Keeping Warm

[Edwin]

Most people in the Philippines don't have to worry about keeping warm. Usually the opposite is true; they have to try to keep cool. That is the same for the Southern USA. We burn pellets in a pellet stove to keep our house warm. They do cost money, so I try to burn a minimum amount. We have a wood kitchen cookstove, and having a fire in that helps keep the house warmer. We have a limited amout of fir firewood. I have to split it in sizes that the wood kitchen cook stove will handle. Then I have some wood from a filbert nut tree that is burn also. I am going out to cut a couple of boxes full and that will last all day, and maybe just a little tomorrow moring. We will be gone to the birthday celebration much of today, so a couple of boxes of the wood will more than last. We have to have heat to keep from having damage in the house due to freezing!

[HappyDave]

I just came back in from walking the dog in 9" of snow. For warmth, I have electric wall board heaters to get the room up to temp, then use 20,000-BTU gas heaters in each room to maintain it. I have the house zoned off into two zones and it is rare that I would need it all heated at the same time.

I have a wood fire, but it is more used as a visual pleasure than for heating although it is designed to circulate the heated air with silent fans and ducting behind it. I am too lazy to chop the wood and clean it out each day. I have a dead tree (natural attrition) supply on my property to keep me in firewood for a long time to come. Too lazy to chain saw it although I have two chains saws. LOL

I wear SuperWool socks and snow-boots inside and out. I have some fleece lined jeans but have not had to wear them so far this year. I am not one that cares about the floors and carpets. Unless caked with mud, no boots are discarded at the door. My house is a home and meant for living comfort and not rules about fastidious cleanliness. Water dries and dried light mud vacuums up easily.

I have an electric mattress heating pad that I turn on an hour before going to bed so the bed is nice and toasty to slide between the sheets. I turn it off when I get into bed as I find the 60-F temp (electric) I keep the room and my body heat is more than enough during the night.

Right now after coming in, my toes were a little cold but the dog is under the desk sleeping on my boot-toes and my toes are warming fast.

[Edwin]

We can have snow here anywhere from 2 to 5 feet depending on the winter. Out on the road it can drift really deep, depending on the amount of snow on the ground and the wind. I don't require the house to be very warm, but Carol gets colder than I do. We supplement with the wood heat. Carol had an electric blanket that is not really warm, but warm enough so that she is not miserable. I only have a few warm blankets to sleep under, and then the dog sleeps with me, so when he is cold, or thinks I am cold he crawls under the covers and suggles with me, and it works. I double sock, and wear my summer boots until the snow gets more than an inch deep. Then I have some mickey boots (military) made for jumping out of airplanes, so they have an air bladder in them that can be filled with air to cushion the impact with the ground. They keep my feet perfectly warm without them gettting too hot, and that works. I have already walked through snow, but we have had warming trends twice that melted all of our snow off. We will get real winter within the next few days, and then we will have it for 3 months or so.

[HappyDave]

I am not a fan of rugging up when inside. The home is my castle and I like my castle temp to be just right. I don't like waste and that's why I have the place in two zones for heating and cooling. I like to wear the same clothes inside the house year round. Same for blankets on the bed. We are here in life on a one-shot pass so we may as well be comfortable.

In Summer it can get up in the low hundreds outside and above eighty inside. I installed air conditioning for each zone too. Because of the Summer low humidity I could have a swamp cooler but I hate them they get smelly and musty, they leak, rust etc. The cost of electricity being around two-bucks a day to run the air, I am a happy camper, er make the home-dweller.

[Edwin]

What happens to me also when I am going for my walk I don't always know exactly how to dress. I had a old coat that I could hang on a fence post because no one else would want it. Now I have a nicer coat, even though I got it from the Goodwill Industries, used, for very little money, but it is a nice and I don't want anyone to see it on the post and want it. Yesterday it was so warm I didn't take my scarf or ear muffs and before I got back I wished would have taken both of them. Today I took them all, but I almost wished I would not have worn my glasses as they steam/fog up when I have to cover my face with my scarf because it is so cold. But it was not that cold, so I was okay. For the first little while my glasses were steaming/fogging as I had my face covered for a while. I also sweat a little while walking, so after I finish and come in the house I feel cold because of evaporating perspiration.

