relative humidity means that when temperatures go up, humidity goes down, and when temperatures go down, humidity goes up.

I keep my house at 60F specifically to cut down on the expense of running a humidifier. It can be very expensive, especially if you are trying to control room climate for a grand piano.

We only need to turn on the airwasher now when we get subzero cold. I do run a humidifier in the bedroom at night because I suffer from dry eyes.

SK, I heartily endorse putting the piano in a room with a door that closes. It will make your life much easier in your new location.

WTG, it’s not so just the temperature, but the use of the furnace. If I turn the heat up, the humidity drops. I thought I understood relative humidity, but your post is a little confusing to me… all I know is, I have three hygrometers in different locations around the piano room, and I monitor those, tweak my thermostat and run my humidifier…


piqué, how are you with your house at 60F? Our thermostat is set at 68F but the actual indoor temp is probably 64-66F (depending on the room) and I find it much too cold for comfort! I dress in layers and so on, but I really need it to be a little bit warmer!

sk--
well, i used to be always cold when I was a kid. I had an ongoing battle with my mother over the thermostat (i would sneak out into the hall in the middle of the night and turn it up because I was too cold to sleep). they had a huge house and it was drafty and my bedroom was over the unheated garage. I was freezing all the time in winter--and this was in the mid-atlantic.

In my late 20s I went to work for the forest service in montana and lived in an unheated cabin with no running water or electricity at 9,000 feet elevation for five months. I got 12 inches of snow in July. There was no dry firewood for the old, broken down wood stove that had a hole in its firebox. I think there was all of three weeks that it didn't get below freezing at night, if that. Didnt matter if it was 2 degrees outside, if I had to take a crap, I had to go out there. There were whole days I just stayed in my sleeping bag and read, with my gloves on.

By Labor Day winter was back at the cabin. Luckily some rangers from the supervisor's office came up and cut down a dead tree for me. I got really good at splitting logs with an axe, and finally I had the ability to warm up the cabin with the wood stove, bake bread and muffins, and heat up water for a sponge bath (before that I'd put gallons of water in the sun to heat up)

Those five months changed my personal thermostat a lot. I am too warm most of the time in our 60 degree house. I sleep with the window open in the bedroom in the winter now. My husband is cold--I have bought him all kinds of things to help him: super thick warm pjs, electric heated gloves, electric blanket. And this year (he doesn't know this yet) I bought him an electric heated vest and I'm going to get him an electric throw for the sofa when we read or watch tv.

I'm not nearly as warm-blooded, though, as some native Montanans I have met. I see them out walking in shorts in the dead of winter. the young lady who has been helping me lately with the horses shows up to muck stalls without a jacket on. In December.

So, possibly you could get used to it. Or you could wear some really warm clothes. Down vests and down booties in the house are a good solution.

piqué, yikes! That would make you get used to the cold!

quote:

So, possibly you could get used to it.

Or we could just buy our own house and then I can install a whole house humidifier so I can turn the heat up!

Jokes aside, I probably should revisit my “room wear” …

I can’t deal with a 60 degree house in the winter. At night it’s great, but during the day I need 68 degrees.

In CA we kept the winter thermostat set to 68. Since moving here we’ve thrown caution to the wind and keep the thermostat set at 69 in a nod to the climate.

Pique, how much do you save by keeping your house at 60 degrees?

I think I wpuld be fine with the indoor temp at 68. Our thermostat is set at 68, but based on the hygrometer/thermometer readings, the actual temp in most of the rooms is between 64 and 66.

quote:

Pique, how much do you save by keeping your house at 60 degrees?

It's hard to say, because the cost of power has inflated so much in the past year, and the prior year as well.

60 is really as much a preference as an economy.

Well, it’s nothing like what Jodi and Piqué are experiencing, but we’re getting some of that cold snap here and it’s going to be down around -1F tonight and for the next few nights.

We are not traveling though, and the heat is set to 69F, so I think we’ll be ok.

I should probably think about my car, which is not winterized at all… it will be fine when it’s time to go out because we have a garage, but I wonder if it will be hard to start it after it’s been sitting outdoors in a parking lot for a few hours… I wonder how old my car battery is …

Bought one of these battery jumpers after Lisa posted about it. Haven’t had to use it, but it’s good to know we have it just in case.

https://well-temperedforum.gro...773935697#8773935697

Looks like you’ll be about 4-5 degrees colder than we are.

Hopefully our car will be ok because we will only be out in the middle of the day.

Although I just realized, daytime tomorrow will be the coldest, and that’s when we need to go out… :P

I guess we’ll find out! :/

We put one car in the garage and my truck and my car are both in the driveway plugged in (Engine block heaters). It got so cold here (-44 degrees ! ) that there was a risk of the anti-freeze freezing… Also, the only places we’ve been going, we’ve been going together and one person stays in the car with it running. (Checking on the horse, and a couple short trips to pick up fly tying supplies, Steve is losing his mind couped up in the house, I’m happily puttering in my art studio). Supposed to get above zero today - Hallelujah! Feeling lucky that Steve is retired. The roads here are sheets of ice - they only plow the main ones, and it’s currently a skating rink on the rest of them. And uptown is on a hill! I did open the cabinet under the kitchen sink on the night it got down below -40, that sink is on an outside corner - but we were fine. I have a heater plugged in in the garage, and so far it’s staying right around 39 to 40 degrees in there. I am so thankful to be living in a well insulated modern house.

It was down to 12 degrees here in Portland last night, which is very chilly for us.

I’m in our not-well-insulated century old home, so I left the undersink cabinets open, and the water dripping for good measure. A friend who lives in a mid-century (guessing?) ranch home has frozen pipes as of yesterday.

Brrrr. Stay warm!

We don't have engine block heaters, and our garage is full of the junk we never got around to selling at the neighborhood garage sale last summer. So all four of our vehicles are sitting out in the open. We did top off all the gas tanks so we wouldn't get condensation in them. Tomorrow we have to drive to Missoula for the day. We do have a battery charger we'll hook up to the one car that has studded snow tires. Our high for today is supposed to be -9, but so far every day we've been much colder than the forecast. We aren't going anywhere we don't have to go.

The house is staying warm. But our lights are flickering. This has happened before when it gets very cold and windy, but the power company hasn't been able to identify the problem....

Mr Pique is watching lots of tv and I'm hanging out with FB friends, emails, long phone calls to friends and family I haven't talked to in a while, and catching up on stuff I've been putting off.

But mostly I am just enjoying being snugged in and not having to go anywhere.

Well, there are the barn chores to keep us from becoming total sloths.

I can’t sleep if it’s too warm. When I lived in Massachusetts, I kept the house at 58 in the winter. My kids still snipe at me about that.

In deference to my Mississippi-born wife, we keep the house around 69-70 during the day, but much cooler at night.