Thursday, November 20, 2008

Hunkering down

Winter is upon us. And while living in an underground house provides some protection against the cold, we're not completely immune to the weather. Even with a sweater is can be a little chilly here unless we crank up the heaters. But our electric bills seem to skyrocket this time of year so we're doing something about it. We've bought two insulating drapes to put over the large windows in our living room. We close them at night to keep the heat in. We've also did the old plastic insulation over the kitchen door and used weather striping to keep out drafts.

I don't know if it will help keep the bills down, but it's something. When the house was built there were no energy efficient windows to speak of. I wonder how much replacing them would cost. Probably and arm and a leg. And another leg.

And a pinky.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The problem is that you are using resistive electric heat, which is expensive to run, but cheap and easy to install.

It might be possible to install an electric heat pump with one or more units in the house with no ducting to take the bulk of the load. (bonus air conditioning)

There are other options, but none are as pretty.

It would be a huge project, but radiant hot water is comfy and can be run from propane and/or wood...