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Flame » in reply to Short of wrapping home in BAGGIE

Are your curtains insulated?
Mary Anne — (archived)

As long as they completely surround your windowframes, insulated drapes can really help with tiny drafts around the edges of the windows, and can reduce heat loss even more through the glassed area at night. Modern window treatments are very pretty, but not good for this purpose. Sturbridge Yankee Workshop has insulated tab curtains for sale: attractive, easy to put up, durable, and good at keeping heat in the house. Also insulated roman shades, which can be put underneath tab curtains.

You might want to keep in mind that a totally airtight house can be a health hazard, too.

We also had some issues with pipes freezing when closing off rooms. You can find electrically-run heat wraps that even work for plastic pipes to prevent this if pipes run through walls of rooms you expect to have very little heat.

We vent the dryer into the house in winter. Put a pair or two of intact pantyhose over the end with some rubber bands to catch the lint, and vacuum the room often. That way you get the heat from the dryer (which is moist heat, by the way), and you can close off the vent to the outside thoroughly to prevent heat escaping that way when the dryer isn't running.

If you have any musical instruments, especially string instruments or a piano, don't keep them in the same room with the wood stove. It'll suck the moisture right out of them, and make them almost untunable.

Tom's suggestion about sunlight is excellent. It also keeps people from getting depressed. For optimum use of sun, make sure you close the drapes at about 4 PM. The sun is too low to be of much use, heat-wise, though it's still pretty light out.

And here's a link to a short, useful article about making your own newspaper logs at about.com. Notice the link to an article on wood burning at the end. It contains handy tips about what to do with free and scrap wood.

Good luck...

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