Post by: Tugboatcap on December 17, 2008, 04:22:17 PM
Tugboat"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"Cap!
Post by: midsize on December 17, 2008, 04:29:04 PM
Post by: pedonbio on December 17, 2008, 04:36:35 PM
Post by: PregNut on December 17, 2008, 05:06:08 PM
Quote:Damn global warming.
Tugboatc said:
This is what we woke up to on the 11th...
Tugboat"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"Cap!
Post by: MasterDragonfly on December 17, 2008, 09:32:19 PM
Post by: brakblake on December 17, 2008, 10:33:21 PM
Quote:
Tugboatc said:
This is what we woke up to on the 11th...
Tugboat"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"Cap!
hey, that reminds me of what its looks like near my place. Though i am in the mountains....7,000 ft up.........
In New Mexico!!!! LOL
Post by: solvegas on December 17, 2008, 10:53:14 PM
Post by: Hiram on December 18, 2008, 02:32:07 AM
Quote:Your homes are probably not as well insulated as those in the north - and do you have any underfloor heating or anything to keep warm at home?
solvegas said: It's 33 degrees right now which is a bitch for us too.
Post by: Tugboatcap on December 18, 2008, 09:08:55 AM
Houses are built on a slab so floors are only as cold as the ground, which is not bad because it doesn't stay cold for long periods, or in our case, the inside temperature of the house as we have hardwood floors throughout. (how's that for a run on sentence!)
Tugboat"People in SE Louisiana CAN'T Drive in Snow!"Cap!
Post by: Bonecracker on December 18, 2008, 10:45:53 AM
Bone...
x-94
Post by: Hiram on December 18, 2008, 11:45:55 AM
Quote:You wouldn't have double glazing though. You'll going to lose a lot of heat through the windows. It would be interesting to see your house through an infra red camera.
Tugboatc said:
Actually, our homes are probably MORE insulated than our northern counterparts
I'm not that familiar with US house construction so you're going to have to bear with me. What about cavity wall insulation?
Post by: MasterDragonfly on December 18, 2008, 12:33:41 PM
Quote:
Hiram said:
You wouldn't have double glazing though.
I can't speak for Louisiana, but even the apartment we live in here in Texas has double-glazed windows.
Post by: Tugboatcap on December 18, 2008, 12:40:11 PM
Tugboat"We insulate the hell out of houses in the US"Cap!
Post by: Hiram on December 18, 2008, 01:04:46 PM
Quote:Oki doki.
Tugboatc said:
Yup. Double Glazing
Just out of pure curiosity, what is the air gap between the pains of glass?
I've stayed in a lot of hotels in the US, my only real experience with the great US indoors. From what I remember from sticking my head out the window a few times, the air gap is about half an inch.
Post by: Zealot on December 18, 2008, 01:10:50 PM
We're bracing for the major storm arriving tomorrow afternoon.
Man,with heating costs being as they are,if there ever was a time women from BustArtist,RanmaruGraphics, or Gammarai's galleries SHOULD exist,it would be now!
Post by: pedonbio on December 18, 2008, 01:59:57 PM
Quote:
Zealot said:
My sister lives in Central Mass. and was out of power for a few days.Heavy icing on the tree branches wrecked the power lines.At the Home depot where I work(or worked,since my Holiday hours have been shaved down to naught) people were coming from all over New England to wait for the next shipment of generators.I think we made our store quota jest from generators for that week.
We're bracing for the major storm arriving tomorrow afternoon.
Man,with heating costs being as they are,if there ever was a time women from BustArtist,RanmaruGraphics, or Gammarai's galleries SHOULD exist,it would be now!
Both coasts have similar weather this month. In Seattle we have almost constant rain from October to June. Every now and then we get some air from the Arctic, so the rain turns to snow as long as the cold lasts. We had snow last weekend; it stayed frozen with patchy snow (a/k/a "rain showers") until today. What was going to be a soaking rainstorm is falling as snow, so Central Puget Sound is all buried. The freeways are technically open, but the cities are all shut down.
Post by: Palomine on December 18, 2008, 02:19:38 PM
@ Hiram: the gap might be air in some windows, but in fancier ones, it's argon or maybe vacuum to reduce heat transfer. Given that my house came w/o insulation (it's about 50 yrs old) it will come as no surprise that all the original glass is single-pane too.
