I’m with Peter and Lila! I’m at that hot stage of my life. My old historic house 1896 was recently given an energy test. It failed miserably! I walked around with the guy pointing the laser at the walls checking for heat loss. A lot of black showed up! Black not good he said.
I said, “well the newspaper and horse hair had all settled after years of pounding nails in the walls.”
Each time I pounded a nail I could hear the plaster fall off the lathe and hit the floor behind the wall or it probably settled in the basement! He walked through the addition and said that was well insulated.
Hmmmm, I said, “then why is the addition 3-4 degrees cooler than the historic part of the house?” I told him that after the previous owners had the addition built they ended up putting in a pellet stove as it was cold! We walked down to the basement. He peered through the crawl space and said, “ big part of the problem is there isn’t a vapor barrier down on the dirt floor!”
I said, “of course not, that’s the cat box!” The look on his face was priceless!!! I pointed over to the corner by the furnace to where 4 cement mixing trays were now cat boxes. He said, “how many cats do you have?” “One,” I said. I hate cleaning cat boxes everyday so now I only have to scoop once a week!
So now a company will be coming in this spring ( too late to save me money from all the heat I am pumping out to keep the outside warm) to put a vapor barrier down in the crawlspace. I told the guy he wouldn’t fit, they need to send in the young skinny kid. He gave me a funny look. I said if it helps, I won’t fit either. Then he told me they will be blowing in insulation in my outer walls in the original house. Unfortunately they will be putting holes in my plaster walls on the inside as they can’t go through brick. He said they patch the holes when done. It’s my responsibility to touch up paint. The walls have faded since I painted them 12 years ago. I touch up with original paint( if it’s not dried out) and the color will be too vibrant. So I guess I will be painting 2 bedrooms, bathroom, dining room and living room. I am NOT repainting the stairwell wall! That took a special ladder and a 6’5” man to paint last time. After I get done painting the old part of the house the addition will look dingy so I will end up painting that to! On the bright side the house will be freshly painted by the time I put it up for sale in 2 years! Oh and it will be better insulated and saving the new owners money! You’re welcome! I did buy myself a beautiful black storm door for the front door. My antique beveled glass door no longer frosts up thanks to the new storm door! Only took me 12 years to get one after having energy guy here inspecting my igloo. Hell, an igloo is warmer than my home! So by next winter I will have a home that holds in heat rather than heating the outside. Now I know why the rabbits and birds huddle up to my house, free heat!
It's amazing how projects spiral out of control. You wanted some insulation, and now you have to paint every room of your house. As a fellow old house owner, new insulation (or ANY insulation) still sounds amazing. Maybe I should also make that call.
It’s going to be a little balmy by Friday so I can put weatherstripping around the doors. My dogs scratched off the last ones! Never ends trying to keep our old houses warm. Thankfully, I have never had ........ freeze up on me. If I say it then I will be jinxed! Lol
While we have no pets the recent freezing and subfreezing temperatures prompted apparently every tiny sugar ant to telephone each other to head indoors at our house. We don’t leave sweet foods out on the counter so they will, of course, go on the hunt all over. (Just blew one off my phone. Likely a spy to report back that I’m expendable as a result.)
I’m thankful we no longer have a dog. I miss her terribly but the idea of her dealing with this weather, and me with her, is too much. Our poor heat pump just can’t handle it so the ‘toaster’ has to be on most of the time. Our electric bill will be staggering but hubby thinks it is worth it. He’s from California and even a normal winter in Indiana can be too cold for him. This blast of frigid air has tuned him from penny pincher to spendthrift, at least for the heating bill. Stay warm, and may the frozen pipes stay intact.
He misses the weather, but the cost of living, not so much. He’s actually mostly happy with being in Indiana, but we are looking to retire somewhere warmer some day.
My old dog passed a year ago June. He loves loves snow but forgets it’s cold outside. His beagle nose working through all the snow until his feet freeze and he becomes a statue. He won’t move! I have to go out and pick up all 36lbs of stiff beagle. I don’t miss that but I do miss him outside with me when I am shoveling.
Ours was a beagle too! I never understood why she loved the snow so much. She would come in and bury herself in the blankets for a few hours, then go back out. I’m thankful we never get much snow down here in Southern Indiana.
My german shepherd LOVES going outside to sit in the snow and will refuse to come in, but with this cold snap she would come back to the door after 5 minutes.
We had unseasonal, truly cold weather in October with actual snow! Hasn’t happened since the early 80s. Then November temp went up, then down, then up in December, then down DOWN over Christmas (when we had blizzard conditions), and now back up. At this point, I’m thinking this is how the whole winter will go. When the temp goes up my weeds actually wake up and think it’s growing time. Our up temps are in the 40s, low temps in teens or negatives, with LOTS of wind.
