Cold House Journal

Interested in that tiny little space where the Venn diagrams of home-heating, anthropology, cognitive science, and urban legend all intersect?  Well then, here’s some fascinating reading.

Meanwhile, you may wonder what we’ve been up to at the Cold House.   So far, since “fire up”, our kitchen temp has averaged 59F. That is 7 degrees above last year’s all-winter average… not clear yet where it will be heading.  We still have a little bit left of the 2 cords of wood we bought 2 years ago, but it’s now buried at the bottom of about a cord I split myself– sourced from our own yard, and trees that came down in friends’ yards.  So, this winter, I anticipate we will be burning 100% wood from within 4 miles of here, all “free” (my labor is, of course, worthless).

Coming soon will be posts on some exciting topics:

1)  New gadgets!  2)  A pending mass slaughter of Norway maples in the back yard!  Big time excitement.  3)  A scheme to heat our hot water, or part thereof, with the wood stove.  Stay tuned!

Lost power overnight due to the early-season snowstorm.  This morning had pancakes, oatmeal, and coffee over wood heat.  Almost a crisis, though, with whole-bean coffee and only an electric grinder… was about to resort to a mortar and pestle, but a one-day supply of ground coffee was located deep on a shelf somewhere…

Politics aside, I’m increasingly impressed with the “Occupy [City Name]” folks, just from a cold-living standpoint.  With snow coming tomorrow, we’re moving from  nice fall weather into winter-camping territory.  If they don’t pack it in, I’d say our local Maine branches (Portland, Augusta) will be contenders for the “coldest occupation site” (competition perhaps from Occupy Albany and Occupy Chicago… oh, and Alaska… oh and all those in Canada…)

Anyway, I have a pretty nice winter tent that hasn’t been out of its bag in, oh, at least 8 years.  Maybe I’ll stop by and donate it to the cause.

Well, I guess it had to happen.  It got down to 56-point-something inside, and someone lit a fire.  Happy fire season.

For all those followers asking, “How can I get in on all the fun of having a cold house, in a way that is full of good cheer and good company?”, I commend you to the “Freeze Yer Buns” challenge over at The Crunchy Chicken.  There you can review the “pledges” made by others as to when they’ll turn on their furnace, or how low they will set their thermostats, etc.  The C.C. also put up a recent post discussing how to acclimate to cooler indoor temperatures, a topic near and dear to us here.

At this house, as you know, we have no furnace and no thermostat, so our participation in the “FYB Challenge” is difficult to document.  But, we’re already a bit past the day when we first lit a fire last year (it’s been warm October in New England, which has been delightful.)  This morning, though, it was mid-30′s outside, and 57º inside.  I believe we have an agreement that the stove can be lit for the first time when the house temp falls to 56… but of course, this is subject to constant re-negotiation.   I don’t think we’re likely to re-achieve this winter our average indoor temperature of last winter (52º)– in part because we have a new housemate coming– but we’ll see.

Over the past two weeks, the (unheated) average temp in the kitchen has been 62º, and generally this has felt perfectly fine.

Overheard in Florida on a recent rainy morning (my sister-in-law to my nephew): “Do you want to wear a long sleeve shirt to school? You’re going to be inside all day today, so you might get chilly.”

Kind of made me chuckle.

“Colds are not as a rule due to drafts, but to the fear of drafts. It certainly is a fact that persons who are always afraid of colds, and see that every crevice that may admit a little fresh air is kept closed, are the ones who constantly complain of colds, while those who have no such fears are seldom affected by them.”

From “Imaginary Diseases and How Cured”, in Life and Health: The National Health Magazine, April, 1907.

… no heat.  First morning below 60 in the kitchen, too.

We just went to check out a neighbor’s house, which is part of the “Green Buildings Open House” tour day (sponsored by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association).  His house, which is lovely, is similar to ours in  size, and also similar in heating costs, but no doubt a lot warmer in winter– what with double-thick exterior walls, hyper-insulated roof, triple-glazed windows, extreme air-tight construction with a heat-exchange ventilation system,  etc.   It’s a beautiful and inspiring house.

Other houses on the tour, such as the one described here, are even more intriguing and outlandish.  (Impressive as achieving R-80 insulating values is, I have trouble accepting one or two people occupying a 2,900 sq ft house as “sustainable” living.  And, to avoid being labelled as a crank, I will desist from discussing the environmental impact of the decision to have 4 children… though it does make me scratch my head.)

I’m thinking maybe next year I will volunteer the Cold House to be part of the tour.   But we might not be welcomed, because there isn’t much to see.  Of course, that would be the point.  There’s little to buy, little to demolish and rebuild, little to design.   Most of the “technology” is in the brain and the body, not in the walls and or the “systems room”– and the rest is rather cheap (cast-off joint compound buckets, for example).   I’d like to appeal to people who would like to save the world (or at least, lower their heating bills into the three-figure range), but don’t have the resources or inclination to do five- or six-figure renovation or construction projects.

I love that technology may save us.  But I greatly fear that it will not save us fast enough.  I think we should consider other alternatives based in things we’ve forgotten how to do, rather than in things we haven’t yet invented.

J:  When did we first have a fire last year?

D:  October 24th.

J:  Oh, I don’t think it will be that late this year.

D:  Oh?  Why not?

J:  I just don’t think it will be the case…

[Current indoor temperature: 72F]