Post by: pedonbio on December 18, 2008, 08:07:22 PM
Quote:
solvegas said:
We had 4" of snow here in Vegas the 15th and today thru tonight probably another 4"-6". We too are also having weird weather. I understand those of you who live in Minnesota or some such place laugh about that but here it's a blizzard. It's 33 degrees right now which is a bitch for us too.
Congratulations, solvegas! Las Vegas set a snowfall record today! Seattle had 7 feet in 24 hours back in 1910, so we are a long way from that record.
Post by: rtpoe on December 18, 2008, 08:48:44 PM
Post by: solvegas on December 18, 2008, 11:20:25 PM
Post by: Hiram on December 19, 2008, 05:38:06 AM
Quote:Is that 8" of insulation within the cavity wall?
solvegas said:
Hiram, my place's windows are double plane and it has 8" of insulation.
I've been to some Canadian homes, and the heater vents seem to be in the floor or low down, probably for the opposite reason to why yours are high.
Interesting about rain gutters, I'd not noticed that last time I was in Vegas.
I think you get used to the cold after a few days, it takes a while for the body to acclimatize, but eventually it does. I've never minded the cold, but damp is more of a issue for me.
My windows seem to have a big air (or whatever it is) gap - not sure if that is good or not?
Post by: MasterDragonfly on December 19, 2008, 07:27:49 AM
Quote:
solvegas said:
Cold sucks. Can't wait for warmer weather already.
Story of my life, regardless of the fact that most of my years were spent in Canada.
Post by: MasterDragonfly on December 19, 2008, 07:47:20 AM
Quote:
Hiram said:
I've been to some Canadian homes, and the heater vents seem to be in the floor or low down, probably for the opposite reason to why yours are high.
That's likely part of the reason.
But consider also that there's a furnace in the basement, and you need to run ductwork to the ground floor and to the second story. There's a certain economy to not running the ducts all the way up to the top of a room.
Conversely, for those homes with finished basements, you have rooms where the heat is venting in from above, which tends to reduce efficiency a bit. For those people who just throw carpet directly on top of the cement floor, there's a certain loss of heat there. The smarter folks will build up a nominal subfloor to provide an air-gap, not to mention a place for moisture (basement cracks/leaks) to pass through without damaging the floor, if need be. (I recall a certain plastic product designed for this purpose, which has a sort of "egg carton" look to it, albeit not nearly as deep as an egg carton, more like about 1/2" in height, which you'd anchor to the floor. Throw down the plywood on top of that, fasten it, then put down the floor covering of your choice.)
I grew up in a home which had baseboard heaters in every room, in a neighbourhood of (mostly?) forced-air furnaces. I think at the time the house was built, my parents decided that electric was cheap and therefore the way to go. We ended up with a laundry chute instead of a furnace.
What they missed out on was the opportunity to install central air later on, as well as a fresh-air exchanger. Instead, my parents eventually bought an air conditioner for their bedroom window and another for the kitchen window. Not a great approach IMO.For anyone who has lived in colder climes, you know that it's not just about the double-glazed windows and the wall/roof insulation. It pays to have decent doors and weatherstripping, not to mention sealing off behind the wallplates of electrical outlets/switches on outer walls. Actually if the insulation around a window frame is poor, then it doesn't matter how efficient the window itself is. My standard test is to hold the back of my hand/fingers towards the window on a cold day, and then check closer to the perimeter.
I was astonished one day while checking out a Royal Homes model home. I did the back-of-hand test at a kitchen window, and couldn't feel ANY draft. And it was quite unpleasantly cold outside that day, with a fairly brisk wind. (For the lazy: Royal Homes build the home into modules indoors at a factory location, then ship the modules on flatbed trucks to the building site. A crane moves the modules into place onto the foundation, and the components are then fastened together. Add finishing touches, and you're done. Bonus: You CAN get them custom built to your particular wants/needs. One couple I knew got one of these built (bungalow style) and realized that the furnace would be below their ground-floor bedroom. They didn't want the noise in the immediate vicinity, so they had the designer put the furnace at the opposite end of the basement. Nice touch.
Post by: PregNut on December 19, 2008, 09:44:00 PM
Post by: H_cups on December 19, 2008, 10:16:34 PM
Post by: solvegas on December 19, 2008, 11:14:02 PM
Post by: Zealot on January 11, 2019, 01:23:17 AM
Post by: solvegas on January 11, 2019, 08:42:16 AM