2025 52 Card Project: Week 5: Heat

[pegkerr]

I have been preoccupied with heat this week.

My house has an old gravity-fed octopus furnace, original to the house. According to my furnace inspector, only 3-5% of houses still have this type of heating. They are very dependable, but on the other hand, they are inefficient compared to modern furnaces. If I want to keep my heat bill from being too exorbitant, I have to keep the thermostat down low.

So I turn it down to 58 when I sleep at night, and when I leave the house for an extended period of time. On the days that I work, I don't turn it up in the morning for the hour and a half I'm getting ready. I turn it up to 65 only when I'm hanging around my house in the evenings.

Frankly, this has felt like I've been pushing the envelope of my own comfort. I use an electric blanket at night, but (being an aging lady) I have to get up numerous times to go to the bathroom. And stepping out of the shower in the morning when the temperature is set at 58 degrees honestly sucks.

So I have been huddling up with blankets, shawls, and a rice heat pack that I warm up in the microwave. I recently bought a warm flannel shirt that is so cozy that I want to wear it all the time. I have been stocking my refrigerator with soups to warm up for my meals and drinking cocoa and tea in the evenings, trying to warm my hands and my belly.

I keep blowing the fuse when I forget to turn off the space heater when I try to run the microwave.

Escaping to the office had been a relief, but this week, a pipe burst in the floor below us. A hot water boiler provides our building heat. For a day or two the heat was so low at the office that I had to pull my shawls out there, too. Until they get the pipe fixed next week, they have brought in space heaters--but the space heaters are blowing the fuses all over the place at the office, too.

Perhaps because I'm getting older. I'm just feeling the cold more. It's all about striking a balance between personal comfort and my budget. Lately, the balance has been a struggle to achieve.

Central image: An octopus (gravity-fed) furnace. Right: a red lumberman's shirt. Lower right corner: a small space heater. Lower left corner: a woman's hands hold a bowl of wild rice bean soup. Left: a heat pack, the type warmed in the microwave. Upper center: a thermostat.

Heat



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Comments

[dreamshark]

Wow, that's a cold house! Your high setting is colder than our low nighttime setting. Yikes.

I do wonder whether you are actually saving money by keeping the furnace heat so low and then supplementing with electric space heaters (which are an expensive way to produce heat). One thing about a gravity furnace: it warms the house up quickly, at least on the first floor. And if it's anything like the octopus we had in our first house it warms the basement up too, which means warm floors. It might not cost as much as you think to turn the heat up to 70 for a few hours in the evening and hang out near the main warm air grating. Then at least you could go to bed warm.

[quadong]

At the risk of providing advice when none was requested (and only because I'm replying to Sharon!), I ran the program that I wrote for my post https://quadong.dreamwidth.org/235835.html

I estimate it would raise your heating bill by 5%, averaged over the year, to set it to 70 in the evenings instead of 65. I don't know what your average bill is, but for me, that would be about $3/month. Also going to 70 in the morning would add another 4%.

(I'm using a "morning" of 45 minutes an an "evening" of 4 1/2 hours. The reason the costs are similar is because most of the cost is the initial getting of the house from 58 up to 70.)

I recently compared the cost of electric space heating to central gas heating. Per unit of heating, electric costs 6x more. So roughly speaking, if you are heating less than 1/6 of your house, space heaters make sense. Except that of course you can't entirely keep the heat in one room, and you end up heating more than you need, even if you keep the door shut all the time. So maybe more like 1/10 would be a good rule.

Quibble

[lsanderson]

Not to quibble, he said quibbling, but octopus furnaces send half their heat up the chimney. I ustta have one and huge gas bills in the winter. Owing to the gas company's infrequent meter readings, I had a year of prepaid gas after switching to a high efficiency furnace.

Re: Quibble

[pegkerr]

I've looked into changing the furnace. They used to have assistance programs to help people with the cost, but they have pretty much dried up, as they assume that people who were going to switch will have done it by now. I've learned that you have to start with about $15,000 in asbestos abatement before you even get to the furnace cost. At my income level, it's just impossible. I'm resigned that I will be stuck with this furnace until I move out of the house, and that probably whoever buys it will insist that the cost of a new furnace be taken out of the selling price.

Re: Quibble

[lsanderson]

Here to quibble again, most/many/some furnace companies handle the asbestos abatement at less than if you look at it independently. (Or at least that's how I remember it a couple of years ago.) I went through Standard Heating, but it was 20 years or so ago. When I looked at doing the abatement myself, it was much less expensive as part of the deal. The other item I was going to push is the foot-warming radiant heaters (https://www.amazon.com/Wasrch-Portable-Foldable-Efficient-Thermostat/dp/B0DJSB22KR/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=4zr4a&content-id=amzn1.sym.255b3518-6e7f-495c-8611-30a58648072e%3Aamzn1.symc.a68f4ca3-28dc-4388-a2cf-24672c480d8f&pf_rd_p=255b3518-6e7f-495c-8611-30a58648072e&pf_rd_r=QX4AJ4NFK25K0RBG1X5Y&pd_rd_wg=wX9Fc&pd_rd_r=227ece9c-bb3d-4e2e-9c69-105d3ddd9ee7&ref_=pd_hp_d_atf_ci_mcx_mr_ca_hp_atf_d) or similar for sitting at a desk. They don't help getting out of a shower, but they're great for just sitting at a desk.

Re: Quibble

[quadong]

The percentages stay the same even if the base cost is doubled. And the base cost depends on the size of the house, insulation, etc, anyway.

[minnehaha]

There's a point every winter when it is just impossible to get warm no matter what. Long johns every minute, sleep in a hat and socks, hand wash dishes in hot hot water... it just cannot warm my bones, none of it. Your low heat settings make staying warm so hard!

Can you put the space heater in the bathroom when you take that long hot shower?

Possibly get heating assistance? You should not struggle with being so cold.

K.

[pegkerr]

Oh, that's a great idea to put the space heater in the bathroom. Thank you!

I've looked into heating assistance, but if I remember correctly, I'm just a smidge over the income limit. Ugh.

[ndrosen]

You definitely have my sympathy. I often wear a coat or sweater when sitting at my desk at work, because the office can be cold (moving around is OK, but I’m cold just sitting there). And I remember setting the thermostat low as a graduate student, and wearing my winter coat while trying to do physics, but I was forty years younger then.