Heating Options, Part One

It's hard to think about heating when I'm sweating and wishing for a fan. The sun finally showed up this week and temps have climbed into the upper 70s. Those of you living further South can stop snickering now – there's a reason I live this far North! (Well, 42 reasons, but climate is one.) Realize also that I am in long pants and long sleeve shirt for black fly protection. After all the rain, drizzle, and downpours lately I was beginning to think I lived near the *other* Portland! The lack of sunshine there is exactly why I don't.

When considering heating options, it's very useful to think outside the box and look at not only potential heat supplies, but also ways of reducing heat needs. The goal here is not how to make my environment a constant 72F, but rather to be comfortable in my environment.

I find the easiest way to be comfortable whatever the temperature is to wear layers. Feeling cold? Put another sweater on. Too warm? Strip down to a t-shirt. What you're wearing is much easier to adjust than increasing the heat or AC, and far more energy (and its cost!) efficient. It's also more adaptable to changing activity levels. It's not uncommon to find me in flannel-lined jeans, turtleneck, sweatshirt, and quilted flannel shirt during the winter while I'm doing some quiet low-energy activity, only to have stripped off the two top layers while doing something more active.

Another method I alluded to above is choosing the environment you live in. The Pacific Northwest has long appealed to me because of its mild climate. My ideal climate would be 40s at night and 70s during the day. However I have long claimed, in only semi-jest, that I am solar powered. Thus an environment with persistent cloud cover (even if it is a dry rain!) is contra-indicated for me. Obviously the population levels that do make their home there prove the internet maxim 'your mileage may vary' (YMMV).

One sadly neglected approach to comfort is simple acclimatization. Eric Brende, is his book “Better Off”, talks about joining an Amish work party after having spent a couple weeks on a road trip. He suffered from heat exhaustion by the end of the day while the other workers took the heat in stride. He realized that using the car's AC during the road trip left him unacclimatized to the warming weather back home. At the other end of the spectrum, early accounts of European-Indian encounters comment on the apparent comfort of the natives, wearing little more than loincloths, on 40F days. Most modern Americans, going from home to car to work to stores and back, never get the opportunity to acclimatize to what the weather actually is outside. This week I'm finding it difficult to make the abrupt shift from 40s and rainy one day to 70s and sunny the next, but I expect in another week or so I'll be fine.

When discussing heating in particular, something related to dressing in layers is the concept of warming the person, not the space around them. There is something remarkably delicious about climbing into a bed in a cool room with a hot water bottle at your feet! Some people use rice bags, warmed in the microwave or on the back of a wood stove. It's the same concept as the chemical hand and toe warmers used by skiers and other winter outdoor sports enthusiasts.

One layer many people seem to be unaware of is hats. If you wear a hat, or nightcap, to bed, you can comfortably sleep in a much cooler room. I use a knit hat that I can even pull down over my eyes. With a hat on my head and a hot water bottle at my feet, I'll happily doze off in temperatures in the teens, with little more than my nose sticking out. Getting up in the morning, however, is another matter entirely. I've never done any winter camping, so I asked someone I know who has – how was he motivated to climb out of his warm sleeping bag on cold mornings? His answer (which I suspected) was your bladder demands it! But what keeps you from crawling back in? I persisted. Essentially, being up and moving is warmer than the cold spots encountered if one squirms too much. I suspect there was also an “awake and bored” factor.

Which brings me to my final observation – if you're cold, move. The adage that wood heat warms you three times has a lot of truth to it: cutting, stacking, then burning. If you're sitting quietly reading, with a lap blanket over your legs and another around your shoulders, and feeling chilly, that's a cue to put the book down and get up and move around for a while. Just don't move around so much you start sweating, because the moisture works to wick heat away from your body.

So having (hopefully) reduced heating needs, but not eliminating them entirely, what are some of the options? I'll explore that in part two.