cold

[velvetpage]

It is chilly up here.

This probably has a lot to do with two or three factors.

The first, obviously, is that it's November, and windy, rainy, and chilly outside.

The second is that our thermostate is located in the dining room. Therefore the only temperature in the house that counts is the temperature in the dining room. The office is a long way from the dining room.

The third is that, over the course of the three years we've lived here, my wonderful husband has taken out storm windows or screens or both from three or four different windows, and not put them back in. So instead of two panes of glass between us and the elements, there's only one. This is true of the bedroom, the office, and the living room windows. In most cases, the reason the storm windows never went back on is that they were bent in order to get them out in the first place, and now my slightly-handy man isn't sure how to unbend them so they'll fit again.

The fourth reason is the front door. Last year we put weather stripping on the screen door, but if you were to stand in front of it right now, the draft would be quite obvious. This last is, in my opinion, the gap which has the largest effect on the temperature of the overall house, and certainly has the largest effect on the work our furnace does. There's a vent right next to that door.

Home improvements needed: New storm windows that are easy to open, close, remove and put back, as necessary. Approx. cost: $5000. New weather stripping for both the inside and outside front doors. Approx. cost: $200. Some cheap fabric draft blocker thingies from the Regal catalogue: $20, and endless hours of frustration as we all trip over them.

Cost of doing nothing: about $400 over the course of the winter in extra heating bills.

Anyone want to start a pool on who we'll be paying this winter, the home-improvement guys or the gas company?

Comments

[athelind.livejournal.com]

If you need to replace your windows anyway, you might think about double-paned glass all through. That'll cut down on your cooling costs in the summer.

(I confess that, as a Californian, I don't quite grok "storm windows".)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

We don't actually have storm windows. Those are windows that folks place on top on their normal windows - not many houses have them. We have modern windows with an stupidly integral screen. I had to remove some of the screens to clean out eavetroughing in the front, and remove a rather precariously rusting length of downspout in the back... and yes, and I couldn't get the screens back in. :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

We have double-paned glass. We have caulking around it. We have screens. We have storm windows. We are proper Canadians.

None of this does any good if the windows aren't able to close the way they should!

Storm windows are just an extra layer of glass that has to be raised in order to get fresh air. Extra insulation, really.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Ahem. That is only true of ONE window. And, if you recall, I put weather-stripping on the front door.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Then we seriously need to do something about the state of the inside door, because the draft down there is going to have Elizabeth building snowmen in the front hall.

[kianir.livejournal.com]

Screens don't do anything for heat retention, obviously, so we shall skip that. :)

Assuming you have gas/forced air heat, the easiest way to sort out temperature differentials in the house is also the most obvious: just close the vents in rooms that get too hot, and open them in rooms that get too cold. That saves energy since you don't have to crank up the heat to get acceptable temperatures in the rooms you use.

Another energy saver is to get a digital thermostat, if you don't already have one. The cheapest Honeywell readily available here is a US$30, self-powered model. They're less aggressive in cycling the furnace than a mechanical thermostat, so you reduce waste from the furnace's warmup cycle (and it's a lot less obnoxious.)

It also helps to close your curtains or blinds, most particularly at night.

I don't think any of those add up to the sums you speak of. (I know weather stripping isn't that expensive, either. :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

A digital thermostat is a good idea. I've been thinking about it for a while, actually - our current thermostat is so innaccurate it's laughable. Basically, we choose between less than 20 degrees, 20 right on, and more than 20 degrees. Since ideal indoor temperature is about 21 degrees, that is not precise enough for me.

We do close curtains and blinds.

We have eighty-year-old vents made of iron that take up about a foot of wall space each. There aren't very many of them, but that's okay because we only have six rooms. The vent that heats the kitchen is the same one that heats the dining room, because the iron grate is double-sided, letting air into both rooms from the same vent. I'm not sure if it's possible to close them, but I'll take a look.

Wouldn't we end up cooking if we turned off the vent in the dining room where the thermostat was, thereby letting it get colder? I mean, the thermostat would pick up that the house was colder and start pumping more heat, which would go upstairs where the vents were open. The dining room would continue cold because the vents there were closed, and the upstairs would continue to get warmer and warmer. Just a thought.

[kianir.livejournal.com]

That's what prompted me to get a digital at our last apartment. The thing was running the AC or heater like every two minutes for a single minute, and the choices seemed to be 65 degrees or 80. The digital not only regulated temperature better, but showed a significant drop in energy costs.

You can always cover them if they can't be closed. What you'd be doing is twofold: forcing warm air into the areas of the house that need it, and reducing the flow of warm air around the thermostat, both thereby evening out the distribution of warmth. Heat will eventually get down to the thermostat one way or another; you're just ensuring that the places the thermostat doesn't know about stay toasty warm.

If you close all the main-floor vents you could overshoot, yeah, and have a condition where upstairs is hot and the main floor cold. Obviously every house is different; you should experiment and see what works.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

You can get a weather-prep kit at Canadian Tire for about $10, which includes outlet insulators (you'd be surprised what putting a little bit of foam behind an outlet cover will do), plastic for windows (which does help a LOT, even if it looks ugly), weatherstripping (we had enough to do at least the front door, and boy, did it help!). The ten bucks pays for itself, and all of this is easy to install. We didn't put up the plastic window covering, but I think we should this year, as at least a couple of our windows are in bad shape.

A digital, programmable thermostat is a wonderful thing (but don't locate it near heat-producing gadgets -- ours is directly above our computer and monitor... spot the deliberate error). We've got programs for daytime when we're not home, programs for when we're up in the morning, programs for night, programs for the weekend... it rocks. And, you can always override it if you need to.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I'm going to stop at Canadian Tire on my way home. I've heard of the foam-under-outlet covers before. I have a feeling we're getting a draught through some of ours, so it's time to check.

How much was your thermostat?

[anidada.livejournal.com]

I'm really not sure, it came with the new furnace... Canadian Tire has them for sure, though, so you might want to check them out, too.

Any house older than the 70s (and even then) is sure to have some leakage through the walls via the outlets. Our house is about 75 years old, with thin (frame) walls, so any little bit helps. :) There are tips available through the provincial gov't's website (Ministry of Energy, I think) on how to check for leaks in all kinds of places you'd never dream of, actually -- worth a look.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Our front door doesn't fit like it might (100+ years over London Clay)...we tacked on strips of old carpet over the cracks....

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

We have on occasion had flurries in our front hall, when the wind and the snow were both bad enough that it was piling up on our (nice, deep) porch. Ours is an 85-year-old house, which is on the shady side of middle-aged for Hamilton. We, also, live in reclaimed swampland. It's not surprising we've got gaps.

The more I hear about your house, the more I wonder why you put up with it. Isn't there a clause in your lease that will force your landlord to fix some of this stuff?

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Nope. but we do OK.
generally don't rock the boat.....
These places were built in the late 1860's - early 1870s and wouldn't have been expected to stand as long as they have ...let alone through 2 World Wars. You can still see the scars of the Blitz if you look closely and know what you are looking at....

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

My grandmother lived through that, hiding out in the Underground with my toddler aunt. She was too young at the time to be sent to the country with so many other children. I was lucky - my nana was a storyteller by nature. Rather like myself, though without the education I've had.

Someday I'll get to England and see for myself.