the summer, and they do not use air conditioning, so their house is not artificially dehumidified. Moreover they have well water, which is very cold entering the house, and unlike many New Englanders they do not have a cellar-- so there is no long stretch

Heroes Of The Cold House, #2: Simon, Damiana and Lulu Hare

You don't know them, but the Hares are planning to get through this winter in Boston with no active heating at all. If they succeed, that's 59 days of furnace-use better than we were able to do at the Cold House last winter. They do have some things going for them: for one, they've built a house specifically for the purpose, super-insulated and ultra-tight with counter-current ventilation heat exchangers and other high-tech-ness (here, we don't even have insulation in the ceiling yet... but you know, we did pretty good still.) For another advantage, they live 85 miles south (every little bit helps there.) But still, it's going to be an impressive feat.

The comments on the Boston Globe article linked above are worth reading. Many people think they are endangering the life of their child; some threatened to call DHS. Relax, people. I grew up sleeping in an unheated third-floor bedroom in Boston. Until I was five or six, it didn't have so much as a ventilation grate to the less-cold room below. It was frigid in there. But I survived. And moved north.

Anyway, way to go Hares. I hope I'll be able to find some follow-up about your experiences this winter.

"Freeze Yer Buns"

If you've been following along with the Cold House idea, and you think you'd like to try it out a bit, but you need some motivation/company, you might consider signing on with the "Freeze Yer Buns Challenge" over at Crunchy Chicken. After November 7th we here at Cold House Journal won't even have a thermostat anymore, but we'll be playing along with the Challenge as best we can!

Silly "Green" Products, Part I

Here's a silly "green" product, sold by a major "green" retailer whose catalog arrived in the mail yesterday:


This is basically a 25¢ plastic tray, sold for $16, which holds water. It alleges to "sustainably" "save your home" from "parched winter air."

My critique: Firstly, my home does not need to be saved from being "parched". What part of the house is damaged by dry air? Perhaps they mean save the home's inhabitants from being parched-- in that case, I refer the reader to last year's posts discussing why it is not winter that causes air to feel dry-- it is over-heating the house (here, here, and here.) Yes, if you insist on a hot house in winter, you will parch yourself. So you should turn down the thermostat, rather than buy gadgets to add artificial humidity to artificially hot air.