[pedonbio]

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.

[Palomine]

 Jeez Tug, I'm jealous (of your insulation). Mine's an old house (for SoCal) and it has almost no insulation anywhere.

@ 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.  

[pedonbio]

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.

[rtpoe]

Who's the schmuck that wished for a White Christmas?

[solvegas]

Hiram, my place's windows are double plane and it has 8" of insulation. Since we worry more about 110 degree weather for 5-6 months than cold, our air conditioner, therefore our heater, vents are high near the ceilings ( cool air being denser will drop down ) and it's ineficient for the winter. We generally do not have basements and most attics are so small as to be more of a afterthought so it is simply not for the winter. My home is 10 years old so it's generally up to date. Very few homes here have rain gutters so as the snow melts there is a lot of dripping all around the house. I have no fireplace ( didn't want to pay extra for something which here is merely decorative ) so the last few days I have to put more clothing on than usual to stay warm. It's now 31 degrees according to the Weatherbug program in my PC. Cold sucks. Can't wait for warmer weather already.

[Hiram]

Quote:
solvegas said:
Hiram, my place's windows are double plane and it has 8" of insulation.

Is that 8" of insulation within the cavity wall?

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?

[MasterDragonfly]

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.  

[MasterDragonfly]

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.

[PregNut]

Sunny and 82 degrees here today.

[H_cups]

Its gone, I was in that area on Monday and it was in the 70's. Unbelievable and beautiful. Thanks for sharing the pics.

[solvegas]

No, 8" on the ceiling. The walls are standard 2"X4" so the walls are about 4". Thank God they put the rolls and not the blown insulation.

[Zealot]

Looking at 60 degree weather right now in New England.

[solvegas]

The high here will be 57 F. So …. Vegas will be cooler than New England. Curious.