BTW, I keep my house at 58* daytime, and 55* at night. I have gas heat and a small house. (Everything else is electric, which goes up $125 in the summer with AC.)
I'm pretty homebound, by choice, in the winter months but this past week has been so ridiculously cold I haven't even gone out to get the mail. I cranked up the thermostat to 72 and still ran some space heaters and wore a sweater. This old momma don't like da cold! Thankfully we have a cat who doesn't go out and just finds a space with some sun coming in to rest all day.
We don't get the amount of snow that we used to in the 80s and 90s when I was working and transporting kids around but we still get the bone chilling cold for several days in the winter. Those are the kind of days I am thrilled to be retired!
I think therapists got the concept of aberrant conditioning from Mother Nature. I got out of the car yesterday without my winter coat and thought it wasn't too cold. It was 10 degrees. That is only true when I had been snow blowing when it was -40 just days ago.
I'm in N. KY and my furnace decided that this was the perfect time to mostly quit. The heat pump went out, and 2 of the 3 heating coils stopped working. Apparently it's about 10 years older than its expected life span. I like to keep the house around 70° as I feel that I should be able to be comfortable in my own house without dressing like an Eskimo. A space heater, fire in the wood burning heater, and the under-performing furnace kept the house at a whopping 57°. Did the arctic decide to move to the midwest?
This post made me glad I subscribed. Also glad I did not join the fad years back to get a pet pig. Why did you? You can’t possibly be lonely with a family of six, NOT counting your numerous pets. BTWi have a friend who DOES live in the Arctic and they are having relatively balmy weather right now. Speaking of Balmy: why pigs?
I explained it in my book "How to be a Man." I'm the son of a pig farmed and loved them from birth. They're a cool pet. Just not built for snow. They have about the same tolerance for cold as people.
Ok. Guess I have to buy the book. I used to know a guy who grew up on a farm in Indiana. They had one piglet who wasn’t doing well so they brought him into the kitchen to keep him warm, and hand fed him, and it accidentally became a very large pet. He said it would run out to greet the car when the family arrived home, along with the dogs. They loved that pig.
I moved from Indiana in the middle of a heat wave in July about 44 years ago, to Alaska where everyone was wearing shorts, flip flops and tee shirts. It was all of 68. I was frozen and wore long underwear all “summer”. Then winter actually arrived, it was -40 at Halloween. Kids wore their “winter gear” and went out to collect candy, without costumes. The coldest I’ve seen was -70. Whenever the temperature would drop to anything colder than -30, I’d start worrying about if the furnace would continue working, would we run out of fuel oil.... Our house was insulated well, but even so the furnace ran more or less constantly at those low temperatures. One of the terrible apartments we lived in the ice would build up in the outlets on outside walls, clothing in closets that was up against an outside wall would freeze to the wall and mold if you didn’t catch it in time. The weather folks never ever mentioned wind chill, but then at those low temperatures it was almost always dead calm. The cold wears on a body and when hubs retired we moved to Arizona.
Some animals don’t understand reciprocity. The cat we had when I was a kid understood the idea well. She was a good mouser and often lined up the heads near our outside door to show us her kill.
Nebraska reached -13, with a feels like temp of -40 during this cold snap. It was awful! Then the next week we were back up to 40 degrees. And now it's snowing so I have no idea what to expect going forward.
When I was young, during the OPEC crisis, my parents kept the thermostat at 68*F. They ended up buying electric blankets for everyone, which helped unless the power lines froze. Lol
Have you considered including temperatures in centigrade for those of us not living in the 60's (era)? 😆
Also I don't know what you are paying for your heating but it's not enough if you can heat your house to 70F! My house is averaging 50-60F currently and my fuel bill is more than double last winter 😭 This month was £180 ($217) and it's only that low because we only run the heat a couple hours a day.
Oh and hang on because you have another storm coming, supposed to rain all week here in AZ., before it heads your way. I do so miss the snow though, especially on Christmas day. Cactus or tumble weed snowmen just don't do it for me
I’m with Peter and Lila! I’m at that hot stage of my life. My old historic house 1896 was recently given an energy test. It failed miserably! I walked around with the guy pointing the laser at the walls checking for heat loss. A lot of black showed up! Black not good he said.
I said, “well the newspaper and horse hair had all settled after years of pounding nails in the walls.”
Each time I pounded a nail I could hear the plaster fall off the lathe and hit the floor behind the wall or it probably settled in the basement! He walked through the addition and said that was well insulated.
