Thursday, January 28, 2010

Winter Math

I didn't want to be negative and title this "Shiver," so you get the mathy title instead. :-)

Edited to Add: Talk about "redundant" blogging! Good thing I skipped that title, since I'd already used it for an earlier post on the same subject. Sorry about that, folks! I'll try not to repeat myself so much in the future. (sigh)

Before I begin: the heating in our older house is baseboard/oil and we have three thermostats, one for each level of the house (no heating in the basement, which does feel comfortable and is dry year round because of the furnace there).

K didn't re-program the thermostat after we got back home from Brazil yet and I got tired of fiddling with the "hold" button, having to press it for a long time before it would let me change the temperature. So I decided to simply bring the radiator space heater that we have (like the one pictured here from this brand) and turn it on in our study/school room which is where we are for most of the day and leave the rest of the house cold. I thought this would be a smart way to save money on the oil bill too. It's tough to use the bathroom and the other rooms of the house and at the end of the day I end up turning the heat up, but it's been working so far. We do have to dress warmer all the time, though.

So, here's the winter math in our house today:

Outdoors (corded thermometer sensor right outside the study window):
38.3 F/ 3.5 C

Inside of study:
68.4 F/20.2 C

Level 1 (right out the door of this room - family room):
55 F/12.7 C

Level 2 (kitchen, living & dining rooms):
56 F/ 13.3 C

Level 3 (bedrooms & upstairs baths):
57 F/ 13.8 C

(level 3 is slightly warmer because the heater goes on at 7:30 am so it's easier to get out of bed. We love sleeping in a chilly house and the boys have no problem wearing long blanket pajamas on top of cotton ones).

How high/low is the thermostat at your house?

3 comments:

kate said...

Ours is set at 19ºC during the day, and we turn it off at night. We also dress warmly (sweaters) inside the house, but I couldn't deal with it being as cold as yours is outside of the study. Though in the mornings it's usually down to around 15 or 16ºC and I let it go for quite awhile before turning on the heat.

Anjali said...

We are big energy wasters when it comes to heat. Our house is 70-72 during the day, and a little cooler at night.

I can't take being cold!

Oonie said...

Anjali, you can come play at our warm house anytime. We keep our heat high too but we have a well-zoned split level house so at least I can let the upstairs get cold and just heat the floor where we are.
You must get Twitter for the Oscars--I'll livetweet it with you! Too much venom out there for the political stuff for me though. But dresses? I'm all about it. Also? Tweeting Olympics. I'm looking forward to that too.