March 14th, 2005 - Heating
Growing up, my family turned the heat nearly off at night. I think it was down to 50 or 55, and rarely did the house actually cool off that much. During the day, the thermostat was set to 68 or so. Some days it never came on–we had a passive solar home that had wonderful southern windows. During the day, vents were closed in the bedrooms (we were gone to school after all). The vent in the extra room was only opened when we wanted to work in there (it was the sewing/prayer/guest room). I got up around the same time Dad did, and he turned on the heat in the morning. So I got used to sleeping in a very cool room!
Unfortunately, our house has only one southern window–in our baby’s room. Makes for a lovely, sunny room. But doesn’t help heat the rest of the house on sunny winter days. Two bedrooms (ours and the guest) have no vent in them. Regardless, the upstairs rarely heats or cools efficiently. We’d love to redo the heating system, but I don’t think there’s an easy way to put in new vents! (We have one other room in the house that is also unheated, although it does have an intake vent–one of THREE in the downstairs.) Eric has always preferred a much warmer house than I. But this year, he was willing to turn it down, sometimes cooler than I wanted! Woohoo! For the most part, we turn it down to 60 overnight (knowing it will be colder than that upstairs). We start out at 63-65 during the morning/afternoon. By evening, we usually have it up to 67 or 68. When we’re sick, it might go as high as 70, but I can recall doing that only once this winter. When I was home with the baby, I usually had it at 67 all day long.
The past couple days, I’ve been turning it up to 63 when I get up for the nighttime feeding (between 3 and 4 am). I’d thought that would take the chill off of getting up at 5am. But it doesn’t really seem to make a difference in the bathroom in an hour or two. So I’m going to stop doing it.
Two summers ago, we outfitted every window with cellular shades (mostly double-celled). That made an enormous difference in the temperature. We also temporarily caulked the windows–last winter just downstairs; this winter all the windows. That made a difference in cutting drafts! The caulk cost only 99 cents per container; it took two, including some major caulking in the basement. I can’t say our heating costs reduced–gas prices went up this year so our bills have been about the same. But imagine how high they may have been had we not made these changes?
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