Even down here in the Florida Keys we're suffering from the icy breath of global cooling. Why, just this morning it was so cold that I actually wore a t-shirt for an entire half an hour before yanking it off. It was that cold. Brr-rr! Those kinds of memories don't fade easily.
So, since everyone else is having fun making winter-related posts, I thought I'd port over an article on my own site that might have a few useful tips in it.
As far as my credentials go, well, I lived in that wimpy New England for three years and breezed through those balmy -10º days without a care. But living in the great state of New England (and its adorable principalities) was nothing compared to living in what's generally regarded as the coldest hell on earth.
A northern California coastal fog belt.
And surviving.
It all starts with the feet. Keep the feet warm and the entire body will follow.
Outdoor
I used to go to Candlestick Park to watch S.F. Giants games, and what an ice box that baby was. When the fog rolled in, it was pretty miserable. Your body might be okay, just from standing and yelling and such, but your feet would be a couple of frozen blocks of ice.
Enter the electric socks.
Like I suppose most people, I figured they'd have some kind of thin wire mesh running throughout the entire sock, keeping the whole thing warm, like an electric blanket.
Not even close.
Instead, there's this tiny, flat strip of metal that runs under the curve of the toes, woven into the mesh of the socks. It was simply amazing how warm my feet got. The next thing I'd know, my feet would feel like they were ready to melt off and I'd be frantically clutching at the OFF switch.
And, on the subject, don't forget the electric gloves.
Indoor
If you're sitting in a chilly room, keeping your feet warm will go a long way to fending off the shivers. For that, I'd recommend a heating pad placed under the rug, or on top of the rug with a small piece of carpet placed over it.
One thing to note is that they get way too warm for indoor household use, so they really need to be on a dimmer. But it can't be a regular light dimmer as the pad draws too much juice. It has to be a 'motor control' dimmer, like used with ceiling fans.
In my case, I bought this dual unit at the hardware store:
That allows me to put the desk lamps (two 25-watters) on the dimmer side and the heating pad on the other. I crank it up to 'Max' until it gets warm, then knock it down to 'Lo'.
Fireplaces
Those pipe units that blow hot air out into the room are a real winner. They say that 90% of a fireplace's heat goes up the chimney, and I can believe it. I once lived in a small, drafty cabin with a Danish fireplace that barely put out heat even at full roar. So I bought a unit of pipes that acted as the grate for the wood and had a hair dryer-type blower hooked up to it, shoving the hot air in the pipes out into the room. It was one of those things that felt like it paid for itself in the first ten minutes.
The pic to the right isn't quite what I had (mine had an actual hair-dryer-type blower off to the side), but it's the same idea.
Also on the subject, if you have wood to burn, the most heat-producing thing I've ever witnessed outside of an industrial furnace was one of these babies:
Portable Room Heaters
I've tried the various types of space heaters and have found that the regular ol' type with the glowing red heating element and a fan works the best. The oil-filled types are certainly economical, but they don't heat a room worth beans because they're not moving the air around. The quartz and ceramic heaters are also economical, but only heat the side of you facing them. If you really want to feel comfortable, you need something that produces raw heat and a fan to mix it with the room air.
And it's certainly cheaper to heat a room than a house, so if you spend 99% of your time in the computer room, it'd make more sense to buy a space heater and keep the rest of the house just warm enough so that your hand doesn't freeze to the refrigerator door handle when you make a mad dash to the kitchen.
House Heaters
The house heater is putting out X number of BTUs, so if you're dumping some of it into an unused room, that's less for the rest of the house. If the vent doesn't have an 'open/closed' lever, don't hesitate to take measures. Either tape a piece of cardboard over the opening, or remove it and stuff something in the pipe.
The flip side is that you can go too far, so what's coming out of the open vents is so strong that it actually creates an uncomfortable draft in the room. There's a balance to be found between the two.
Drafts
There's a big difference between "drafts" and "ventilation". I hate drafts, but I like fresh air, so I usually have a window or two cracked even in the dead of winter, but it's never drafty in the room because of other factors. The best trick is to have tight-fitting mini-blinds over the window, so the incoming air is 'diffused' by the blinds, rather than coming in as a stream of cold air.
When it comes to sealing household drafts, like under doors and around windows, most things can be sealed with a visit to the hardware store:
— Sliding wooden windows in older houses can sometimes leak like a sieve, but you can use tape to seal up the edges during the coldest months. Most types of tape will leave a bit of residue behind when you peel it off, but electrical tape probably least of all. If you don't like the idea of ugly black tape around your windows, the marine stores usually sell white electrical tape.
— When it comes to gaps under doors, there are all kinds of 'door sweeps' on the market, from rubber to felt to a hinged type that lowers as the door is closed. And in severe cases you could always raise the threshold (the piece on the floor the door closes over), although then people would trip over it, so if the gap is really that bad, it'd be best just to replace the door.
— Chimneys are also a major source of drafts. If the draft plate in the chimney doesn't close tightly, the next step would be tight-fitting glass fireplace doors that could be opened when in use. You could conceivably stuff an old blanket up the flue, but you'd have to promise to clip a string to it with a big note attached to the bottom saying "REMOVE ME FIRST!"
Bedding
While people differ dramatically in regards to how they like the room kept overnight, I think most people sleep best in a cool room but with warm feet. What I'll do is pull a normal blanket over me, but drape an extra blanket across my feet. If it gets extra-cold overnight, it's easy to grab the extra blanket and pull it over you.
I'm also a big fan of the electric blanket, setting it to 'Cremate' fifteen minutes before jumping in the sack. If your normal blanket feels right but your feet are still chilly, use the electric blanket over just the feet.
It's Not Just The Room Air
I lived for years in a cold northern California coastal fog belt where I fought the cold for 10 months out of the year. At one point I made an interesting discovery.
What people tend to do is wake up or arrive home to a cold house, set the thermostat to their usual temperature and wait for it to feel comfortable. The thermostat gets to that temperature and shuts off the heater. Then the next few hours are spent with the place barely feeling like it's warm as the furniture and walls and floor cool off the freshly-heated air and the heater cycles back on, over and over again until everything's finally up to room temperature.
I found that if I just kind of suffered for a while and let the place get extra-warm, that all of the surrounding material items would warm up and the house heater and I didn't feel like we were 'fighting' the cold for the next few hours. Nor do I think it really cost much more, as, while it used up more juice heating the house up in the first place, the heater didn't cycle on near as much afterward.
Keeping It In Perspective Dept.
And the next time you're thinking of complaining about the cold...
