About This Blog
This is about a guy (and a girl he sneakily recruited) who tried living through the past three Maine winters, in two different average older houses, using what most people would consider “almost no heat”. What does that mean? Well, last winter the “warm” area of our house averaged 52°F. Our heating energy use consisted of less than one cord of firewood ( < $300) and about $100 worth of electric heat.
The initial motivation was four-fold: (1) Yankee stinginess, as heating oil topped $4/gallon, (2) environmental inclinations, as I realized that in winter New Englanders burn even more oil for heat than gas in their cars, (3) curiosity, as I wondered how people lived in New England in the old days without tropical indoor temperatures, and wondered if they could do so again, and (4) boredom, alleviated by amateur heat-reclamation engineering projects. Now, though, it’s just become a way of life.
In the winter of 08/09 we were in a 140-year-old city house with old steam heat. We made it through with only 59 days of furnace use, and those with the thermostat rarely set any higher than 60ºF. We used about a third the oil of previous winters at the same house.
For the winter of 09/10, we moved to an average, marginally-insulated 1950′s suburban cape with no furnace, no radiators, no thermostat– basically, no heating system. At the start we had just a couple of small electric space heaters and an electric blanket. After Christmas, we put in a tiny wood stove. We grew accustomed to living with indoor temps in the 50′s– the bedroom was often in the 40′s, the kitchen was sometimes above 60. We used less than $100 of electricity for warmth over the winter, and less than a cord of firewood. We shut the stove down altogether on March 8th.
The winter of ’10/’11 we continued heating with wood at a rate of about one cord per year, supplemented by tidbits of electric spot-heating. Our total annual heating expenses are now about half the amount of an average Maine LIHEAP grant, and about 15% of what an average oil-burning Maine household spends each winter.
For the winter of ’11/’12: who knows? We’ll keep you posted.
Disclaimer: We don’t claim to be Carbon-Neutral No Impact Organic Green Überpeople. The blog may dabble in other areas of environmentally-conscious living, but centrally, we’re specializing in the question of how to dismantle the Home-Heating Industrial Complex.
Contact us! coldhousejournal@gmail.com
