Drafty castles - January 1, 2012

It was cold today: down in the 20°s with a fierce wind from the north. Anya and I snuck out for a walk this morning, and then we went over to the dog park. Both times, she ran around like a maniac. Clearly this is her weather...

It really was the wind that made it miserable today. At the dog park, standing in the lee of anything was tolerable, but walking west-northwest was downright painful. It really showed how much of a component wind is when we're thinking about the experience of cold.

When we bought this house in 2001, it was uninsulated. After a couple winters, we had new windows put in (just the inside portion, not the storm windows) and blew cellulose insulation into the walls. Even more than the general improvement of warmth, we noticed the sudden lack of a draft in the room when the wind blew outside in winter.

It's a cliché (but one based on truth) that old stone houses in Europe, especially stone castles, are "cold and drafty," which is partly why tapestries were such an essential part of premodern castle life. But those drafts were also necessary given that the heating was entirely through burnt wood and peat—not in a single remote furnace like we use now, but in a fireplace in each room that needed heat (and imagine life before the fireplace and chimney became common in the sixteenth century).

So that legendary draftiness, which some of it may have been a byproduct of the construction materials, was also part of the design. When we had our new gas boiler put in a few years ago, we had to install an external vent... which now makes the basement significantly colder than it used to be.

The whole way we act and dress indoors changes when we can be snug and cozy. Draftiness affects basic health. Forget what your great-uncle said about being tough and just wearing more sweaters; a recent study shows residents of uninsulated houses missed work and school twice as much as residents of similar houses that were retrofitted with basic insulation, and had lower rates of respiratory conditions.

Why did it take so long, then, for insulation to become commonplace?