Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Just call me Susan Cristo
It's 11 am, so it's already a balmy 7 degrees outside. Bright sunny clear skies, though, which of course means it will be down to -5 tonight. I have turned the thermostat up to 64 degrees, and am snuggled up in a blankie here in front of my warm glowing monitor.
Actually, I exaggerate a little. (You didn't know that about me, right?) That number on the thermostat is fine for keeping the house warm, providing we humans are going around in warm clothes. (The dogs and cats curl up in our/their beds and grumble a lot, but hey, THEY aren't paying the darn propane bill!)
Now YESTERDAY was a different story around here, and it's why I have borrowed the ways and moniker of the famous landscape artist.
Prevailing winds in our area tend to be from the northwest, but with the storm system yesterday we had bitter cold blowing in from due east. Our back door, which opens on the hall where Mr. Thermostat lives on the wall, faces east. There is a semi-new storm/screen door on it (that comes close to fitting the crooked door frame), but the back door itself...well, let's just say it wouldn't make the grade as airlock material. So SOME of the rooms of the house were actually HOT (to someone wearing two sweatshirts), being as how the hallway was full of slivers of very nippy incoming breezes, making the heater stay on pretty much continually.
Clearly, now was the time to bump another chore to the top of the list. I found my trusty roll of duct tape, which had last been used LAST week when we had a more traditionally produced storm roll in from the north. The old tape edging the smaller back up AC unit (in the north wall were birds sometimes nest) had curled up like a bad perm and fallen partly off the wall behind its wall hanging disguise. (Oh, ok, fine, it was really an old leather jacket! Happy now??)
I had committed much of the roll of tape to the mummification of that AC unit, which DID look rather sci-fi-like afterwards, hanging out of the wall in its new subdued silver wrap. (I hung the jacket back over it anyway. Maybe I should find an Indiana Jones hat and whip to hang by it and make it look like a deliberate decorative statement....) But there was plenty to use on the leaky bits of the wooden back door, and it did successfully stop most of the incoming frosty air.
I was on a roll now (a roll! Of duct tape! GEDDIT?!?) and decided to finish off by attacking the very worst leak, the window in the north wall of the basement where there is also (coincidence? or FATE?) a seldom used AC unit haphazardly installed in the window well. I KNEW this one leaked badly, since an actual DOG got through the air baffles several times. And I could see it was not a moment too soon to address the problem, since SNOW was slithering in past the edges of the old baffle and tape arrangement.
So the basement AC also got the Cristo treatment, and all is well, except we need a new roll of duct tape.
Actually, I exaggerate a little. (You didn't know that about me, right?) That number on the thermostat is fine for keeping the house warm, providing we humans are going around in warm clothes. (The dogs and cats curl up in our/their beds and grumble a lot, but hey, THEY aren't paying the darn propane bill!)
Now YESTERDAY was a different story around here, and it's why I have borrowed the ways and moniker of the famous landscape artist.
Prevailing winds in our area tend to be from the northwest, but with the storm system yesterday we had bitter cold blowing in from due east. Our back door, which opens on the hall where Mr. Thermostat lives on the wall, faces east. There is a semi-new storm/screen door on it (that comes close to fitting the crooked door frame), but the back door itself...well, let's just say it wouldn't make the grade as airlock material. So SOME of the rooms of the house were actually HOT (to someone wearing two sweatshirts), being as how the hallway was full of slivers of very nippy incoming breezes, making the heater stay on pretty much continually.
Clearly, now was the time to bump another chore to the top of the list. I found my trusty roll of duct tape, which had last been used LAST week when we had a more traditionally produced storm roll in from the north. The old tape edging the smaller back up AC unit (in the north wall were birds sometimes nest) had curled up like a bad perm and fallen partly off the wall behind its wall hanging disguise. (Oh, ok, fine, it was really an old leather jacket! Happy now??)
I had committed much of the roll of tape to the mummification of that AC unit, which DID look rather sci-fi-like afterwards, hanging out of the wall in its new subdued silver wrap. (I hung the jacket back over it anyway. Maybe I should find an Indiana Jones hat and whip to hang by it and make it look like a deliberate decorative statement....) But there was plenty to use on the leaky bits of the wooden back door, and it did successfully stop most of the incoming frosty air.
I was on a roll now (a roll! Of duct tape! GEDDIT?!?) and decided to finish off by attacking the very worst leak, the window in the north wall of the basement where there is also (coincidence? or FATE?) a seldom used AC unit haphazardly installed in the window well. I KNEW this one leaked badly, since an actual DOG got through the air baffles several times. And I could see it was not a moment too soon to address the problem, since SNOW was slithering in past the edges of the old baffle and tape arrangement.
So the basement AC also got the Cristo treatment, and all is well, except we need a new roll of duct tape.
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