velvetpage (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
velvetpage) wrote2004-11-24 09:30 pm
velvetpage) wrote2004-11-24 09:30 pm
cold
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?
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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.