If You're Going to Live in the Country Part 12

TIGHTENING FOR WINTER

The wolf of winter was the arresting phrase originated several years ago by no less a pract.i.tioner of the art of advertising than Bruce Barton, to drive home the merits of adequate domestic heating. But no matter how efficient your heating system may be, unless the country home has been made ready for the cold months, insufficient heat and excessive fuel bills result.

Against this, there are a number of simple things the home owner may do himself or have done. n.o.body begrudges money spent for fuel that keeps the house at a comfortable, even temperature. In the days when six dollars bought a ton of the best anthracite coal and the pea and buckwheat sizes were sold as waste products, it may have been a matter of small importance that certain spots in a house leaked heat and let in cold. Besides, in an era when windows closed tightly with the first cold blasts of fall and remained so until spring, such ventilation was probably a life saver. But at the present high prices for either coal or fuel oil, these points about the house where heat is lost and winter cold crashes the gate should be taken seriously.

With a new house, of course, everything possible in the nature of built-in metal weatherstripping and thoroughly insulated exterior walls were included by the architect when he prepared plans and specifications. But even he may have ignored one of the most practical means of conserving warmth. This is a set of storm windows and doors carefully fitted so they open and shut at will, yet are snug enough so that little cold penetrates. These are remarkable conservers of heat.

Measured scientifically, the amount that escapes by radiation through ordinary window gla.s.s is amazing. The storm window reduces this to a minor percentage because the dead-air s.p.a.ce between the two thicknesses of gla.s.s acts as an efficient means of insulation.

Storm doors and windows are now made in stock dimensions that fit practically any frame. Quant.i.ty production has made their price so moderate that the saving on fuel for a single winter can exceed their initial cost and the labor of fitting and putting them in place. Such windows and doors should be properly marked, like the screens that replace them in summer, with numbering tacks so that, each fall, they may be put in proper place without confusion. The system is simplicity itself. A duplicate tack bears the same number on the sill of each window and on the upright of each door. This is a real saver of time, for so small a variation as half an inch in width or height can make the difference between doors and windows that really fit and those that leak air. Such proportions vary even with a new house.

The only requisite for such a complement of double doors and windows is a proper place to store them during the summer months. Being largely of gla.s.s, if they are not put away carefully, the breakage can be both annoying and needlessly expensive. So it is well to provide a special compartment, located in the garage or other convenient place, where these may be placed when not in use. Similarly, the same section may be used in the winter for door and window screens as well as garden furniture.

Except for the new country house or one that has been completely remodeled or renovated, each succeeding fall brings minor repairs.

These ought to be undertaken during those cool crisp days of fall that precede freezing weather and penetrating winter winds. They will vary with age and state of repair but they begin with the cellar and progress upward to the attic. Unless your house is unusually ailing, probably not all of these will be necessary but at least there should be a careful examination and diagnosis. Here is the list.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SNOW HAS DIGNITY, BUT IS THE HOUSE SNUG AND WARM?

_Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho_]

Repoint the foundations, inside and out, with a rich cement mortar to seal any cracks through which the wind might penetrate. A late October or early November day when there is a high wind is ideal for this work. As one goes over the inside of the foundation, the searching cold blasts will reveal the crevices that need attention. Mark each one with a wooden splinter as fast as they are found. When all four walls have been thoroughly inspected, the work of closing these cracks can be done as a single operation. Except for a solid brick or stone house, inspect the point at which the sills rest on the foundation walls. The fillet of mortar may have come loose or cracked in places.

Any such breaks should be repaired.

Before leaving the cellar notice the windows. Does cold air leak through joints of sash and frame? If so, make them tight with batten strips or, if very loose, calk them with oak.u.m. The window through which coal is delivered, of course, cannot be sealed so thoroughly as it may have to be opened now and then for additional fuel.

Weatherstripping it as well as the hatchway door is advisable.

Some houses built on side-hill sites have at least one cellar wall more exposed than the rest. Where this condition exists, it is a real economy to cover the inside of it with insulating material. Either special plastering or fiber-insulating board can be used, as individual conditions warrant. At the same time any water pipe that is close to an outside wall should either be re-located or insulated, lest it freeze some day when it is abnormally cold or a high wind is blowing. Freezing cold air blowing through a fine crack in an exterior wall acts about as does the flame of a welder's torch, only in the reverse. The flame cuts by melting; the cold air solidifies the water in a pipe and sometimes does it so thoroughly that a cracked pipe is the result.

From the cellar one now goes to the attic. Are windows in place here and weather tight? How about end walls and the under sides of roof? If not insulated, your house can lose a quant.i.ty of heat at these points.