Hmmmm, I said, “then why is the addition 3-4 degrees cooler than the historic part of the house?” I told him that after the previous owners had the addition built they ended up putting in a pellet stove as it was cold! We walked down to the basement. He peered through the crawl space and said, “ big part of the problem is there isn’t a vapor barrier down on the dirt floor!”
I said, “of course not, that’s the cat box!” The look on his face was priceless!!! I pointed over to the corner by the furnace to where 4 cement mixing trays were now cat boxes. He said, “how many cats do you have?” “One,” I said. I hate cleaning cat boxes everyday so now I only have to scoop once a week!
So now a company will be coming in this spring ( too late to save me money from all the heat I am pumping out to keep the outside warm) to put a vapor barrier down in the crawlspace. I told the guy he wouldn’t fit, they need to send in the young skinny kid. He gave me a funny look. I said if it helps, I won’t fit either. Then he told me they will be blowing in insulation in my outer walls in the original house. Unfortunately they will be putting holes in my plaster walls on the inside as they can’t go through brick. He said they patch the holes when done. It’s my responsibility to touch up paint. The walls have faded since I painted them 12 years ago. I touch up with original paint( if it’s not dried out) and the color will be too vibrant. So I guess I will be painting 2 bedrooms, bathroom, dining room and living room. I am NOT repainting the stairwell wall! That took a special ladder and a 6’5” man to paint last time. After I get done painting the old part of the house the addition will look dingy so I will end up painting that to! On the bright side the house will be freshly painted by the time I put it up for sale in 2 years! Oh and it will be better insulated and saving the new owners money! You’re welcome! I did buy myself a beautiful black storm door for the front door. My antique beveled glass door no longer frosts up thanks to the new storm door! Only took me 12 years to get one after having energy guy here inspecting my igloo. Hell, an igloo is warmer than my home! So by next winter I will have a home that holds in heat rather than heating the outside. Now I know why the rabbits and birds huddle up to my house, free heat!
It's amazing how projects spiral out of control. You wanted some insulation, and now you have to paint every room of your house. As a fellow old house owner, new insulation (or ANY insulation) still sounds amazing. Maybe I should also make that call.
It’s going to be a little balmy by Friday so I can put weatherstripping around the doors. My dogs scratched off the last ones! Never ends trying to keep our old houses warm. Thankfully, I have never had ........ freeze up on me. If I say it then I will be jinxed! Lol
Cheops Law: No project comes in on time or on budget.
While we have no pets the recent freezing and subfreezing temperatures prompted apparently every tiny sugar ant to telephone each other to head indoors at our house. We don’t leave sweet foods out on the counter so they will, of course, go on the hunt all over. (Just blew one off my phone. Likely a spy to report back that I’m expendable as a result.)
We had a mouse decide to spend the cold snap inside. We were not amused.
Our cat would have a hay day.
I can trade you for some centipedes! They came in 1896 when the house was built and still haven’t paid rent!
I’m thankful we no longer have a dog. I miss her terribly but the idea of her dealing with this weather, and me with her, is too much. Our poor heat pump just can’t handle it so the ‘toaster’ has to be on most of the time. Our electric bill will be staggering but hubby thinks it is worth it. He’s from California and even a normal winter in Indiana can be too cold for him. This blast of frigid air has tuned him from penny pincher to spendthrift, at least for the heating bill. Stay warm, and may the frozen pipes stay intact.
I finally get why California is so expensive. The weather is worth it.
He misses the weather, but the cost of living, not so much. He’s actually mostly happy with being in Indiana, but we are looking to retire somewhere warmer some day.
My old dog passed a year ago June. He loves loves snow but forgets it’s cold outside. His beagle nose working through all the snow until his feet freeze and he becomes a statue. He won’t move! I have to go out and pick up all 36lbs of stiff beagle. I don’t miss that but I do miss him outside with me when I am shoveling.
Ours was a beagle too! I never understood why she loved the snow so much. She would come in and bury herself in the blankets for a few hours, then go back out. I’m thankful we never get much snow down here in Southern Indiana.
My german shepherd LOVES going outside to sit in the snow and will refuse to come in, but with this cold snap she would come back to the door after 5 minutes.
We had unseasonal, truly cold weather in October with actual snow! Hasn’t happened since the early 80s. Then November temp went up, then down, then up in December, then down DOWN over Christmas (when we had blizzard conditions), and now back up. At this point, I’m thinking this is how the whole winter will go. When the temp goes up my weeds actually wake up and think it’s growing time. Our up temps are in the 40s, low temps in teens or negatives, with LOTS of wind.
