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]

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

[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. :)

[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.

[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....