Friday, July 09, 2004

Home non-heating

I'm really going to have to do something about the non-heating situation at home. It's really quite chilly when it hasn't been raining (and often quite chilly when it has).

I have a 'character' home; it's almost one hundred years old, and it's design is not conducive to an evening of warmth and fluffy comfort.

For example, my kitchen is a lean-to (this means it was built onto the house some time after the house itself was completed), which means that the floor is on a slightly different level from the room next to it. It also means that it has no ceiling space which could have accomodated some nice, cosy blocks of insulation.

The Victorian (I think) house design was meant for sun-avoiding Victorian English people, which means they've cleverly arranged the windows in such a way that very little sun enters the house. I'm sure this is why, in the Winter, it is often colder inside the house than it is outside (in the frost!).

Like most staunch Kiwis, I have refused to consider installing central heating. Central heating is for softies and rich folk. Perhaps if electricity or gas were available cheaply, and the cost of installing central heating were lower, I would do it. Perhaps if I read a refereed scientific study which confirmed that New Zealand winters were indeed just as numbingly cold as those in Edinburgh, I could do it without feeling like a big softie.

So I get by on a 7-fin oil column heater in the lounge/kitchen. Notice I said lounge/kitchen, not lounge - remember that the kitchen bit is uninsulated, so that heat's going to go kitchen-wards and sky-wards.

Also, the boy's a smoker, and while he's considerate enough to smoke outside he isn't considerate enough to close the door behind him. He smokes in the kitchen doorway, which leads out into the cold, wild yonder (my backyard).

I've tried to think of a solution to this problem:
1. build a false ceiling to house the insulation (this leaves about seven feet of head space from the floor)
2. get assertive and close the door behind him every time the boy goes out for a smoke
3. Get a much, much bigger heater - or an outdoor heater even - for the lounge/kitchen
4. get used to walking around with an alpine sleeping bag on my back
5. move to a newer, more energy-efficient home (but I like my house, it's my first and only home-of-my-own; besides, I'm not ready for the stress of house-hunting again - it's only been thirteen years)

Help!

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