theparkerfamily

The quick brown fox jumped over the good, but lazy Parker family.

transoms & chimneys

Saturday, 29 October 2011

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turns out climate control in a 97 year old house is a bit of a challenge.

who knew.

it’s that time of year finally, and we’ve started to do the things i sincerely hope to be doing in this backyard each October for the rest of my life — pulling in the porch furniture, turning off the outside spigots, and firing up the radiators.

the boiler that feeds the radiator turned out to be a bit of a problem — it’s 40+ years old, and seems to be throwing a lot more heat back into the unfinished basement than it’s putting up the pipe to the main living areas. when we called a chimney person to investigate, it turned out that the chimney has collapsed, so the heat just has no where to go.

needless to say we’re getting that fixed. actually, we’re probably just going to replace the 40+ year old boiler while we’re at it.

in other news, sparklet’s room has become a bit of an ice box — which is (mostly) as we expected. it’s on the north side of the house (so gets very little sun) and has a door, a window and a transom — all of which are 97 years old and all seemingly more proficient at escorting the outside in than keeping it out where it belongs.

so, i spent last weekend opening up the transom windows to let some hot air circulate between the rooms. of course, i was doing this with a chisel, a mask and a hepa-rated vacuum cleaner just in case our 97 year old paint had some heavy, metalic surprises inside.

regardless, i think we’re all setup for the winter on Monroe Street — the first of many, i hope.