03071 Keeping Warm in the Winter

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home. — Edith Sitwell

This is the first in a series of chapters on practical energy conservation. Some things will be repeated several times over the several chapters. That repetition should suggest something about the importance. You can use this as practice to note the beneficial connections among the various strategies, techniques, and tools of energy conservation.

Energy conservation is critical because the days of cheap energy are history. These days we're paying more money for less comfort.

Or you can work smart and design better to use less energy and spend less money for it. Smart work means more money in your pocket for other things you want or need.

Start with believing in yourself. You are not a helpless prisoner of giant energy corporations. You can take control and arrange your life so that you spend LESS money on energy. You have to actually rise up and do these things though. Magical wishing won’t cut your utility bills by one small coin. Procrastination is the thief of time and that’s a big problem when it comes to living more sustainably.

Get used to not being as toasty sweating warm in the winter as you’d like. If it’s winter and you’re running the heating system so hot that you can sit around in short-shorts, sandals, and a tank top, STOP that! You have an excessive sense of entitlement to all the energy you care to burn.

Dial down that thermostat more. Unplug the heater more. You live in a house, not a sauna!

Bundle up your body! Dress for the season indoors. Wear loose layers of clothes. Start with a layer of wicking underwear such as is discussed in 03061. Clean clothes keep you warm better than dirty clothes. Don’t forget a hat, even indoors & in bed! Put blankets and quilts on sofas and chairs, so people can bundle up while they sit. If the floors are bare, put down area rugs. Snuggle! That’s what winter is for!

When you go outside, keep dry. Wet clothing loses its ability to insulate, and can suck heat right out of you. Stay out of the wind as much as possible.

Heat less of your house. Zone heating is a primary energy sustainability design strategy. Only heat rooms when occupied by people. It is easier to keep a room warm when several people are inside it, than when there is only one. Remember this especially if a power failure cuts off your heat during the winter.

Fill your house with more people or move in with someone else. As the good times are go bye-bye, the economic situation goes from bad to worse. The sooner we adapt, the easier it will be. Larger households are better able to get by in these tough times. More people in the house mean more income and that helps pay utility bills. Rent rooms to friends and relatives or work with programs that help people find additional roommates.

If you are low income . . . Your local utility, government, or a charity may have a free weatherization program. Search for information and if you qualify for low income assistance, get in the waiting line for help with things like insulation, plastic for windows, caulk, repairs, etc.

Heat always moves to cold. Next to turning down your thermostat and dressing for the season indoors . . . stopping drafts is the MOST IMPORTANT THING you can do to reduce your winter heating bill. A draft is a place where heat leaks out of your house.

Use a stick of burning incense to find the drafts in your home. It’s best to do this on a windy day. Look around doors, windows, light switches, places where pipes enter your house, electrical sockets, and any cracks in walls. Hold the incense stick close to wherever you want to check and see if the smoke rises slowly or blows one way or the other. If it’s blown around, you have a leak. Stop that leak or your heat will leak out of your house and you will end up cold.

Caulk is cheap. Use caulk to close up seams and cracks where you find drafts. If there are larger openings, fill them with newspaper and plastic, a board, some dry wall, or use cans of spray foam to plug the cracks. We used 90 tubes of caulk and 20 cans of foam to do our house, which has about 1500 square feet. Read the book Insulate and Weatherize, from Taunton Press, and follow its recommendations literally. You can find it at your library.

If your windows are drafty, put plastic over them. Yes, plastic is always a problem but so are leaky houses. Use a staple gun to attach the plastic to the window frame. Put narrow strips of wood around the window frame to hold the plastic securely in place. If your windows are really drafty, do this on the inside too. Don’t just use a staple gun. Put the wood strips in place too. If you don’t use the strips of wood, the plastic won’t work as well as an air seal.

Get Free Heat From the Sun! Whenever the sun shines through your windows, open up their curtains or blinds and let the sun shine in and fill your house with warmth.

Fill empty two-liter bottles with water, put some food coloring in the water so they look dark (mixing several colors like red, blue, and orange usually turns the water dark). Put them in the sun so they soak up the heat. Later they will radiate that heat and help you stay warm. More solar water bottles are better than less! If you don’t have food coloring, paint the outside of the bottles black.

