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brin_bellwayUpper floor: 73
Ground floor: 70.5
Basement: 65
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(The thermostat (ground floor: living room) and the "fridge" thermometer (upper floor: bathroom) roughly agree with these numbers. The thermostat has crept up a degree since I started writing this, while the outdoor temperature has climbed from (keeping the same language) 72 to 80.)
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It's weird how the inter-floor temperature difference is very noticeable in summer but not in winter. I think of "the beginning of summer" as the day you go up the stairs and get hit by a wall of heat, and that was yesterday.
(Though it's expected to go back to being cool in a couple days. Probably not time just yet to put the window air conditioner in upstairs, to pump out the upper-floor heat without being able to open a window to the toxic pollen outside.)
((You bet your ass I *thoroughly* duct-tape a seal around the edges of that window air conditioner. Which is a big part of why it would be a hassle to put it in for two days and then take it out again.))
(((I feel like there has to be a better way, some setup involving mounting a HEPA filter on your open window, but thus far I have failed to think of anything that wouldn't involve daily re-taping.)))
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We have poor insulation (except in the attic) but high thermal mass, which makes us surprisingly good at coasting through periods of hot days and cold nights. We have only lost 3.5 of our 8 degrees of stored coolth from two days ago. On cool evenings after sunny days, the temperature in the living room often drifts *upward* in the late evening, the passive solar heat still working its way through the brick.
Tonight, however, is not expected to be cold.
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Dad is in his usual basement chair, wearing a hoodie. Mom, alas, is too mobility-disabled to chase temperature gradients, and is in an upstairs bedroom with a ceiling fan.
---
Summer is always a hard adjustment. I'm so used to carefully hoarding heat, to practices based around keeping heat *in* and not keeping it *out*.
(I grudgingly boiled pasta on the stove yesterday, deliberating on whether to dig out the lid. I hear you can make pasta in a pressure cooker, and I really need to experiment with that.)
I haven't taken down the black tarp on the building-envelope wall of the mudroom, but I *have* closed the blinds so it's not getting direct sunlight. The blinds in the southeast are closed too (which is disorienting, as I spend much of my time there), but probably I will open them in the afternoon.
It is the time of year to be reminded of why I haven't pushed for forms of increasing our solar gain that don't have an exit plan.
Ground floor: 70.5
Basement: 65
---
(The thermostat (ground floor: living room) and the "fridge" thermometer (upper floor: bathroom) roughly agree with these numbers. The thermostat has crept up a degree since I started writing this, while the outdoor temperature has climbed from (keeping the same language) 72 to 80.)
---
It's weird how the inter-floor temperature difference is very noticeable in summer but not in winter. I think of "the beginning of summer" as the day you go up the stairs and get hit by a wall of heat, and that was yesterday.
(Though it's expected to go back to being cool in a couple days. Probably not time just yet to put the window air conditioner in upstairs, to pump out the upper-floor heat without being able to open a window to the toxic pollen outside.)
((You bet your ass I *thoroughly* duct-tape a seal around the edges of that window air conditioner. Which is a big part of why it would be a hassle to put it in for two days and then take it out again.))
(((I feel like there has to be a better way, some setup involving mounting a HEPA filter on your open window, but thus far I have failed to think of anything that wouldn't involve daily re-taping.)))
---
We have poor insulation (except in the attic) but high thermal mass, which makes us surprisingly good at coasting through periods of hot days and cold nights. We have only lost 3.5 of our 8 degrees of stored coolth from two days ago. On cool evenings after sunny days, the temperature in the living room often drifts *upward* in the late evening, the passive solar heat still working its way through the brick.
Tonight, however, is not expected to be cold.
---
Dad is in his usual basement chair, wearing a hoodie. Mom, alas, is too mobility-disabled to chase temperature gradients, and is in an upstairs bedroom with a ceiling fan.
---
Summer is always a hard adjustment. I'm so used to carefully hoarding heat, to practices based around keeping heat *in* and not keeping it *out*.
(I grudgingly boiled pasta on the stove yesterday, deliberating on whether to dig out the lid. I hear you can make pasta in a pressure cooker, and I really need to experiment with that.)
I haven't taken down the black tarp on the building-envelope wall of the mudroom, but I *have* closed the blinds so it's not getting direct sunlight. The blinds in the southeast are closed too (which is disorienting, as I spend much of my time there), but probably I will open them in the afternoon.
It is the time of year to be reminded of why I haven't pushed for forms of increasing our solar gain that don't have an exit plan.
Re: pasta with lid
Date: 2026-05-18 06:00 pm (UTC)I've done pasta on a low simmer with lid reasonably often, it just requires a bit more attention than pasta without the lid at least until you're calibrated because it's easier to overboil with a lid. (And yeah, I switch from lidless in winter (convenient!) to lid on in summer.)