ypsi~dixit

Who has the furnace on? Shame! Open your curtains for passive solar ease! What's more, my neighbor had her **A/C** on on a nice sunny, 70 degere fall day. Double shame! Windows open all day for me, to air the house, then closed in afternoon to capture the afternoon sun. Garden: Will pull my carrots and last peppers and tomatoes probably today...have also had three fun-size gourds and a baby pumpkin. After the frost tonight, comes a fun weekend of Tomato Tennis, Tomato Street Hockey, and new this year, Tomato Baseball. The highlight of every growing season!

Uh, um, I had the furnace on. For ONE night! Ah, just testing it!Then I realized my error and promptly shut it down. Then I read in the poll that a kind reader is not turning it on till Nov. 1, and I decided to do the same, and "put a sweater on."

I also still have the windows open all day. Passive solar thingie going on in the office. Two tomato plants in there in pots with li'l maters still on them which I hope ripen.

AC on a 70-degree day is just plain silly. Fer Pete's sake, there's only, like, five days in August when it's sweltering hot. Just take a shower! No one in MI even really needs AC. If you ask me.

winter 55/60
summer 80/
that's the heat and cool settings ..if we turn it on at all
still ain't turned it on
don't intend til it's 60 in

I'm with you, Mr. Friday. 50-55 in winter. "You'll freeze your pipes!!!" a friend used to tell me. Poppycock. My old track coach used to say "if you aren't exhausted, you didn't work hard enough." By the same token, if you're too cold indoors, uh, it's time for a bracing slug of Doc Friday's.

...that's 50 at night and during the day, turned up a wee in evenings. But I'm happy to read at night with a big comfy throw, and wear long undies indoors. Like our hardy pioneer forefathers.

Gosh, 'n' I was feeling virtuous at 65 degrees. Competition's tough in this neck of the blogosphere.

Thermostat masochism is like winter biking...it gives one that smug feeling of self-congratulatory virtue. :) Well worth it!

Wow, I'd love to keep the house at 60---so what do you guys do about the niggling problem of frozen hands? Sweaters and socks are easy, but wearing GLOVES in the house can really hamper a person's range of activity. (And don't even mention "fingerless gloves" to me, because I just won't buy it.)

Hopeful, I find that Eucerin, that really good skin cream that comes in a wee pot, actually creates an insulating microlayer. It's also the slipperiest goo on the planet, so you may have to scuff off your palms on a towel while leaving the cream on the backs of your hands.

9:00pm 48 degrees outside 4 small logs (one maple, two oak, one walnut)+ one match + one section newspaper = 75-80 degrees inside till next evening.

Man, oh man, that sounds so pleasant and nice! Lucky you, Holzschlepper, with your lovely wood stove.

Ultimate goal: No furnace use all winter.

Dang nab it, I wish I could have that as a goal as well...maybe someday. Perhaps woodstoves will be on sale come spring.

Admirable, H.

It costs so much to heat my house that I usually keep the heat set at about 50. It ends up getting a little warmer on sunny days (sometimes it gets up to 60 - yay passive solar) because the thermostat is in a north room which doesnt get much sun and that is nice. I have two portable heaters that I use during the winter. One is a radiater type that adds about 5 degrees to a large room or 10 to a small room. I also have a heater with a fan that blows directly on me. I keep myself in sweaters, hats, warm socks, and blankets. Usually I end up being just toasty cozy all winter even though most of my house has a temperature of around 50 degrees.

I do confess to having a small room a/c unit for my bedroom because I just simply cannot sleep if the temperature is above 80 degrees or so. There are only 2-3 nights a year when I need to use it though I end up using it on the "fan" setting all summer long.

I have thought about buying a wood stove because it would be nice to have some kind of heat backup if the power goes out. But I dont know if I would want to heat with it all winter. Partially because of all the work involved in getting that much wood but also because of air pollution concerns. Do they make wood stoves that scrub the smoke the way some factories do? That would be cool.

Many of the new woostoves are of the "catalytic" type. Once the stove is warm, you turn a lever that sends the smoke through a different chamber that burns the smoke another time. Whe one first starts the stove you see smoke out the chimney. Then when the catalytic lever is thrown, very little if hardly any smoke can be seen.

Holz: That sounds very efficient. One reason I hesitate is because I have a lot of old maps and art hung up around the house. I don't want those items to get smoked up in my infinitesimal house.

I've looked a bit into geothermal. Even in Michigan, this can work well, and even in a small yard like mine, a vertical system can be installed that taps into the constant 50 degree earth not far below the surface to provide year-round heating and cooling.

