The house – Page 5 – Into the Woods

Old Southern house trimmings

Much of the South’s old rural housing stock is falling into ruin. This is the case with the Yadkin Valley house that my mother was born in. It was built by her grandfather. The house, and most of the land the house sits on, is no longer in the family.

I’m considering salvaging a tiny bit of tradition by duplicating the trim on the front porch posts of my mother’s childhood home. My brother did this. He copied the pattern and used it for the front porch of his house, which is about 25 years old.

Though the pattern is not exactly Gothic revival, I’m thinking that tradition may trump strict adherence to the Gothic revival style of Acorn Abbey.

Whole-house surge protector

I finally have a whole-house surge protector, something I’ve wanted for a long time. It’s possible to buy these things and have an electrician install it, but my electric company offers them for $9.95 a month, with installation, and a warranty, included.

The surge protector installs under the meter. It took the technician only a couple of minutes to install it. The warranty will pay for the repair or replacement of anything damaged by lightning (or any kind of power surge) that gets through this surge protector. The warranty covers each damaged device for up to $5,000, or a total of up to $50,000 per incident. One of the advantages of a whole-house surge protector is that it can protect the big stuff such as the heat pump, refrigerator, washing machine, etc. It’s a good idea to keep the small surge protector installed at computers, etc., to give them double protection.

I hope this makes me feel a little more secure during the summer lightning storms. I know how much damage lightning can do…

I found the right chairs

For months, I’ve been looking for the right dining chairs. The chairs I’ve liked best are Amish chairs. They have the mass and the no-nonsense lines that work best with Gothic revival and with the heavy, solid cherry tables my brother built for me. I was put off by the price of the Amish chairs, though, and was hoping to find something I liked for less. But today I found just the right Amish chairs at the Amish furniture store in Walnut Cove. They had been marked down by a third because the factory filled an order with the wrong finish, or something like that. The chairs were made at an Amish factory in Ohio. They’re oak, stained with a cherry finish. I bought four — two with arms and two without.

They look severe, but they’re surprisingly comfortable. And they were made by American craftsmen.

The history of fireplaces

My fireplace burns propane.

While watching on DVD the 2006 Masterpiece Theater / BBC production of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, I realized that, though some features of houses have changed a great deal over the years, fireplaces have changed very little. There was the Rumford fireplace — a more efficient fireplace — that was becoming the state of the art at the time of the American revolution. And of course coal-fired fireplaces and gas-fired fireplaces were developed. But the elemental fire and hearth are things that humans have had in their houses for as long as they’ve had houses.

Though today fireplaces have a certain utility as backup sources of heat in case our modern heating systems go down, they are not really necessary, and that is not how we justify their cost, which is considerable. We have them because we want that archetypal presence of hearth and fire in our homes. If you walk through a building supply super-store like Home Depot this time of year, you’ll even see simulated “electric fireplaces” for people who don’t have chimneys.

In Walden, Thoreau had a lot to say about the cost of our houses. He wondered why people want such big houses when much smaller houses would do, even though people sometimes spend a lifetime paying for their home. Thoreau saw this as enslaving ourselves to our houses.

If anything, houses now cost even more now than they cost in Thoreau’s day. These days, probably a third of the cost of the house goes into systems that didn’t exist in Thoreau’s day — central heating and cooling systems, electrical systems, fancy plumbing systems, and so on.

The cranky and eccentric Thoreau was quite cynical complaining about houses: “Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.”

It was in Thoreau I encountered a reference to the Rumford fireplace: “An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars (these are the country rates) entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man — and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages — it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

Steam punk heat pumps

The compressor

It’s cold outside, so let’s talk about heating systems.

Over the years, I’ve lived in houses with all kinds of heating systems — wood stoves (including wood cookstoves), wood circulators, oil circulators, oil-fired furnaces, gas-fired furnaces, and, in San Francisco, electric baseboard heaters. The heating system that I remember most fondly (other than the wood cookstoves) was a system that used steam radiators and a gas-fired boiler, vintage 1935 or so. A friend of mine even named the old boiler Puff.

The gothic cottage has a heat pump (a Trane XR13, model number 4TWR3030A1000AA), and these past few months have been my only experience with heat pumps. I’ve been eager to see how it performs and how much electricity it uses. It’s also a complicated system with considerable nerd appeal, not least because my system is zoned. That is, though I have only one heat pump, I have thermostats upstairs and downstairs. A Honeywell zoning system electrically opens and closes ducts to direct hot or cool air where it’s needed.

So how do I like heat pumps? Great — until the outdoor temperature drops below about 17 degrees Fahrenheit, below which temperature the heat pump efficiency clearly falls off rapidly. I’ve been observing the system carefully, paying attentions to questions such as: How cold is it outside? What are the thermostats’ settings? How often and how long does the system run? How warm is the air coming out of the ducts? Surprisingly (surprising to me, at least), the system works quite well even when the outdoor temperature is in the 20s. It goes without saying that if the temperature outdoors is in the 30s or 40s, the heat pump heats effortlessly.

But the low here last night was 13, and the night before, 11. At those temperatures the heat pump really labors and runs most of the night. Both mornings, the thermostats have indicated that the heat pump’s “auxiliary heat” system had kicked in. To compensate for the poor efficiency at low temperatures (which heat pump manufacturers certainly understand), heat pump systems have electrical coils in their air handlers which kick in when the heat pump alone is unable to maintain the temperature requested by the thermostat. The auxiliary heating coils use three to four times more electricity per unit of heating that the heat pump, so they’re switched on only when necessary.

