Thursday, November 20, 2008

Muddy Season

My backyard is still a mess from the construction. I can't wait for the ground to freeze so I don't have to resort to this every time I let the dog out:



The easiest way to clean her feet when mud is embedded in her claws and between her toes is to hoist her into the kitchen sink. Naturally, she hates it.

The continuing saga of the new room:

My SO crawled under the house and scooted through the crawl space on his back and satisfied my curiosity about what is under the new room. It is dry and properly insulated and not icy cold, so now I feel the room is not being cooled from below. I have seen the insulation in the walls and attic myself. It must be all those windows; they are supposed to be energy efficient (low E, whatever that means), but they are still glass.

The plan to increase the fan speed on the furnace is not going to happen because it turns out that the fan speeds are set at the factory and cannot be changed after installation. And the room is comfortable when the furnace is on high, so the furnace capacity must be okay. The heating company still wants to put dampers in the ducts, but I fail to see how this will help unless they are thermostatically controlled. I'm going to call them tomorrow and give them the opportunity to convince me.

I have closed the register in the dining room, where the thermostat is, to see if that helps. Then I may reverse the direction of the ceiling fan in the new room and run it on low. And then I will get some window treatments soon. And an area rug. And I can move a space heater out there. I'm thinking that, like the floor, the temperature in that room is just going to be one of those things that didn't turn out quite like I had hoped. Too bad.

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