re: #408 ggt

No space heater—wool socks, thinsulate, foot warmers, dogs, cats, those things you put in the microwave?

This is a 3500 sqft house, large open common areas, two stories, bottom story is an above ground “basement.” Part of the house, 50 years ago, was a bar in a near by town, moved up to this spot and placed on the lower story. Most of the walls are tongue and grove pine planks and the floors upstairs are hardwood, no rugs. The “basement” under floor is cement.

We have a gas furnace, which doesn’t really make the house toasty and the cost of gas up here is very high. If I ran the furnace, my gas bill alone would be over 300 dollars a month.

We use two wood pellet stoves, one downstairs and one insert in the living room fireplace. They do fine when we don’t have an arctic
freeze like this.

We have electric blankets and a couple of electric heaters. Unfortunately the electric heater from my office is doing duty in the upstairs back bathroom to keep anything else from freezing.

Minor inconveniences, but the idea is living in the mountains without spending a fortune on utilities and services. were far from rich.

Of course there are homes up here that are so environmentally shut up that you barely know if you are living in the mountains or living in New York City. That’s like visiting a foreign country and then eating no where but McDonalds.