Increase the heat coming through a window by placing a piece of cardboard covered with aluminum foil on one side outside to reflect light into the window. You could duct-tape some of those reflective auto sun shades together and use them to reflect light inside the window. This reflector starts at the bottom edge of the window, so for most houses it won’t actually be on the ground. To keep it from blowing away, brace it with something or lay it on something and duct-tape it. Milk crates and boxes are good for this. Put some weight in them so they don’t blow away.

Cover up your windows and doors when the sun does not shine through them. Use layers of blankets, quilts and curtains or put up window shades you make out of rigid board insulation. You could duct tape reflective auto sunshades together to cover you’re your windows, and sandwich them between blankets to help you keep your warmth inside and the cold outside.

The curtains or blankets covering your windows need to go all the way to the floor and you need a cornice board or valence at the top.

A cornice board is a box attached to the wall that hides the top of the curtain and the curtain rod. A valence is the same thing, only made with fabric. If you don’t do something like this, air that hits the window will cool and fall to the floor. That falling wind current will draw additional air behind the curtain against the window glass at the top where it cools, falls, and the cycle continues. You break that cycle by interrupting it at either end. This is the reason why curtains have traditionally been “full length,” going all the way from the windows to the floor.

The best situation is to have both — let the curtains fall to the floor and put a cornice board or valence up top. If you are a renter and don’t have cornice boards handy (they aren’t common these days), tack a blanket or quilt to the wall just above the top of the window, and drape it over your window curtains/quilts so it covers all of the top of the curtain and its rod. This creates the same effect as a cornice board only with fabric. That’s cheaper and its portable too. Of course, cornice boards are portable. If you install them and then you move, you can take them with you when you leave.

Insulating your walls. If you don't have good insulation in your walls and can't afford to install some. . . Hang layers of sheets, quilts, and blankets on walls to insulate the room. Run curtain rods close to the ceiling along the walls and use those to hang sheets or blankets against the walls. Insulate walls with bookcases or stacks of newspapers.

For walls and windows, several layers or curtains and hangings are better than one or two. Go the extra mile in covering up your windows. You’ll be glad you did.

Stack boxes of Styrofoam against exterior walls. Ask your friends to save all the Styrofoam packing peanuts they get for you. Shred Styrofoam cups and use blocks of Styrofoam. Cover the boxes with cloth hangings for aesthetics. Styrofoam has an R-value of about 3.8 per inch so a 12 inch deep box in your attic or against a wall is R-45 which is pretty good insulation. When you move, take your insulation with you. Styrofoam is a fire hazard. You can lessen that somewhat by lining the inside of the boxes with aluminum foil.

If you have an uninsulated attic (or a not-insulated-very-well attic) put boxes of Styrofoam on the floor of the attic. Another attic possibility is cardboard, which has an R-value of 3-4 per inch. Stacks of cardboard can insulate attics and walls.

At Night . . . Turn the thermostat down or the heater off and pile on the blankets. Dress warmly for bed in sweat pants and shirt, socks, and maybe even a cap (depending on how cold it will get and how low you set the thermostat). Take a hot water bottle to bed with you.

Make a Canopy Bed! Put a frame over a bed and hang sheets and quilts over the top and the sides to make an old-fashioned canopy bed. Or pitch a tent over your bed or a couch. This creates a smaller space and protects you from cold drafts in the night so you can stay warmer.

Don’t pour heat down the drain! When you take a shower, put the stopper in the tub. Let the water cool before draining. Let your hot cooking water cool first. This adds humidity & heat to the inside of your house that would otherwise go down the drain.

Air dry freshly-washed clothes inside the house.

Floors. If you have bare floors, put down area rugs. You can layer these for even more insulating effect. Area rugs can be placed on top of carpet to increase the insulating effect.

Food helps you keep warm. Eat good meals with lots of carbohydrates for fuel. Winter is a great time for warming and nourishing soups and casseroles. Drink plenty of fluids.

Hot Water. Use less of it by installing low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators. This can cut your hot water requirements as much as 50%, saving 14,000 gallons of hot water/year/family of four. Low-flow showerheads go for as little as $10-$12 at a home supply store and they are easy to install yourself. You’ll never know it’s not a full-flow shower head. It will drench you nicely in the shower. If you rent, change out the existing full-flow showerhead for the low-flow. If you move, take your low-flow with you and reinstall the full-flow.

