Snug

[darkemeralds]

In what was by far the most painless home-improvement job I've ever experienced, the Clean Energy Works and GreenSavers contractors completely insulated my formerly-uninsulated house this past week.

November has been too mild so far to turn the heat on, but even so, I notice two distinct improvements already: when I wake up in the morning, my bedroom doesn't actually feel like the outdoors--there's a kind of snugness to it; and the place is quieter. Honestly, I didn't realize how hollow and echoey it was around here till all the hollows were fluffified.

The contractors found crevices and gaps to insulate that I didn't even know were there. They blew loose insulation into exterior walls from below by putting holes into the sill, rather than tearing up my interior walls. There's only a little bit of touch-up painting to do.

They replaced some old wiring in the attic crawl space so they could insulate up there. They put fancy sealing strips around the drafty mudroom door. They plugged the gaps around electrical sockets and light switches. I mean, the place is snug.

My little house is so happy! And so am I!

Comments

[silk_knickers]

That's awesome! And just in time for winter. My biggest complaint about my apartment, and renting in general, is my inability to properly insulate this turn-of-the-other-century building (which could definitely use some better insulation; my gas bills last winter were absurdly high.) In the meantime, there is the as-seen-on-TV "double-sided draft guard" under two of the doors to the outside that helps a teeny tiny bit.

[darkemeralds]

Apartment life is always rife with problems of non-investment, and so was life in this house for a lot of years. Stuffing things under door cracks was something I've done a lot of, and I also recall some really labor-intensive Saran-wrap-style window shields involving double-sided tape and a blow dryer to shrink-fit the clear film (and YEARS of unremovable double-sided sticky tape on window frames).

I can't say I'm looking forward to lower heating bills, because the cost of this upgrade is being added as a loan payment to my electric bill from now until eternity, but I imagine the retrofit will let me cut down on the number of hugely wasteful hot-bath-just-to-get-warm events I'll indulge in in the coming winters.

[ranunculus]

I -so- empathize with the hot bath thing!

[darkemeralds]

I'm sort of obsessed with the miracle of hot running water. It might be the single most important technology humanity has ever devised.

Perhaps I exaggerate...

[ranunculus]

No exaggeration!

Hmmm. Cooked food. But I digress.

[darkemeralds]

Cooking! The external stomach that expanded homo sapiens' diet by leaps and bounds!

I am so into reading What Technology Wants right now that every thought and idea seems to lead back to questions of human technology. Kevin Kelly, the author, uses the construct of cooking as a technology that gave us an external stomach, a form of pre-digestion, that took food we couldn't otherwise have digested or extracted nutrients from and made new sources of calories, and therefore of longevity (and therefore of ideas, and therefore of more technology).

It's a really interesting book.

[ranunculus]

Might be worth figuring out cost of insulating v.s. cost of heating. Then contact Landlord and ask for it to be done, and offer to pay part, or all if they won't budge.