[Edwin]

I am learning that keeping warm for different people means different things. Our daughter is with us now after coming out of a bad relationship with a husband she had been with for either 2 or 3 years; I've lost track. Anyway in the house where she was before she came here lived a 90 year old guy that my Mom's brother actually rodeoed with when they were young. He owns a rodeo arena where they often had rodeos in the past, and some of us have pictures of past rodeos in that arena. Anyway this guy has poor circulation and he wants the house hotter than most other people can stand it. Our daughter had to go to the bedroom to escape the heat. He burned what should have been his winter wood in a few weeks, when it really was cold outside, but he got more wood, so it was okay. Our daughter coming out of that hot house feels cold all the time at our house, and at the same time we feel too hot! We are adjusting to it, though, Carol and I and our daughter. Carol's brother who has lived in the Philippines for 12 years now, spent so many years working and living in warm places in the world, that when he comes to our area of the country he is forever cold, unless he comes in July or August. When he is here he says that he can't wait to get back to the Philippines where it is warm!

[red]

Not all has to keep cool, in our area there maybe times we need to keep warm. I remember my husband wearing t shirt on porch while i have to stay indoor because its cold. He said "what! its good weather here, cool." The he kept the fan on because its hot and I was struggling the cold. Too bad for me esp i have rhinitis allergy.

[Edwin]

Yes, Red, our brother-in-law who has lived in the Philippines for 12 years, and actually he lived in that part of the world for many years before that, and he would always be cold when he would come to our part of the country, even when we were plenty warm enough. His filipina wife was the same way probably because of always living in a very warm environment. She never came to this country only for short visits with him, so she never got acclimated to this weather.

This is kind of funny, because I am temperature insensitive. It can get very cold to where everyone else is very uncomfortable, and I am still comfortably warm until it gets really cold, or I have been exposed to it for too long a period of time. I am the same way about heat. I am fine when everyone else is too warm. So it has to get very warm or very cold before I notice it. A couple of years ago the airconditioning quit working in our car. I was fine with it, but Carol was very miserable, so I took it in and got it fixed, and now it has worked for a couple of summers. In the summer she wants the airconditioner to drop the temperature to the point that she would be freezing if it were winter. Then of course she wants the house heated a lot warmer than she wants to car in the summer time. When we are in the car, and she wants the temperature to be about 65 degrees Farenheight, I tell her to just wait for winter, and it will be very easy to have the house at that temperature, but during the winter she wants the house warmer than that. Well, now that it is February our coldest weather and our most severe storms should be finished, but we have not had the snow that we usually get this winter. We did have some very cold air temperatures, and some winds, although the wind did not blow very hard this winter.

Other things can have an effect on how cold you feel, like the moisture content in the air, the wind speed, and how well your house is insulated. I found this winter that I needed 3 shirts and a tee shirt to stay warm while walking, but before I finished my walk I was sweating, so when I came in the house I changed my shirts, putting on dry ones. Otherwise I would get cold from evaporating sweat off my skin. I did get cold from that a few times before figuring that out!

[Edwin]

This is the time of the year that we can expect spring coming, but yet it can still be winter. This year we did not have any severe winter weather to speak of. Our snow fall and snow level was way down. We had very little drifting snow, only 3 feet or so for a few days, but nothing compared with what we usually get. We did have a little cold air temperatures, but nothing that was extreme, unless you consider -15 Celcius extreme, and we don't consider that extreme. We did have some wind, which make walking either miserable or impossible, and I just did not walk if I was afraid I would be too cold, because the wind drives the cold right in, and it is not work that risk. We didn't have any hard winds at high speeds, but this is the time for spring to start coming, so we will see what happens. As the ground thaws out we will get some mud, and hopefully that process will go quickly, so that we don't have trouble miring down trying to drive the car. Now we will see what spring and summer holds for us.

[Edwin]

Well, it is still getting fairly cold most of the time at night. It is a little below where it freezes ice on the water, but in the daytime, especially in the afternoon, it has been getting above freezing. It has been 0 to -6 Celcius during the night, with some wind part of the time, which makes it really difficult to keep the house warm. It has been 0 to 6 Celcius during the daytime lately. During my 2 hour walks with the doggies, I have gone to wearing my summer ball cap, and no gloves, as well as a very light jacket. I am always glad to see the warmer weather coming, although I don't mind the cold at all. I just really bundle up, especially if the wind is blowing, and if it is too miserable then I skip my walk, which I have done a few times this winter. It is not worth risking my health or my life to go for a walk, as much as I want to do that each time. I am still wearing my snow boots, because from here to the country road we have mud and snow. I walk on the snow to keep my feet out of the mud! When I get to the county road where I do most of my walking, the ground conditions now are wonderful for walking. The German Pincher is having more fun as there are hundreds of small birds on the ground, and he thinks that he can catch them! Good luck, Rand! He can't but he sure tries. He is really tired when we get back!