Home Improvements

Our apartment, although beautiful and charming, it pretty cold and drafty these days.  The heating system is good, if a bit uneven (3 exposures, 4 windows, and 2 small radiators in the kitchen and a single exposure, huge radiator and 2 feet of exposed heating pipe in our bedroom).  Although the apartment heats up quickly I worry about the amount of energy used to heat up an apartment that doesn't even have storm windows.  Plus, the drafts and lack of humidity certainly detract from the comfort.

A couple of weeks ago I used masking tape to seal up the cracks around most of our windows.  We immediately saw some improvement in both temperature and humidity.  I also bought these little ceramic vessels that hang on the radiators to release moisture into the air.  I'm a little suspicious that these aren't doing a thing because the water level doesn't really drop but I still dutifully change the water weekly.  You are probably wondering why I don't just buy an electric humidifier (or two, like we had in New York), but I haven't been able to find one here.

With all of us having a cold I have been trying to add some moisture to the air.  You'd think in such a wet climate I wouldn't need to do that but you'd be wrong.   At night I leave 3 wet towels in M's room (by morning they are bone dry) and whenever I can I let laundry dry in there as well.  I often also put a pot of boiling water in his room at about 9 at night and leave it there until morning.  I steam up the bathroom by letting his nightly bath run through the shower head and then open the bathroom door (often leaving his bathwater in the tub overnight).  We have also dropped our daytime thermostat setting to 19' C (66'F) as opposed to 20' C (68'F), which strangely keeps the thermometer on the hygrometer at 68'F.  At night we turn the thermostat down to 17, since we have found anything lower wakes us up with a chorus of "Mama, I'm freezing" in the middle of the night.

All of these actions seem to be helping.  I received a hygrometer for Christmas (perhaps my favorite gift--thanks Mom and Dad) and if my calibration efforts are correct, our home is within the comfort target of 40-45% relative humidity.