Survival in Tough Times: There are more thrifty ways to make heat and stay warm. I'll visit some of those soon. For now, make sure that firewood isn't getting wet when it rains!
None of the methods in this column will solve all heating and cooling problems by themselves, but applying each when it's appropriate in season will contribute to our overall well being. All of these tips will apply when there's a need or a desire to turn off or minimize the use of furnaces and air conditioning units.
One of the key concepts bearing on many of the techniques listed here is the idea of the thermal cell. Warm air rises and cool air sinks. Take a bottle of tea or water out of the fridge on a warm day and let it sit on the counter for an hour. Open it and sip out of the top, and keep drinking. The first sips are warmer than the ones after it because the warmest liquid rises to the top. The coldest part sinks to the bottom. Drink a hot cup of tea or coffee, and the warmest is always on the top. When the top is cool enough to sip, what is below it is even cooler.
When we heat the air in a room, the warmest rises to the top unless we're disturbing it with a fan or with open windows. For this reason, the greatest heat loss is generally through ceilings. After all, that's where the warmest air is. It's warming the ceiling much more than the floor. To hold heat in a room, the first principle is to insulate above ceilings.
The second greatest heat loss after ceilings is around windows and doors, that is, through actual gaps to the outside. By caulking and applying weather seal products, this heat loss can be minimized. Caulking should go around the window frames, not around the sashes. Sashes should be weather sealed with foam, felt, or v-seal weather stripping. We want the windows to be functional when the weather changes. Updated vinyl window systems are usually sealed with a fuzzy weather strip that greatly reduces heat loss. Thermopane (double-glazed and airtight) windows bring a major reduction in direct heat loss through the glazing, but still allow solar warmth to come in. They cost more, but the advantage over traditional single-pane windows and storm windows is usually worth it.
If you are blessed with a two-story house, the loss of heat directly through windows and doors applies to you. Open stairways to the second floor facilitate heat loss in the winter time when it's a bad thing. They also facilitate heat loss in the summer time when it's a good thing. In the winter, stairways to the upper floor should be opened or closed as needed. If the stairway is open, heat produced on or for the lower floor will rise up the open stairway to replace the cooler air from the upper floor that will actually flow down the steps.
Houses built before central heating were meant to be opened up in the summer and closed off in the winter time. Opening upper doors and windows allowed heat to rise and escape in the summer, to be replaced by cooler air coming in to replace it from the lower, cooler parts of the house. This is why deciduous trees are a blessing in northern climates. In the summer, their leaves shade the ground and block the sun. They provide pools of cooler air that can be drawn into the house. In the winter with the leaves gone, they allow the sun to penetrate the windows into the interior of rooms on the sunny sides of the house, where it can be trapped and held for greater comfort. To keep the largest houses cooler in the summer, many had cupolas or functional attic windows. The doors to these upper spaces would be opened in the summer to allow the warmest air to vent out the top of a house like a chimney.
In the winter time, owners of larger houses closed off hallways and rooms that were not in use to conserve the heat that was produced in fireplaces and stoves. Well-designed older houses often had pocket doors along the lower hallways leading to the major rooms. Above these doors there sometimes remain brackets or the evidence of brackets for portieres, heavy drapes that held the heat in the downstairs rooms while making it easy to enter and exit the rooms without moving the heavy sliding doors. Hallways, often open to the upstairs rooms, usually remained cool and closed off. Bedrooms remained cooler than downstairs rooms. It was a real luxury to have heat from a fireplace or stove in upstairs rooms. Wash basins were designed to be bowl-shaped so the water in them would not crack the china when it froze. Wealthy homes had water or warm water delivered to the bedrooms in the morning. When central heating became available for older homes, one of the favorite ways to enjoy it was with hot water or steam radiators because these could be installed much more easily than the ducting required by gravity or forced-air furnaces.
