jessica
hi.
i want to be clear that these are ideas to save
on heating, not requests for maintenance. i've been here long enough to
draw some conclusions.
the way i see it is that the
basement is designed in such a way that it doesn't really matter what
the source of the heating is, it's going to be high. about 70% of the
basement is unheated, and the insulation is incomplete. so, there's
going to be tremendous heat loss unless the unit is better insulated.
i'm not talking about the windows, i'm just talking about the walls
bordering the unheated areas. if it's -10 outside the walls, and there's
cracks under the walls, that's just going to leak and leak and leak,
whether you put a furnace in here or not.
so,
insulating the walls (and the place where the walls hit the floors)
would be the first thing i'd do if i wanted to cut heating costs down
here.
second, i might want to look at putting stops on
the doors, as well. for the back door, it's just constant leakage.
again: if it's -10 outside the door, and there's a 2 inch crack under
the door, changing the source of the heating isn't really going to be
the factor that makes the big difference in costs. it's blocking the
drafts. with the front door, there's nothing to separate the cold coming
in through the entrance, so it's going to suck the heat out as well.
it's not realistic to put an extra door in, but putting a seal on the
front door would probably also be huge.
third, it might
be worth your while to run a vent from the furnace into the currently
unheated part of the basement. that would both reduce costs fighting the
draft into here and reduce costs fighting the draft into upstairs, and
any stacking moving the air up [which i'm sure must exist].
i've
had to turn the heat up a little, as the air in the unfinished part of
the basement has plummeted. if the insulation through the walls was
better, i'd be able to keep it at a lower level...
the landlord
Thanks,
I am concerned as you are....I will considered your suggestions and
will act on these as soon as I can with timing and financial recourses.
Right now I am not able to act on doors until spring. I want to put new
doors. Just keep warm the best you can. I will talk to you when I come
by.
jessica
as i'm sure you know, it's going to get freezing this week.
i've
crammed some towels in the cracks around the doors. it's obviously not
as good as a rubber seal (and that back door is especially, like, *not*
meant to keep out drafts), but i think it's at least a good experiment
to try to see if it really helps or not. logic suggests that if you can
feel a draft through a 2 inch crack up two sides of the door then
obstructing it any way at all should make at least some difference. that
said, i don't think towels are exactly the best at trapping heat,
either. but i'll let you know if it actually keeps the heat in a little
better; if it makes no difference, that indicates it's really dominantly
a wall issue.
basically, i think this place was
constructed with the assumption that the basement would be heated. just
consider the walk back to the fuse box. that's a perfect sink for cold
air, right. the only way it makes any sense to put a half-insulated wall
right there with a bedroom on the other side is if it's taken for
granted that the heat is on in the whole complex. otherwise, it's just a
structural nightmare: the unit is heating a cold air sink.
so, let's hope the towels make a noticeable difference and the doors can consequently provide a noticeable decrease in cost.
(pause)
hi.
i
don't want to bug you about this too much, i just want to update on the
effects after blocking the doors and turning the heat up a little.
it
seems to hold the heat in pretty well just about everywhere except the
second bedroom, so i think putting weather stripping around those doors
is a very good idea.
the second room has ceramic
baseboards, and the first room has wood baseboards. the walls are about
the same temperature in both rooms, so i think the walls are probably ok
but that the baseboards in the second room are leaking. now, i don't
want to jump to conclusions about conductivity because i think the
situation is complicated by various factors, i just want to point out
three observations:
1) the wood baseboards are closer
to the ground and forming a better seal. so, it seems like they're doing
what they're supposed to, while the ceramic ones are not.
2) the
ceramic baseboards in that room are much, much colder than they are
around the foundation. that is, the ceramic baseboards in the second
bedroom are very cold whereas the ceramic baseboards in the kitchen are
not so cold. so, there's exposure, there.
3) if you look around
the basement, you'll notice that most of the walls have these black,
plastic stoppers around them that form a seal to the ground. that black
plastic is missing on that wall. it's just paint.
i'd
have to *guess* that the cold ceramic is a symptom rather than a cause,
and that the causes of the draft are the missing plastic around the
outside and the incomplete seal on the inside.
it's of
course going to be a lot easier to run some plastic around the wall on
the outside than to replace the baseboards, so i'm just pointing that
out as a possible approach.
other than that, i think
the weatherstripping on the doors is the key good idea, and that the
walls themselves are actually not particularly drafty, excepting the
cold air moving in under the walls on the far side.
