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Monday, January 26, 2009

Surviving A Cold Spurt Down South

I live in the south, South Carolina to be exact. They DO NOT build houses in an energy efficient manner down here. I am basically living in a large, expensive card board box...complete with all the drafts.

We have had a pretty good cold spell down here and it has really opened my eyes to how poorly they build houses down here. Here are some good examples.

I can stand three rooms from my front door and SEE daylight all around my front door.

My hot water heater is in an UNHEATED garage - I mean how damn stupid are you to do something like that....I mean AT LEAST insulate that thing with a jacket!

When I stand or sit next to a window I can feel the cold air seeping in.

My outside faucets don't have a shutoff inside the house! I can't drain them for the winter so the pipes freeze everytime it dips below 32 degrees. This is just moronic in my opinion. When I lived up north the shutoffs where in the heated portion of the house so cold exposed pipe could be drained in the winter.

My siding is right over the house wrap...NO DAMN styrofoam insulation at all!!!

I could go on but to continue would just piss me off even more and ruin my day...SO here is what I am doing about it!!!!

1.) I installed a insulated jacket on my water heater - not ideal but better than nothing. Ideally the water heater would be in a heated portion of the house. I am actually looking at replacing it with an "on-demand" water heater.

2.) I installed weather stripping around my front door. I also plan to install a storm door as well this should drastically cut down on the draft coming in the front door.

3.) I installed that plastic sheeting insulation on the windows. I hate this but it was the best I could come up with.

4.) I have plans to replace my sheetmetal garage door with an actual insulated one...my garage door up north had 1-2 inches of styrofoam between the layers of sheetmetal. My current door is a piece of garbage....just don't have the funds to replace right now.

5.) I put pipe insulation and tape on all exposed copper in my garage to try and help with the pipes freezing. I may have a plumber come in and install shut off valves in the garage in the future.

This is my meager plan so far...if you have any ideas, please pass them along...I am all ears!

...that is all.

Original: http://beasurvivor.blogspot.com/2009/01/surviving-cold-spurt-down-south.html

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