More frigid weather ahead

So I thought that this past week was going to be bad, now I come to find out that it's going to get really cold in the next several days, with temperatures plunging down well below zero, with a forecasted low of -13 again in the next few days. Last night I went to the hardware store and bought some "rope caulk", basically, pliable weather sealing, and used it to seal up cracks in a bad window in the living room through which a lot of cold air was coming. I was still feeling a draft which I traced to the hole where the cable comes through from outside, so I put some weather stripping over that hole in order to keep it a bit warmer in here. I've had draft blockers on my windows all winter and those have helped somewhat, but sealing up the cracks in the window that has badly warped sashes seems to have helped immensely. It does feel quite a bit warmer in here now. I just hope that it was adequate to keep me warm when temperatures start their great plunge tomorrow. I understand that February is forecasted to be even colder than this month turns out to have been. If that's the case, I am grateful that we do not have to pay the heat bill in this big old drafty barn of a house. It's uninsulated, all of the windows are in kind of questionable shape, especially the one in my living room that is unable to open or shut properly, so there's only so much that one can do to stay warm. I do not trust space heaters at all. They cause so many fires. Hardly a day goes by that I do not read of a house fire caused by a space heater. Well, the LAST thing that I want to do is to burn down the house in which I live. As a rule, they are not safe and can cause carbon monoxide poisoning as well, so I'd rather go with our furnace to stay warm and to make sure that its filters are changed monthly and that it's in good, working and serviceable order.

The house is over 100 years old and you can only do so much for older homes. They weren't built with energy efficiency in mind because they did not have to worry about it in those days. So of course, the heat bills are going to be very high this winter because it's so cold, but we've installed draft blockers on all of the doors and windows here, I caulked the bad window here, so we're doing our part to cheaply insulate where we can. Neither of us who lives here has a lot of money to spare, so we're doing only that which is within our budgets. If we lowered the thermostat to the standard setting of bettween 65 and 68 degrees, the temperature inside the house would drop into the low 50s and we'd freeze. So in order to bring the house up to between 68 and 70 degrees, we have to crank up the heat somewhere between 76 and 80 degrees, depending on how cold it is outside. We lose tons of heat through windows and doors, even with what we have done to snug up the house using draft blockers and rope caulk. Without proper insulation, the house is going to continue to lose tons of heat, 10 to 12 degrees from the thermostat setting on average. At that rate, you may as well be opening doors and windows and throwing money out of them. But since my neighbor and I are not the owners here, we can only do so much to tighten things down and go from there, but we both wish to stay comfortable and warm and not freeze to death in this place keeping the thermostat at 68 degrees. My old place was so tightly insulated that I could keep it at 68 and be warm and toasty, even on the coldest days and nights, but this place loses too much heat to make that possible. So we bump up the heat and we block drafts wherever we can and we drink lots of hot coffee and tea and eat lots of hot soup and wear warm clothing and keep warm blankets on hand. It's plenty warm in here now that I've caulked all of the cracks and holes where cold air was coming in. When the temperatures begin their great plunge tomorrow, if I feel too cold, I have a snug afghan under which I can cuddle on the sofa. I'm more than ready for this latest polar blast. Probably not going to be the last we get this winter, unfortunately.