Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Start Freezin' Yer Buns!

Ok, a lot of you on the East Coast have been freezing yer buns already, and even over here on the usually balmy West Coast I woke this morning to 38 degrees for my walk with Paco. For those of you on the Facebook page, we've been discussing temperatures and other issues for a few weeks now, but today "officially" starts the challenge. So, if you've been slacking, it's time to start thinking about keeping your thermostat lower.

It's not too late to sign up and pledge what temperatures you plan on keeping your thermostat at this year (day and night). Just head on over to the pledge post and let us know!

If you missed the last couple of blog posts on the challenge, here are some links:

*How to Acclimate to Cooler Indoor Temperatures
*Cold Indoor Temperatures and Condensation
*Freezing Friends Round-Up

If you want to stay on top of the latest conversation on who's freezing what, join the Facebook Page:

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure we're going low enough to qualify as "Freezing our Buns", but we are going a few degrees cooler than last year. Right now we've got it set to 67F in the daytime and 64F at night, which is cool for a Georgia girl! Maybe as the winter progresses and we get used to the cold, we'll try to go a few degrees lower.

Adrienne said...

Still hasn't gotten below about 66 degrees in my apartment, so I'm not freezing and the heat hasn't been on at all. It's been in the 20's some mornings but mostly in the 60s & 70s during the day, so it stays warm enough inside.

Dea-chan said...

We only turned the heat on fairly recently (a week?) and it's set to 65. We've got curtains up and as this is our second winter in this apartment (first time I can say that ever!), I know where the problem spots are and we're taking steps to work on it.

I do need to block off the back door, as it's not over the foundation (fruit room! :-D).

Bootzey said...

A challenge? With the price of gas it is a necessity! I have 2 furnaces in my house and only 1 gets used. I adjust my life in cold months so that heat is on upstairs at 55*. I have it rigged so only the master suite gets heated. And downstairs is only heated by the stove when I'm cooking. On nights that the temp dips past 32 are nights I run the dishwasher to keep hot water flowing through the pipes.

DramaMama said...

Can't remember if I've signed up already, but we turned the heat on last Friday. Tried to make it to Nov 1, but we were a few days short. Last year we were at 66 during the day and 58 at night. I think we will stick w/that this year again, but I am making some double sided door drafts and we are looking for other ways to save on heating costs/keep this place warmer. I can't fuss w/the temps too much since we are foster parents and there are regulations about that. In the past, we put a space heater in the baby's room, but right now we don't have any foster kids. So we'll see what this winter brings. We live in the mid/lower SE corner of WI...there's plenty of lake effect snow but sometimes the lake (Michigan!) keeps the temps a bit warmer too. Looking forward to learning more (as we do each year) about staying warm...

Anonymous said...

We were freezin' buns because we didn't have power for 3 days, but we're now thawing buns.

I wonder what a 3-day power outtage does to the overall energy consumption of a region? When you facotr in that some people have generators & others are burning firewood (inefficiently) ... Perhaps Mother Nature can help us help ourselves out of this climate mess?

Aydan said...

I've had my furnace on to 60° once or twice, or at 55°, but it's mostly been off (Midwest, Great Lakes Region). It's usually 50°-60° in here. I'm okay with this, except for my hands, which aren't wrapped up in layers like the rest of me, get so cold, and painful. I don't know what to do about it except start wearing fingerless gloves in the house. I guess in a few weeks to a month I'll have the heat on full-time and maybe it won't be as much of a problem.

Cynthia in Denver said...

Buns? Buns? Try buns, hands, feet, fingers, toes and nose!

My husband keeps the thermostat at 66. He's set it to hit 68 when I get up at 4 in the morning to go to work.

We've had around 30 - 40 degree temps here in the Denver area this week. I'm cold.

Zev said...

We still haven't turned on our furnace yet, and I don't plan to unless we're going away for longer than overnight. Got our first snowstorm a month ago and it's been below freezing for most of the time since. The goal is to heat entirely with the woodstove this year, all with beetle-killed lodgepole pine that we've cut ourselves from the lot behind our house. I have to say I'm a huge fan of heat! The stove has done a very good job of keeping us toasty so far. It's set into a fireplace of huge pink Pike's Peak granite rocks, and once they get warm, they radiate heat for two or three days.