Need . . . more . . . blankets

[jhetley]

Have seen the local squirrel legions running along with dried leaves and grass clenched in their little rodent jaws, preparing the winter lodge.  And their fur grows fluffier, their tails more luxuriant.

Me, I just taped another interior plastic sheet over a window, this one in the little nook off the living room that houses my radios and some bookshelves.  That's a north window, large, and probably good for a dozen gallons of #2 fuel oil all by itself.  And we never move the shade on it, anyway.

That's the problem with interior plastic -- you have to have a window you can set the shade and leave it.  Most of ours, we want to be able to open and close.  But exterior plastic, you're sealing moisture in.  I can see the frost on our neighbor's storm windows already.  Always put the tightest seal on the moist, warm side of the wall . . .

There's your winter wisdom for the day.  Free, even.  North Woods survival at its finest.

Comments

[wolfette]

from your descriptions of Maine winters, I'm surprised you don't have double - or even triple - glazing.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Well, this is a wood-frame house built about 1850. Little niceties like central heat, electric wiring, and plumbing came later. Insulation, later still. We have single-glazed windows with exterior combination storm-windows over most of them. These interior plastic sheet additions give us effectively triple-glazed on most of the north windows.

This is why we wear several layers of sweaters in the winter . . .

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I remember living in the Great Frozen North and putting plastic on all the windows when the cold weather hit ... and then living all winter without a real view of the outdoors unless we were in it.

Bleah. One more thing I don't miss...

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

This isn't the cloudy Visqueen polyethylene that you are probably remembering, it's a thin heat-shrink sheet so clear I keep bumping my nose on it when I go to look outside. Not any worse than the wrinkled dirty glass it is covering.

But still a nuisance.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Visqueen was what we used. Sometimes with curtains made of cut-up Army blankets to further cut the cold. It was like wintering in a cave. Good to know that's changed!

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Caves are warmer . . .