Cold House Journal

Seeing a few new visitors dropping by today reminded me that I never got around to posting a winter’s-over wrap-up for the 2012/13 “heating” season.  Sometimes, you never quite know when it’s over.  This year, the fires dwindled to about one or two a week by mid-March.  Then on March 23 I left for a three week excursion.  J. probably had a few fires while I was gone (we were on an unofficial don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy) but by the time I returned the stove was pretty much shut down.

So, for those as statistic-obsessed as me, here are the numbers crunched from the datalogger under the kitchen counter:

Dates: Nov. 5, 2012 – April 15, 2013

# of temperature data points: 15,423

Minimum temp:  39.0°F

Maximum temp: 68.2°F

Mean temp:  52.3°F

Standard deviation: 5.4°F

Comparing to the previous winter, you can see that this winter’s max temp was 1.1° lower, the min temp was 3° lower, and the overall mean temp was 4.25° lower!  Not sure how we achieved that– if anything, I thought we were getting a little soft this winter… but there it is.

So what now?  Well, it’s finally lovely and warm in Maine, the flowers are busting out, the lawn is green, and you can walk around in shorts (if the bugs aren’t too bad).  But cold weather is always just around the corner here.  At present we still have about a winter’s worth (1.5 cords) of slaughtered Norway maple in the garage, so yet again there will be no need to spend anything on heat next year.  Someday I may put in a small furnace, if only because it will be impossible ever to sell the house without one, but it won’t be this year.

Just a tad bit chilly in here this morning– even though it isn’t all that cold outside (21F).  Ironically, it’s sometimes warmer in the house when it’s colder outside, because I fear it will get too cold inside… and light the fire.  Will make one tonight, I guess.

Yes, it’s really winter.  We’ve been down below 0(F) the past couple nights, with the days not quite getting to double-digit temps.  The house was 41 this morning… needless to say the wood stove is burning a bit more than usual.  Still, it’s considerably warmer here than up in Quebec (where we were a few weeks ago) or central Vermont (where I’m heading tomorrow.)  And it’s much, much warmer here, than, say, this town in Siberia.  Those people are seriously tough.  

Average kitchen temperature for the winter still hovers at about 52.6F.

I really like that I can pull a can of Diet Coke off the bottom self in the kitchen, and (unless we’ve really been running the wood stove) it’s already nicely chilled.  And I really like that the living room at 47F is a perfect temperature for riding on the bike trainer when I get home, without getting drenched in sweat.  But I will confess that even I find it annoying to have to warm up red wine for dinner.

Happy New Year from the Cold House!

We’re just back from a few days playing touriste in Quebec City– a place that really knows how to enjoy winter.  No one up there was griping about the cold– they just put on bigger hats, string up more lights, put on a smile, and go out to ski, toboggan, drink…  It was also pleasant driving around in a place where snow tires are mandatory, and the proportion of SUVs on the road was dramatically  lower.  I think we got out of there just in time, though, as the forecast low for tomorrow night is -17F (-27F).  That’s cold even to me.

Back on the home front, our living area has averaged 52.8° F so far this winter.  As the graph clearly communicates, the temp in here is rarely steady, either from hour to hour, or day to day.  Hard to say how much wood we’ve gone through so far– maybe 1/5th to 1/4 cord.  We haven’t started on the actual split wood from Treemagedon yet, still just burning the cut-up branches and other little stuff.

So if you go to buy a new, standard, tank-type water heater, you discover that for any given gallon capacity they come in several different tank shapes, called “short”, “medium”, and “tall”.  It seems the “tall” are marketed for use in narrow spaces, the “short” for use in low spaces (like a crawlspace), and the “medium” for, well, everything else.

The interesting thing, though, is that from an efficiency (passive heat-loss minimization) standpoint, there is an ideal cylinder shape– namely, the one with the smallest ratio of surface area to volume, which is when the diameter is the same as the height.  From this standpoint, the shorty models are almost perfect, but the mediums are too twice too tall, and the “talls” are even worse.  Based on this, it would be rational to buy a short one– except that, for some reason, the shorts and talls are both much more expensive than a medium (like, $50-100 more)!  This makes no sense from a materials perspective, since the shorts use less steel/glass/insulation than a medium, and a medium less than a tall.  So I suppose it must have to do with demand, volume of production, and manufacturing efficiency.

It looks like we’re going to have a different heat (or lack-of-heat) pattern this winter, compared to the past few, because J. is now away from the house during the week and home only (mostly) on weekends.  So, there may be a bit more polarization– namely, less heat than usual when I’m home alone, and more heat than usual on the weekends.  

So far, though, we’re averaging 54.6F (since November 5th), which is a smidge lower than last winter’s overall average of 56.5.  This morning is the coolest one yet in the kitchen, at 45F.  That’s about as low as even I enjoy– will probably have a bit o’ flame of the wood stove tonight.

Reader Becky sent me the following message, which she said I could post here in the hopes of getting advice from other CHJ followers.  (I’ve already sent her my own thoughts– including that 60F is probably pushing the envelope in her situation– but she’s happy to have more advice!) (P.S.  Being pregnant in El Paso in the summer without A/C sounds, to me, fairly literally, like hell.)

“Hi,

Finally, some comfortable, invigorating indoor temps!