Nesting, Farnsy Style

The apartment we call home has one feature that I was determined to have when I was apartment hunting a couple of years ago: building-provided heat. I know about myself that if I'm the one financing the heat, the result will be cold, cold winters. And I'd be miserable. It's not fully rational, but it's true. Unfortunately what we have is the old style steam heaters, with the *glug glug glug* and the wheezing. They turn on just a few times a day and they put out a LOT of heat.

Last winter the building had a policy of keeping the coldest apartment at a comfortable temperature. All the windows were old and really leaky to this meant turning on the heat really high. We live on the second of three stories--the warmest apartment--so we frequently had to leave a window or two open to avoid a slow death by heat exhaustion. I was fully expecting the same this year.

However, two things have happened. One is that the building replaced all of our windows with new windows that actually keep the cold out. The other is that they have decided to keep our houses at the lowest temperature that the law requires of them. In case you are wondering, that's a really low temperature.

Well, we have some sensitive roaches and tarantulas (not to mention fingers and toes), so living in a house kept just above 60 was not a good option for us. Yes, we have a space heater, but that would require us paying for heat. Again, not a good option. The other option is to make our house more insulated than any of our neighbors.

Bingo! Now that's something I can get obsessive about.

Preliminaries--The Basics

It turns out I find insulation very fascinating. After a few hours and days of research, I've had some really good ideas. First, I taped the back door shut. All around the frame, inside the door and out. We can use the front door if we need to go anywhere. This probably made the most difference because we were getting a steady breeze of cold air all around that door. It's inconvenient to have to take the trash out through the front door and all around the building, but it's very convenient to be able to take off one's shoes without fear of frostbite.

The back door also had several windows, which have been painted over but are always really cold because they are old and single-paned. We bought some Styrofoam insulation from a hardware store (that stuff is so cheap and great) and I installed it across all the glass parts of the door. Another victory for the Farnsworths. And the floor in the kitchen is always cold. Not sure why that particular room is that way, but clearly something wasn't insulated correctly. So we covered the floor in the kitchen with another type of foam. I think it's meant for gyms and stuff. It's intended to be walked on and it keeps the cold floor from chilling the rest of the house. Yay!

The Main Event: Bubble Wrap!

If you look at an infrared picture of a house from the outside (during winter) you will see that all the windows are red. This is because windows (doubled paned or not) are much better conductors of heat than walls are. I've seen statistics that indicate that ridiculously high percentages (like 30 or more) of the heat we lose from our house goes right through our windows. This is a bit of a problem because Ashley won't let me cover the windows with Styrofoam. She actually wants light to be constantly streaming into our apartment. So there has to be a better solution.

Well it turns out our problem is faced in spades by greenhouse keepers that live in cold areas. They lose a lot of heat through the glass and they can't cover it up without killing their plants. One of the best solutions to this problem is bubble wrap. That's right, packaging bubble wrap. It's not a perfect insulator, but it's a heck of a lot better than glass and it lets the light through just fine. Plus it's cheap and easy. You just spray a little water on the window, put the bubble wrap up to it, and it sticks and stays. When you want to remove it you just pull it off. Nothing could be easier. If you want to increase the thermal resistance of the window, you can put a second layer right on top of the first layer and it will stick with water just as well. Let me tell you, this was really fun. I can think of few things better than using something commonplace and surprising to conserve heat and money. I love it!

After completing the insulation of the windows, they kind of look kind of like frosted glass. You can sort of see out and in but the light is diffused. Still all the light comes through and not much of the heat gets out through them. With just one layer of bubble wrap, in fact, the windows can still be opened and closed without having to remove any insulation. And remember there's no tape and no glue used. I'm so happy with it that Ashley and I are probably going to get some more bubble wrap at walmart today and put a second layer up.

By the way, one of the most common window treatments in Chicago is to cover them with this clear plastic that sticks to the wall around the window and you blow on it with a hair dryer and it shrinks taut. It turns out the main purpose of that is to keep air from leaking in an out of the window (a big problem in these older homes and apartments). It works well for that purpose, but that's not much of a problem here since our new windows are tight and well calked. The plastic sheet also acts as something of a barrier to convection currents, but not much of one. The bubble wrap is better, and it allows you to still use your window if you so choose. Ashley was adamant about that because she is concerned about the possibility of burning something on the stove and not being able to open a window to let the smoke out. Not that that's a problem for us. And then there's the carbon monoxide our oven gives off. But our solution is just to use our toaster oven instead. It works very nicely.


Actually it's a little funny that we continue to insulate because our house is pretty warm these days. Ashley frequently turns off the heater or opens a window. I say that's just fine. I have no problem with opening the occasional window to let the excess heat out, but I do have a problem with the heat leaving of its own volition while we are cold and can't do anything to stop it.

Basking in the warmth

As Ashley has discovered, I tend to get a little enthusiastic (obsessive?) about this kind of project. I've spend a lot of time researching different ways of insulating a home. I can tell you that when we have our own home, it will be oh-so-insulated. I will probably build tight fittnig removable window insulators out of a variety of space age products and cover our windows in them in winter. That is, if we don't live some place super hot. In that case, lots of regular insulation and some of that reflective stuff. Anyway, this is a really fun and productive obsession. And it doesn't drive Ashley crazy in the least.

Sometimes I walk around repeating the words "bubble wrap bubble wrap bubble wrap..." She's amazingly tolerant of it.