Growing up, I noticed that my very old-fashioned grandparents always closed off the "front room" guest room and the living room in the winter time. The front room had two regular wood doors. One of these opened onto the living room. But the living room opened into the dining room through two large prairie-style French doors. These remained closed during the winter. That house had a coal-fired gravity furnace, with big ducts going to all the rooms in the one-story house, and with large return-air ducts draining cool air off the floors to flow to the lower part of the furnace. The flow of heat into the rooms could be regulated with dampers in the ducts and by the registers in each room. The bathroom was directly above the furnace in that house. When the damper and register to that room were open and there was a fire going in the furnace, that room got nice and toasty. The manly thing to do on cold mornings was to get up ahead of everyone else and build a fire in the furnace. My grandfather always did that. Within thirty minutes, there would be a pleasant warmth filling the rooms that were not closed off. In that way, my grandmother and anyone else in the house would not have to bear the chill during that half-hour warm-up spell. Peeping out from under covers in the closed-off front room when I heard my grandfather shake down the ashes, build a fire, and close the squeaky door on the firebox is a very pleasant memory.
Another manly memory for a small boy was to be allowed to help feed the fire. A 10x10 room next to the furnace was where the coal man put the soft coal into the basement through a coal chute. My grandfather always had kindling and some chunks of firewood nearby, used to start the fire. The coal went on top of the fire once begun. I was old enough to remember being allowed to put some small lumps of coal into the furnace with a short-handled scoop which always stood nearby, next to the long poker and the sledgehammer. That scoop is a treasured possession to this day.
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Fireplaces and stoves have dampers and draft controls
Fireplaces and stoves have dampers and draft controls. These are to allow smoke to escape, but to limit heat escape as much as possible. Fireplaces are not generally as efficient as stoves because there is little draft control. As the fire burns and when the fire goes, out, that flue is still drawing warmed air out of the house. If there's a wind to increase the draw up the chimney, it will pull even more heat out of the house. In the summer that can be good, but in the winter it makes for reduced efficiency and more fuel. Airtight stoves and airtight fireplace inserts are much better at keeping warmed air in the house rather than allowing it to escape up the chimney.
Speaking of fires, it's always a good idea to use dry fuel. If fuel is wet, heat must be used to drive out the moisture before the fuel will burn properly. Until it dries it combusts poorly, making for more smoke and less heat. Slow-burning fires produce more creosote in the chimney. At a past job where I provided the firewood to be used in an 18th-Century fireplace, the visitors were used to using poorly seasoned firewood that often sat under a dripping roof edge. When I arrived at that job I immediately began keeping the firewood out of the rain and under shelter where it would dry and season properly. The following winter a guest asked me if there wasn't some firewood around that wouldn't burn up so fast. I told him no, there wasn't. Not anymore. He gave me a look like I was weird and shuffled away. He wanted a fire without heat and without work. Perhaps I should have suggested that he soak some firewood in the tub before he put it on the fire. I've enjoyed telling the story ever since.
Keep that thermostat set pretty low. When you start to feel the chill, instead of turning it up, go to an alternate source of heat. Build a fire in the stove or bake something. If the furnace kicks on before you feel chilly, then there's no sense in having other heat. Put on a sweatshirt or a sweater. I wear khaki pants in the summertime because they're cooler. I switch to jeans or even insulated pants when the weather turns cold. They feel better outside and they feel better inside, too. If your home has a shoes-stay-at-the-door rule, then look into some thick socks or warmer house shoes or slippers. Inside, warm feet make all the difference. That's true outside, too. Outside, keeping the neck warm makes all the difference to me. Inside or out, day or night, keeping the head warm has to be an essential rule. In the classic poem The Night Before Christmas, you'll recall that Ma was in her kerchief and "I in my cap." I'd bet that room upstairs wasn't heated at all, and Pa was probably getting a little thin on top. Keep that head warm and the neck covered to assure a long winter's nap that's also snug.
There are more thrifty ways to make heat and stay warm. I'll visit some of those soon. For now, make sure that firewood isn't getting wet when it rains!
Dr. Bruce Smith (Inkwell, Hearth and Plow) is a retired professor of history and a lifelong observer of politics and world events. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to writing, he works as a caretaker and handyman. His non-fiction book The War Comes to Plum Street, about daily life in the 1930s and during World War II, may be ordered from Indiana University Press.