Remember, heat rises and, after a storm, if the snow on the roof of your house melts quicker than on those of your neighbors, it is a clear demonstration that you are wasting heat by letting it ooze through certain minute apertures. Another way to combat this upward radiation is to pour a loose, featherlike insulating material into the s.p.a.ce between the attic flooring and the plaster of the bedroom ceilings. As it comes in bags prepared especially for this purpose and is very light, sometimes it is only necessary to raise a small proportion of the attic floor boards and the insulating material can be spread evenly through these openings.

There remains still a major escape for heat, the fireplaces. If each is equipped, as is customary with all built during the last half century, with a cast-iron damper that closes the throat when not in use, make sure it is in working order. Sometimes such dampers get clogged with soot and fail to close tightly. For older fireplaces the problem varies. Some can have a throat damper installed; others are of such size or shape that it is not practical. With the latter, if the throat is not too large, it is possible to stuff it with tightly packed newspaper, first crumpling the sheets to make them bulky. The large fireplace, once the scene of all family cooking, generally has an opening into the chimney so large that there seems to be but one practical way to treat it. This is the use of the time-tried fire board which fits tightly into the opening of mantel and shuts off the fireplace completely. This causes much lamentation each winter in our own household, as the picturesque effect of the fine old fireplace with swinging crane is blotted out by a none too ornamental expanse of board. But it is so fitted that it can be readily removed any time a fireplace fire is desired. When not in use such a cavernous avenue for escaping heat must, of course, be closed. No heating system can compete with it. Stand beside such a fireplace for a moment and the cold breeze swirling out from it will convince you.

Nothing is more uncomfortable in winter than cold and drafty floors.

Much of this can easily be corrected by closing the cracks, usually found in older houses, between flooring and walls at the baseboards.

Generally quarter-round molding, carefully fitted and securely nailed is sufficient but occasionally wide, uneven cracks have to be closed with oak.u.m, putty, or crack filler before the molding is put in place.

Again, if the cellar has no plaster ceiling, a drafty floor can be remedied by lining the under side of the flooring with felt paper or like material.

Lastly, inspect the heating plant. Has it been cleaned and put in order since last season? If not, it should be done without fail, for no soot-clogged furnace or encrusted boiler can work properly. You are simply wasting fuel and effort if you neglect them.

Out of doors, there are several minor things that can make or mar a winter in the country. Be sure the faucets used for the garden hose are disconnected and drained. There is probably a drain valve in the cellar for this. If your water supply is a shallow well, notice the location of the supply pipe. If it extends to within four or five feet of the top, some sort of covering must be placed over the latter to prevent cold winter winds searching it out. A cover of wall board with a small opening for ventilation is easily fitted to it and will avert later trouble.

It is far from amusing to awake some zero morning and find the house without water because the well pipe has frozen. It can be thawed with a blow pipe but that means calling a plumber or a handy man who happens to have a tool of this sort. One such experience will keep you from forgetting or neglecting to provide a well cover. Similarly, if you are in doubt whether the pipes from water source to house are below the frost line, a carpet of leaves about two inches thick on top of the ground along the course of the water pipe, will obviate any such unhappy event. Thawing a frozen pipe plainly visible in the well is child's play compared to the task of arguing with any underground.

Once, such pipes had to wait for nature. Today, they can be thawed very skillfully with special electrical equipment, but not cheaply.

The standard charge ranges from $20 up, mostly the latter.

The family living in the country will also find that cold weather puts a great strain on the automobile. A car that has worked perfectly all summer simply refuses to start, and the storage battery that operates the self-starter is exhausted and powerless. The sensible course is to have the car put in condition for winter before the first cold snap congeals the crank-case oil. Replace the latter with one of lighter grade; have the radiator filled with a good anti-freeze in sufficient quant.i.ty so that you will be safe on the coldest days against the hazard of a frozen radiator; have the ignition system thoroughly overhauled and new spark points put in the distributor. Most important of all, get a new storage battery if the one you have is more than a few months old.

This course of action saves annoyance, is better for the automobile, and less expensive than calling for garage help some abnormally cold morning when many others are also in trouble and you must wait your turn. Don't take just anybody's advice when changing to lighter and more freely flowing motor oil. Go to the service station handling the make of car you drive and have it done there. They will know which is the right grade. We once almost ruined a car by following a layman's advice. With our own hands we refilled the crank case with oil that was rated as S.A.E. 10 and was perfect for the light car of our well-intentioned adviser. Unhappily the lightest suitable for our make and model was S.A.E. 20, practically twice as heavy. Fortunately we burned no bearings before our error was discovered and so learned a valuable lesson more cheaply than we deserved.

Keeping the radiator protected against freezing is not complicated.

