As you know, we didn't turn our furnace on in September as usual. We waited, and waited, to see how long we could go. Here's the result of our strategic use of electric space heaters instead of a forced-air natural gas furnace:
Each month our utility company (natural gas & electric) sends us a comparison graph showing how much energy we used compared to others in our neighborhood with the same size house. The "efficient neighbors" are the lowest 20% of average energy use, and includes homes that are unoccupied and sitting on the market waiting for a sale. I was delighted to learn that we are now below our "efficient neighbors" in energy use!
We've been going around the house looking for drafty areas, and they are everywhere. We pried the molding trim from around this window, and guess what? The idiots who built our house (and all our neighbors' houses) never bothered to caulk where the sheet rock met the windows. They simply spray painted the walls, and then slapped some trim over the gaping cracks.
So we had to do remedy the situation. Better late, then never, right? You wouldn't believe how the walls sucked up this expanding foam insulation. There were great caverns of cold air in there. Before we repaint the exterior of the house next time, we'll pull the trim on the outside of the windows and do the same from the other side.
It's been getting colder and colder at night, with freezing temperatures and blankets of heavy, wet fog by morning. Last week I woke up and the temperature gauge on the alarm clock by my bed said 58 degrees. Inside. It was time to fire up the furnace. I didn't want mildew setting in anywhere, and honestly I was tired of ambling around like the Michelin Man in multiple layers of fleece and wool. So I spent an hour going around to all 14 heat registers and popping the grates out so I could vacuum the ducts. The dust bunnies that accumulate there would have exploded out into the room the minute the furnace went on had I not cleaned them out.
I reset the thermostat for 62 degrees from 9pm to 6am, 68 degrees from 6am-8am and 5pm-9pm, and 65 during the day. Understand, however, that the thermostat is between the kitchen and the gas fireplace, the two warmest places in the house, and the upstairs and playroom usually remains much colder. If not using space heaters, we'd need the furnace to run almost constantly to get the rest of the house warm, and it would be 80 degrees down by the thermostat. Right now the furnace is running (aiming for 65 degrees) and I'm upstairs and my temp gauge says 62. Hey, at least it's not 58! But my fingers are a little numb, so I better get up and make some hot tea. Either that, or wash dishes!
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