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<DIV><FONT size=2>I was up early this morning, as is my usual situation on
Sundays, 6 AM. It was 31 degrees on the outside thermometer, and it
was 65 degrees inside our house, without a fire going in the wood stove or
any electric or natural gas heat going. This was because Saturday we
finished our superinsulation project (well, we still have interior window
shutters to make). We now have R-50 in the attic and R-33 in the walls and
I am glad too report it works "as designed". Last night when I got
home the house was hot. Sean said, "Well, the news said it was 40 degrees
and dropping and even though i wasn't especially cold, I built a fire."
After I cooked supper, I started thinking about opening a window.
Obviously we have to now learn how to operate our newly insulated
dwelling. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=2>Saturday morning I had to buy 20 more bags of insulation as we
were about out of what I had bought in September, and we still had some attic to
go. So I went to Home Despot, only to find that they were down to 8 bags,
which I bought, and winced a bit at the TWENTY PERCENT PRICE INCREASE since
September. I called another HD, they said "Not only are we out, but all
other Home Despot stores in town are out." Fortunately, Lowes at SW 74th
had 13 bags left, and I went and got 12 of them, which turned out to be exactly
the amount we needed. I guess I could have bought and used the 13th,
but ten bucks is ten bucks. Memo to other do-it-yourselfers: buy
your insulation in the summer when the price is low. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Another nice surprise has been the performance of the new
electric water heater. This will eventually be the backup for our solar
water heater system (which we will install next year), but for now it is nice to
have running hot water in the house again (we have been without running hot
water for hmmm about 12 months). Anyway, we had the electricians install a
switch so we can easily turn it off and on. The first day we turned it on
for about an hour, and proceeded to have running hot water for 2 days without
turning it back on. Partly this is our frugality with hot water (learned
over the last 12 months), but also the tank is apparently very well insulated,
which made me glad I didn't buy the cheapest one but instead got the mid-range
("9 year warranty") model. I was amazed how hot the water was on the
morning of the 2nd day. We'll see what it does to our bottom line with the
electric bill, but only turning it on for an hour every 2 days should be a lot
less usage than is typical for hot water heaters. We intend to insulate
the tank even more, I picked up a roll of insulation for that
purpose.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>So all's well at our house. Hope everybody else stays
warm without burning too many BTUs.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Robert Waldrop, snug as a bug in a rug in Oklahoma
City</FONT></DIV>
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