BTW, I keep my house at 58* daytime, and 55* at night. I have gas heat and a small house. (Everything else is electric, which goes up $125 in the summer with AC.)
Are you a snowman? Or possibly Elsa? With those indoor temperatures, you must be one or the other.
Let’s just say I really suffer in the summer with AC at 73*! And I choose snowman!☃️
I'm pretty homebound, by choice, in the winter months but this past week has been so ridiculously cold I haven't even gone out to get the mail. I cranked up the thermostat to 72 and still ran some space heaters and wore a sweater. This old momma don't like da cold! Thankfully we have a cat who doesn't go out and just finds a space with some sun coming in to rest all day.
We don't get the amount of snow that we used to in the 80s and 90s when I was working and transporting kids around but we still get the bone chilling cold for several days in the winter. Those are the kind of days I am thrilled to be retired!
72 sounds like an amazing luxury. If I could, I'd spend the rest of the winter in a sauna.
I think therapists got the concept of aberrant conditioning from Mother Nature. I got out of the car yesterday without my winter coat and thought it wasn't too cold. It was 10 degrees. That is only true when I had been snow blowing when it was -40 just days ago.
I had the exact same thought! When it got up to 10, the pigs started going outside on their own again. Guess they thought it was spring.
I'm in N. KY and my furnace decided that this was the perfect time to mostly quit. The heat pump went out, and 2 of the 3 heating coils stopped working. Apparently it's about 10 years older than its expected life span. I like to keep the house around 70° as I feel that I should be able to be comfortable in my own house without dressing like an Eskimo. A space heater, fire in the wood burning heater, and the under-performing furnace kept the house at a whopping 57°. Did the arctic decide to move to the midwest?
This post made me glad I subscribed. Also glad I did not join the fad years back to get a pet pig. Why did you? You can’t possibly be lonely with a family of six, NOT counting your numerous pets. BTWi have a friend who DOES live in the Arctic and they are having relatively balmy weather right now. Speaking of Balmy: why pigs?
I explained it in my book "How to be a Man." I'm the son of a pig farmed and loved them from birth. They're a cool pet. Just not built for snow. They have about the same tolerance for cold as people.
Ok. Guess I have to buy the book. I used to know a guy who grew up on a farm in Indiana. They had one piglet who wasn’t doing well so they brought him into the kitchen to keep him warm, and hand fed him, and it accidentally became a very large pet. He said it would run out to greet the car when the family arrived home, along with the dogs. They loved that pig.
I moved from Indiana in the middle of a heat wave in July about 44 years ago, to Alaska where everyone was wearing shorts, flip flops and tee shirts. It was all of 68. I was frozen and wore long underwear all “summer”. Then winter actually arrived, it was -40 at Halloween. Kids wore their “winter gear” and went out to collect candy, without costumes. The coldest I’ve seen was -70. Whenever the temperature would drop to anything colder than -30, I’d start worrying about if the furnace would continue working, would we run out of fuel oil.... Our house was insulated well, but even so the furnace ran more or less constantly at those low temperatures. One of the terrible apartments we lived in the ice would build up in the outlets on outside walls, clothing in closets that was up against an outside wall would freeze to the wall and mold if you didn’t catch it in time. The weather folks never ever mentioned wind chill, but then at those low temperatures it was almost always dead calm. The cold wears on a body and when hubs retired we moved to Arizona.
Some animals don’t understand reciprocity. The cat we had when I was a kid understood the idea well. She was a good mouser and often lined up the heads near our outside door to show us her kill.
“I don’t think the math on that decision works out” 😂
Nebraska reached -13, with a feels like temp of -40 during this cold snap. It was awful! Then the next week we were back up to 40 degrees. And now it's snowing so I have no idea what to expect going forward.
When I was young, during the OPEC crisis, my parents kept the thermostat at 68*F. They ended up buying electric blankets for everyone, which helped unless the power lines froze. Lol
Have you considered including temperatures in centigrade for those of us not living in the 60's (era)? 😆
Also I don't know what you are paying for your heating but it's not enough if you can heat your house to 70F! My house is averaging 50-60F currently and my fuel bill is more than double last winter 😭 This month was £180 ($217) and it's only that low because we only run the heat a couple hours a day.
Is it only the UK that's experienced this?
Oh and hang on because you have another storm coming, supposed to rain all week here in AZ., before it heads your way. I do so miss the snow though, especially on Christmas day. Cactus or tumble weed snowmen just don't do it for me
Were you not around for the -60 Bengals game years ago? -40 is nothing LOL