A Heater That Works
There are enough trees in New Haven for you to tell the leaves are turning, and it's pretty. It's also getting colder, and, as I've been anticipating since the summer, this will test my apartment's ability to keep the cold out.
It's a two-level apartment designed some decades back by an architect for his own bachelor living, so it's very cool — and there's that great deck on it — but it has all kinds of weird amenity issues, like a lack of electrical outlets in certain areas, and a surprising amount of useless storage space hidden away on one side of the upstairs level.
And early results about the heat/cold situation are not good. The windows are barely insulated at all, but okay, there are cheapskate shrink-wrap type products that can alleviate this. Harder to get around are the heat vents, which are just kooky. There's a giant one upstairs in the dining room space, and two in the small upstairs bathroom; but on the first level there's just a small one in my room and a small one in the bathroom.
One of my roommates doesn't have vents at all; I'm sure this isn't up to code. I'm encouraging her to get a space heater and dock the cost from rent. I should probably encourage her to get an expensive one, so it isn't noisy as hell and a fire hazard.
Anyway, when the heat comes on, the upstairs/downstairs temperature differential feels like about twenty degrees. And I don't want to know how much of that heat is immediately diffused out of the various skylights.
Might be buying some long underwear this year . . .
It's a two-level apartment designed some decades back by an architect for his own bachelor living, so it's very cool — and there's that great deck on it — but it has all kinds of weird amenity issues, like a lack of electrical outlets in certain areas, and a surprising amount of useless storage space hidden away on one side of the upstairs level.
And early results about the heat/cold situation are not good. The windows are barely insulated at all, but okay, there are cheapskate shrink-wrap type products that can alleviate this. Harder to get around are the heat vents, which are just kooky. There's a giant one upstairs in the dining room space, and two in the small upstairs bathroom; but on the first level there's just a small one in my room and a small one in the bathroom.
One of my roommates doesn't have vents at all; I'm sure this isn't up to code. I'm encouraging her to get a space heater and dock the cost from rent. I should probably encourage her to get an expensive one, so it isn't noisy as hell and a fire hazard.
Anyway, when the heat comes on, the upstairs/downstairs temperature differential feels like about twenty degrees. And I don't want to know how much of that heat is immediately diffused out of the various skylights.
Might be buying some long underwear this year . . .
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