Insulate the hot water pipes. Insulate the hot water tank with a special "jacket" made for the purpose (typically $10-20 at home supply stores), or wrap it with insulating materials. If it is a gas water heater, do not cover the top or the bottom, the thermostat, or the burner compartment of the tank. Lower the temperature on the water heater to 120 degrees.

Take quick showers, not baths.

To make a simple solar water heater: get a 5-gallon plastic bucket with a tight fitting lid, and paint it black. Fill with water, put the lid on tight, and set it in the sunlight for a few hours. Voila, easy and free five gallons of hot water. Use as hot water, or let it slowly cool inside your house and add to the warmth inside.

Lights. Your grandfather was right: Turn off the lights when you're not using them. Compact florescent bulbs work in regular light fixtures, last longer and use much less energy. They cost a little more, while they use 75% less energy than regular bulbs and last for thousands of hours. Use less electrical lighting during the day when natural light is available. Use more "task lighting" — smaller lights focused on what tasks.. LED lights use even less energy although they cost more than the CFLs.

Washing Clothes. Wash clothes in cold water. Wait until you have a full load, don't do small loads. Instead of using the dryer, air dry your clothes outside on a line. Get some racks to use for indoor clothes drying when its raining or too cold outside, or put clothing on hangers to dry.

If you go to a laundromat, there might be a sign that says “Free Drying.” Don’t believe it. The prices to wash at such laundromats are always higher than they are at the laundromats where customers pay for drying. At a commercial laundromat, the customer pays to wash and the customer pays to dry. As a sales gimmick, some laundromats combine that into one transaction — the price to wash includes the price to dry — so there is no such thing as a free dryer in a laundromat.

A better choice is to wash the clothes at the laundry, bring them home and hang them on the line to dry.

Dishwasher. What is the best thing to do with your dishwasher? Disconnect it and sell it for scrap metal. Don't buy into the culture of death idea that there is something wrong with household tasks like washing dishes because they are "women's work." Make washing dishes a family or household activity — when many hands pitch in, the work is less tedious and gets done faster. At minimum, don’t use the heat dry cycle. There is a considerable amount of propaganda out there justifying the dishwasher as a “green” lifestyle choice. I remain suspicious of all it. Too much of it sounds like greenwash to me.

Small batteries. Everyone should minimize their reliance on small batteries because they are noxious items to manufacture and to dispose of. If you must use small batteries, always use rechargeable batteries. For $30 or less, you can get a solar powered battery charger and some rechargeable batteries and go solar. Or you could use a charger that runs on household current. Small batteries are expensive — the fewer you have to buy, the more money you have for other things. A good source for inexpensive solar-powered small battery chargers is C. Crane Company (I receive no compensation for this recommendation; I am simply a satisfied customer and have not found anything like this elsewhere.)

http://www.ccrane.com/more-categories/batteries-chargers/solar-powered-battery-charger.aspx.

Gadgets and Ghost Loads. Many modern appliances and gadgets have "ghost loads.” They use power all the time, even when you think they're "off.” When an appliance isn't in use, turn it completely off. Unplug it if necessary — especially the television (which consumes lots of energy). The best choice is to plug them into an extension cord or power strip that has an on-off switch. Use the switch to turn the television or whatever off and on, and you will avoid wasting power via the "ghost loads" in the appliance. Be wary of bringing more electrical gadgets into your house and scrutinize what you already have. Do you really need all that stuff?

If you have a water bed, drain it and replace it with a regular bed. A waterbed heater can use as much electricity as a refrigerator. While you still have it, insulate it well during the day when it is winter or it will attempt to heat your whole house. Never use the television for "background noise" while you're doing something else; a radio consumes less power.

Computers. Don’t leave your computer equipment on 24/7. It is a myth that turning computers on and off is hard on your computer.

Work with your friends and neighbors to increase your safety, quality of life, and happiness. It’s easier to put plastic on your windows if you do it as a group. Get together with friends and family and do everyone’s windows. Go on a crusade against leaks.

This is the way we win the war against hard times and find happiness and contentment for ourselves and all we love. If we want more beauty and wisdom and justice and love, the place to start is to live beauty, wisdom, justice, and love in our own hearts and households. That requires learning to become energy conservative. We want to be liberal with our beauty, wisdom, justice and love. We need to be conservative with our human and fossil fuel energy.