It is a quiet Sunday night in Sutton. Gilles, Steve, Chulita and I are gathered around the wood stove while watching the Sunday night line up. Steve and I are on the sofa near the windows and patio doors wondering why it feels chilly despite the warm fire burning right in front of us. Anyways, I was eager to read my magazine. All of a sudden, there was an explosion. It felt like and sounded like a snow ball was thrown right at me. I looked down at my magazine and it was splattered with wet spots. We all look at each other trying to figure out what happened. Gilles, who was over at the kitchen table was splashed as well. It turns out that a can of coke behind the chair I was in froze and exploded. I thought I was being clever storing extra beer, coke and sprite behind this arm chair since the kitchen has very little storage. It turns out that there was coke everywhere including the kitchen hood, the window across the room from the explosion site and all over the explosion area. What I did not fully realize until now was that the air behind the chair was so cold that it could freeze any liquid nearby. I must admit that tonight is one of the coldest nights wee have seen so far (-24C/ -11F). However, it is incredible to think that a house built only 3 years ago could be so poorly insulated. We regularly complain about the cold floors or the cold toilet in the downstairs bathroom, but this is quite ridiculous.
Thank goodness, Gilles has taken the issue of insulation very seriously. In fact, today when we went to the construction site, the house was pleasantly warm despite that there is no electrical heating. I cannot imagine what our electrical bill will be this month as it seems we have the heater on but not much gets heated. Gilles has spent lots of time with foam, double wall construction, insulation and having urethane shot to seal between the floor joists. Our new house will be very efficient and warm. I can't imagine any winter explosions in our super insulated house.
You're talkin' my kinda language, Lucinda, when you talk about insulation! My neighbour up the hill built a LEED platinum home and one of the factors was 12-inch instead of 6-inch frames to accommodate serious amounts of insulation.
ReplyDeleteMy parents, when we built our place, took insulation seriously too (albeit not *that* seriously) and our place is nice and snug. Now if I could just find a way to convince the dogs not to go in-and-out, in-and-out all the livelong day, letting blasts of -35C in!