Winterizing -Insulation

I visited the Victorian Farmhouse and read this post on winterizing. Those were the days. Described are various methods we also used in this house in the early days- straw bales around the foundations, plastic wrapped windows, etc. No-likey any of those useful, but awkward ways to keep warm.

Old houses are drafty, that is a given, but there is drafty and then there is frigid and that frigid part is hard to get used to. Forget about Laura Ingalls and her nostalgic recounting of snow drifting into her bedroom!

We have attended to lots of insulating and our house is a lot more comfortable for it. The best thing we did was gut the old kitchen to the walls and put insulation under the floor and in the wall cavities. I think the pipes in the crawl space are still wrapped with electric tape to keep from freezing, but mortaring the foundation helped, too. And we closed up the opening from the old cistern underneath the back-porch-kitchen. In a history sense I hated filling in the old cistern, but from a practical POV it was better than drafts, helpful rodent access, and mosquitoes in the dead of winter. That is not a task that even “old house” people see every day. Our main way of dealing with the modern need to insulate was to drill holes in the outside clapboard and blow in insulation. Not my favorite solution. Laying in fiberglass is much better, but that is only when you decide to fully renovate a room. All the holes get plugged with plastic disks that you paint along with the clapboard. We did this, because there really doesn’t seem any better solution, but purists won’t go for it. My dad did something similar but from the inside, You drill the holes in the plaster and blow in the insulation, then cap and plaster patch all those half-dollar size holes. It works. Tedious work to patch, but it works.

I have only one real solution for keeping warm in winter: get a wood stove. Still, lots of people won’t be happy with this, either… stoves must be fed, and that means wood supply, more dirt and dust, and ash cleanup. But there is nothing like radiant heat. I always wanted to utilize radiant heat floors, etc, but couldn’t rationalize the cost. But that is one way to go if you can’t see insulating the walls- but really- insulate the attic, because there is the source of lots of your heat loss.

Plus I like those little door draft-stops, you know the ones- they look like long rolls and you place them against the bottom of the door.

Windows- replace with insulated glass or get storms. If you have that cool wavy old-fashioned glass I can understand the desire to keep it. In my case boys who happened to break windows with alarming frequency soon did away with many of the original glass windows. I could never figure out how generations of people could conserve things until my kids came along….

I don’t like straw at the foundation… it does work, but it is a nuisance and attracts mice. ‘G’ says “The straw also makes a great mulch the following spring”, but I caveat: yes, I thought so too, until that was the source of my never-ending weed problem with quack grass and all its friends. Straw needs to be thoroughly composted, although heavy straw mulch is probably fine for outlying areas of the yard or in the veggie garden where you till every year, just don’t use it in your flower gardens. You were warned.

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