Have you acclimated to a colder climate?

Tereza Okava wrote:In my experience it's a lot easier to adapt to a hot climate than to a cold one  

Kathleen Sanderson wrote: Managing a cold climate has more to do with learning how to dress and manage your home heating in order to stay warm and comfortable, IMO.

John F Dean wrote: I found out my friends, who claimed to have no problem heating their homes, kept their houses at 55 to 60 degrees.  Most of my time was spent in winter, recovering from winter, or getting ready for winter.  I remember having snow in  mid June.

John Weiland wrote:

John F Dean wrote: I found out my friends, who claimed to have no problem heating their homes, kept their houses at 55 to 60 degrees.  Most of my time was spent in winter, recovering from winter, or getting ready for winter.  I remember having snow in  mid June.

Yep,.....just outside of Fargo-Moorhead, this is still our norm -- we do not set the thermostat above 60 F and it normally is about 55 F.  We run a woodstove on the main floor to supplement the forced-air oil-burner furnace in the basement.  My wife grew up in central Pennsylvania and seems as home in these temperatures as I am having grown up in Minnesota.  Currently we consider ourselves "scarily blessed" to have had temps since Christmas hovering between zero at night and 40 F by day...unseasonably warm!

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:  I don't have a wood stove hooked up yet -- the stove is sitting in the barn until I find someone to check the old chimney and make sure it's safe.  I will be glad to get that working again, but we do have a propane heater in case of power outages.

........ So having a back-up heating system is not just a good idea, it is essential for survival.  And, of course, if you lose heat at those temperatures, your pipes are going to freeze, and your toilet will freeze and probably crack (it's a good idea to keep some anti-freeze to pour into it just in case), not to mention whatever food you have stored.  

John Weiland wrote:

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:  I don't have a wood stove hooked up yet -- the stove is sitting in the barn until I find someone to check the old chimney and make sure it's safe.  I will be glad to get that working again, but we do have a propane heater in case of power outages.

........ So having a back-up heating system is not just a good idea, it is essential for survival.  And, of course, if you lose heat at those temperatures, your pipes are going to freeze, and your toilet will freeze and probably crack (it's a good idea to keep some anti-freeze to pour into it just in case), not to mention whatever food you have stored.  

Kathleen S.,    It might be good to check the building codes in your area about the chimney.  I think our codes specified that the original chimney, up which at one time ran the exhaust for the only wood cook/heating stove for the house in the early decades of the past century, would not by itself qualify for use with our woodstove when it was installed.  We would need to install a chimney liner for it to be used.  Instead, we opted to go out the main floor wall with the chimney pipe, then up through the lip of the roof with class-A chimney pipe to reach the height required by code for the pitch of our roof.  So the point being that if you have an acceptable or even more desired place for your stove installation, you may not have to bother looking into using the older chimney.

I don't know what the price of electricity is in your area, but we additionally are considering an 'in-duct' electric heater, -- one that fits into the duct-work from the furnace that could provide heat if the main furnace was out.  Our concern here with the furnace in the basement and the woodstove on the main floor is that no amount of warmth on the main floor would keep the basement pipes from freezing if the furnace was out.  But an electric 'duct heater' might provide just enough heat to the basement to keep the pipes from freezing.  Maybe........

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:  .....This house is a square divided into four equal-sized rooms (with the stairs taking a chunk out of the down-stairs bedroom), and the existing chimney is right in the center, which is a pretty good location for a stove, for distributing heat.  But we could probably make another location work well enough.  

John Weiland wrote:

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:  .....This house is a square divided into four equal-sized rooms (with the stairs taking a chunk out of the down-stairs bedroom), and the existing chimney is right in the center, which is a pretty good location for a stove, for distributing heat.  But we could probably make another location work well enough.  

One thing we may also be a bit lucky with is winter sun.  Our floor plan also is a 'box'..... 900 square feet (30 X 30) farm house with basement and second floor, built before indoor plumbing, electrical, and ducted heating.  We too have a central chimney that was deemed okay for the exhaust from the furnace, but would not meet code for the woodstove.  Sadly, the south side of the house is where they opted to put the staircase...running upstairs along that south wall.  (Yet this was by design since a south-facing door went strait to the outhouse....which was perched right on the riverbank! :-? )  Because of this staircase, it negated the possibility of retrofitting that south wall with a nice bank of south facing windows.  Nevertheless, since the stairs end on the main floor right where the old parlor was and since the previous owners removed the walls that divided the space on that floor, we installed a large french door that opens out onto a deck.  With the angle of the sun pretty low, on a clear day that room heats up nicely....and since the thermostat is in that room, it keeps the furnace turned off on clear days. In the heat of summer, the angle of the sun rarely puts much direct sunlight into that room.  So if there is any chance that your location enjoys decent winter sun, it may be worth installing some south-facing windows or increasing the number and area of window space that would help with daytime warming.  Personally, I feel it almost criminal up here that some nod to passive solar is not written into building *requirements*.... but that's just me. :-)

John Weiland wrote:

Kathleen Sanderson wrote: Our concern here with the furnace in the basement and the woodstove on the main floor is that no amount of warmth on the main floor would keep the basement pipes from freezing if the furnace was out.  

I don't think you would have to worry.  It may be worth the experiment just to see.  At my lady's former house, we turned off all heat the the basement for four days just to see how cold it would get.  It was well below zero outside.  The basement never got below 50 degrees.

Mk Neal wrote:I agree with Trace regarding basements. Your basement is essentially a man-made cave, and in Kentucky it should not freeze below a heated house, with the caveat that freezing air from the outside (e.g. near leaky window or door) might cause very localized risk of pipes freezing IF they are not being used regularly.  Insulate windows/doors and any bare pipes near the outer walls.

Trace Oswald wrote:

John Weiland wrote:Our concern here with the furnace in the basement and the woodstove on the main floor is that no amount of warmth on the main floor would keep the basement pipes from freezing if the furnace was out.  

I don't think you would have to worry.  It may be worth the experiment just to see.  At my lady's former house, we turned off all heat the the basement for four days just to see how cold it would get.  It was well below zero outside.  The basement never got below 50 degrees.