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.
October 28, 2009 at 9:26 pm |
Oh no, don't they know that overheating is a risk factor for SIDS.