A Couple Things I’m Doing To Get Ready For Winter

This winter could be very hard for a lot of people. We’re lucky. The Pacific Northwest gets freezing weather and all. We don’t get the frigid below zero stuff for any length of time.

What this means is we can adjust our lifestyle so we can afford to heat our home. At least to a reasonable level of comfort by modern standards.

What kind of adjustments? The kind of things that environmentalists have been saying for years.

• Turn the thermostat down. Only do it now before it gets really cold. You need to give yourself time to adjust.
• Wear more clothes in layers. More insulation to keep that heat in close.
• Exercise. Since, I’ve started exercising (swimming) again I’ve noticed I’m more comfortable in the cooler temperatures in the house.
• One thing we are doing is letting the house temperature vary some. Not having the heat click on and off all day. You have to play with it. If you let the heat fall too far the house will cool off too much. You’ll use more fuel getting it warmed back up than if you had left it on in the first place. Because of our solar gain (when the sun is actually shining) the furnace only needs to be clicked on about 2 hours a day.
• The next thing we’re going to experiment with is heating certain zones only. The problem is our house is very poorly designed for selective heating. Between an open floorplan and forced air heat we just have a tough time with this one. My solution would be to move to a house that has certain areas that can be heated selectively.
• Wood stove. Especially, ones like the masonry stoves. A bit of wood can be made to heat a very long time. The stove captures most of the heat in it’s thermal mass instead of letting it out the stack.
• Look into insulation and weather sealing. Pretty standard stuff that’s going to get more popular as the oil thing goes on.

There must be a bunch more ideas. I’ll be looking around to see what I can find.