Nearly any filling station has the necessary hydrometer. To be sure the anti-freeze liquid has not evaporated unduly, have the radiator contents tested about once in two weeks, particularly after several days of abnormally warm weather. For real safety, it is wise to have any automobile radiator filled with enough of the compound so that its freezing point is fully ten degrees colder than the lowest temperature expected. There are two reasons for this margin. It allows for a slight percentage of evaporation and for a certain peculiarity of country highways. There are sometimes points on the road where, for some reason, the actual temperature is a full five degrees colder than elsewhere. We have seen many cars steaming and boiling in such places.

We have once or twice been in the same unhappy situation and know that thawing a radiator so frozen is slow work, requiring blankets and plenty of patience.

A word as to the clothing especially designed for the cold of the country. Wool-lined mittens may seem to hark back to sleighbells and buffalo robes, but driving a spirited span hitched to a cutter was a summer occupation compared to steering an unheated automobile ten miles on a below zero morning with ordinary gloves. Mittens are not graceful but in them the fingers are not confined and therefore do not chill as quickly.

Further, do not scorn the good old-fas.h.i.+oned arctics. Get the high four-buckle kind. They afford real protection against cold and snow and a pair lasts for several years, particularly in the sections of the country where snow and abnormally cold weather are intermittent.

Sweaters and woolen m.u.f.flers should also be part of the added equipment, for nothing makes for such misery as getting thoroughly chilled for lack of adequate outside clothing. A walk or a drive becomes then just an endurance test.

We have one last warning. The mitten and overshoe theory may seem to you but a sad sign of approaching age and debility--and so none of them for you. Granted they are not needed except for abnormal weather, some bitter cold evening you may arrive home with fingers, or ears, or toes frostbitten. Don't under such circ.u.mstances go into a warm room before you have thawed them with snow and vigorous ma.s.sage. When you do go into the warm atmosphere continue to treat the bite with cloths wrung out in ice water. Otherwise, this simple winter casualty may be as serious and painful as a bad burn.

KEEPING HOME FIRES IN THEIR PLACE

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_CHAPTER XV_

KEEPING HOME FIRES IN THEIR PLACE

In the good old days before the United States had a record of one fire every minute of the twenty-four hours, grandfather and his father before him considered that a good citizen paid his poll tax, served on juries, and patrolled his home for fire. Going to bed without banking fires in stoves and fireplaces was unthinkable. The rest of the household also had a proper respect for lighted candles and other possible fire breeders. Of course, under this simpler mode of living, light and heat were generated within view and what is seen cannot be readily ignored.

Then came the development of modern household conveniences. Furnaces and steam plants took heating below stairs; electricity replaced candles, lamps, and gas fixtures; and the old cook stove gave way to modern ranges of various sorts. The safer and easier the devices, the more human vigilance relaxed. Today, of our half billion dollar fire loss annually, one-fifth of it occurs in the country, and over sixty per cent of residential fires start in the cellar.

Of course, every home has certain fire hazards but they can be reduced to the minimum by a few elemental improvements and precautions. Some call for slight additions to the house equipment; others are simply the old-fas.h.i.+oned art of self-fire policing. This program of little things starts in the cellar and ends in the attic. Here is the list.

Don't let piles of rubbish and papers acc.u.mulate in cellar, attic, closets, and like places.

Provide a metal container with hinged cover for storing inflammable polishes, cleaning fluids, chemically treated dust cloths, mops, oily cloths, and the like. Make sure they are put there when not in use, instead of being tossed into some convenient "glory hole." Use metal containers also for hot ashes and the daily acc.u.mulation of papers and trash.

Be certain that electric wiring fuses are in good order. Pennies behind burned-out fuses are a misuse of good money in more ways than one.

Inspect the cords of all electrical appliances and portable lamps. If they are frayed or broken, replace them. Speaking of appliances, the simple flat-iron in the hands of a careless or absent-minded person probably causes more fires than all the other more complicated work-savers combined. For stage-struck Seventeen, then, moodily pressing her pink organdy while mentally sweeping a triumphant course through a crowded ballroom in a sophisticated black model from Paris; or for dark-hued Martha who thumps out on a luckless s.h.i.+rt the damage she plans to inflict on a certain Pullman porter when he shows up at her back door again, provide an iron that cannot over-heat. With a thermostat that turns current on and off, it and the ironing board can remain forgotten for hours. The electric light company may benefit but no fire will result.

Equip fireplaces with screens that fit. If the hearth has begun to disintegrate from many fires, it is time to renew it as well as loose mortar.

Mount stoves or Franklin fireplaces on metal-covered, asbestos-lined bases.

Don't put a rug over the register of the pipeless furnace. It will cause dangerous over-heating and the effect will be disastrous rather than decorative.

Be sure no draperies are near open flames such as candles and portable heaters.