It's a significant intial investment, but once installed, is a good system. Non-polluting. Needs a bit of electricity to run the heat pump thingie. It's definitely something I'm interested in. I can have the geothermal vertical coils installed in my unused driveway area on the north side of the house.

Holz, that is quite interesting. I bet that system cuts down on the amount of wood needed too.

Geothermal with solar panels to provide the electricity would be cool. I dont have any way to afford such a system at this time though. I hope that other people can be the early adopters of that technology though so that (hopefully) it can eventually get into my price range.

I notice less dust now that I burn wood. Oxygen is continually pulled from the room in a straight, small stream. Depending on the air-inlet door adjustment. When using forced air furnace, all the dust gets blown around constantly. And no smoke really comes into the house. If it does, somethings wrong. Lots of bad things live in ducts as well. Mold, mites. I read that a decomposing tree in the woods gives off the same carbons as burning a tree. Nothing lost/nothing gained. The energy is just transfered. Wood heat gives a very warm, steady heat as well. Not like blowing warm air does for five minutes. Its steady, not up and down so fast like forced air.

Hm. Interesting. Sounds like a very "clean" stove. You make good points about the dustiness of furnaces; when I turned mine on on that cold night last week, you wouldn't believe the smell--super-dusty. And as you say, the heat seesaws a lot with a forced-air furnace, which can't be as good for my plants as steady wood heat would be.

Well, you do have to have a kettle of water filled on the stove all the time. Or else it does get dry. I actually like the dry though. But plants don't. But forced air has the same problem, needs a humidifyer. And they can suck with a lot of maintenance. And they can leak or grow mold.

Plus I don't think my forced air system is efficient at all. When I'm down in the crawl space, I can see the uninsulated aluminum ducts going to the various vents. Through the super-cold crawl space. A lot of heat is likely lost even before the air gets to the vents in the floor.

Wood isn't foe everyone. It does have to be a part of your lifestyle. One can buy it. But most bought isn't good. Its green, or not the best types of wood, or the wrong lengths. But I like being where you get good woods. I like the smell when cutting and splitting. Stacking becomes a satisfying art. There are websites with wood people. Discussing all sorts of things. I find really satisfying and ethereal. But not everyine could find the time, or enjoy the work involved.

You can buy 4x8x3/4 sheets of insulbaord that has foil on one side. Then use a big trimboard as a stright-edge and cut duct size pieces and adhere them on you ducts with polyken foil tape and special adhesives. The work would probably pay for itself in a year or two. Heating up the ducts from stone cold is inefficieant. You can also install insulation beteen the floor joists from the crawlspace if there isn't any.

Now is definatley the time to start finding leaks in the house. And sealing them.

I love the phrase "wood people." :)

Wow, two great pieces of advice. I bet Home Depot has the insulboard and adhesive. Never knew such a thing existed. I'll have to round up a car person this weekend.

There is no insulation between the joists. With the memory of a dried mouse pancake in the crawl space still fresh in my mind, I can't say it's the place I most want to spend time in in my house...but with a drop light it can't be too bad.

Yep, that's what I planned to do tomorrow: home leak audit. Out go the screens. In come the storms. Weatherstrip leaky kitchen door. And squirt some of that expando-foam in the dryer vent hole, since I don't have a dryer.

http://www.homedepot.com/prel80/HDUS/EN_US/diy_main/pg_diy.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0609411082.1159539240@@@@&BV_EngineID=cceeaddimiemggecgelceffdfgidgkj.0&CNTTYPE=PROD_META&CNTKEY=misc/searchResults.jsp&MID=9876&N=2984+3573&pos=n05

You can also use it to soundproof your Corvette..

Thank you--that's nice of you to dig up the link. I took a look and ah ha, there it is: Thermwell. Self-adhesive! Which is good because when you mentioned glue and special tape I got nightmare visions of creating a giant gluey mess or possible adhering myself to the furnace...

Your link does the same thing. Weird. Always goes back to the ac picture.

Oops. Ah well, at least I know it's out there.

Last year we used that plastic that you adhere over the entire window, lowered the thermostat & cut our usage by about half. But since gas prices doubled, it was kind of a wash!

Anyone know a good installer of blow-in cellulose insulation? I'm also going to do rope caulk around the windows.

My daughter wove me a wool shawl with a hood. Taking orders from all you sustainble folk. It's really an indispensible winter item for surviving the climate of my home!

I was thinking of going the plastic route, too. Not sure, though, if you need a hair dryer or not.

Half! My goodness. Those gas prices were a big burden last fall.

I also plan on doing the rope caulk. Not expensive.