Just what is a heat pump? It’s like an air conditioner, with a compressor and refrigerant. But unlike an air conditioner, it can switch into reverse and can either heat or cool. The system consists of two units — the compressor, which is always outdoors; and the air handler, which is inside the house somewhere, often in a basement or attic. The air handler contains blowers, a heat exchanger for the refrigerant coming from the compressor, and the backup heating coils.

As an air conditioning system, heat pumps are great, and they have no greater problem with efficiency than any other air conditioner. But when you use a heat pump for heat, you want to be aware of how its efficiency falls off at extremely low outdoor temperatures.

With a heat pump, you almost certainly want a secondary source of heat. I have a propane fireplace. The fireplace works even during power failures, so it serves as an emergency heat source. But on those cold mornings when it’s 14 degrees outdoors is a great time to turn on the propane fireplace to give the heat pump some help.

If you’re bored some cold morning, why not watch your heat pump do its steam punk defrosting trick? The coils on the outdoor compressor get very cold when the system is pumping heat into the house. Frost forms. This frost must be periodically melted off. I am not yet sure how my heat pump decides when to go into defrost mode. I need to call my installer and find out. But I understand that there are two ways this is done. Some heat pumps defrost every so many minutes, and others have ice detectors on the coils. In any case, when this mode begins, you’ll see heavy white frost on the outdoor coils. The fan shuts off, and the compressor runs in reverse, so that the coils are producing heat rather than cold. Meanwhile, back in the house, the thermostats say “Waiting…”, and the air handler will continue to send “auxiliary heat” into the house if needed. Outside, as the coils heat up, water drips, and the ice melts away. After a few minutes, a cloud of steam begins to pour out of the compressor. When the defrost cycle is done, there is a steam-punk pneumatic hiss, like a steam train, as valves open to reverse the compressor back into service. The fan turns back on, and the compressor goes back to work pumping heat into the house. Very entertaining!

I’ve written previously about the steam punk movement.

The air handler, Trane model number 4TEC3F30B1000AA

I upload data on my electricity use to Microsoft Hohm. My electric bill for December was on $94. This month has been very cold, so I’m sure I won’t get off so easy with my next bill. June was the month the system first came on line, so the June bill was for only part of a month. For a mild month like September, my electrical bill was $53. That includes, of course, lighting, cooking, hot water, appliances, and computers.

Some interior shots

Looking into the living area from the kitchen area

Several people have been asking for interior shots of the gothic cottage. Frankly, I’ve been stalling, for a couple of reasons. For one, the interior is a work in progress, and it’s going to be many more months before I’ll be able to afford to finish what I want to do. For two, interior photography is not easy, and I’m never happy with the results I get with my camera and its lens. There will soon be two other examples of this house in existence, from people who’ve bought the plans from the same architect. One is in Canada, where construction is almost complete. And another is in western North Carolina, where I believe construction is to start in a few months. The interior of my house is built according to the architect’s plans with minor changes. I left both upstairs rooms open to the living room, with railings. The architect showed a large upstairs bathroom on the back on the house, and a walk-in closet off the upstairs hallway. Instead of this, I used the walk-in closet as the upstairs bathroom, and I used the large bathroom space for what I call “the radio room,” and left it open to the living room.

Just as I had indispensable professional advice from my brother on the actual construction of the house, I’ve had advice and ideas from my sister on the interior. I’ve had to work with such furniture as I had, though I’ve bought a few pieces (my brother made those large tables in the living room). There are other pieces of furniture that I still need to find, or build. I also need curtains. The curtains will be expensive. And I need more wall hangings. I’ll add these things as I can afford them. In trying to better explain my taste to my sister, I realized that my taste probably comes more from movies — especially period movies — than from anything else. I’d like to have a bit more Harry Potter. If I had to summarize my taste in one sentence, I think it would be this: I want it to look like a place where magic is possible, or like a setting for a good story.

Much of the effect I want has to do with lighting, which of course I can’t capture in daylight shots using window light. The atmosphere in the house definitely changes its mood at night.

Looking into the kitchen area from the living area

Looking up into the radio room from the living room

Looking toward the doors of the downstairs bedroom and bathroom. The room makes that big organ console look small.

Looking toward the front door from the back door. That’s the laundry closet on the left. Can you espy the cat?

Looking toward the front door again, showing the bottom of the stairs and the under-stairs closet

Looking down onto the stairway landing from the radio room. The radio room has a large cased opening into the stairway.

Looking down the upstairs hall from the bedroom

Looking into the bedroom from the radio room

Looking into the radio room from the bedroom. That’s a closet on the far end of the radio room.

One more…

It’s still not quite the photo I want, but I’ve been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to photograph the abbey on a snowy evening.

The snow commences…

It started snowing today around 1 p.m. I think the snow has just begun, though. Ten to twelve inches is forecast.

Lily at sunset

Lily loves the big upstairs windows — especially when she’s all snug on the bed at sunrise and sunset.

A new heirloom

It was not easy to figure out what sort of tables I needed for the main room of my little gothic cottage. Most of the tables one sees in antique stores — at least any table that I stood a chance of affording — were just too spindly and too fancy. I wanted a table with the mass to hold its own in a fairly large room with a 21-foot ceiling, something with a strong Gothic presence. I soon realized that the tables I needed would look more like church furniture than household furniture. Sure enough, in looking online at companies that make furniture for churches, I saw the sort of tables I wanted. They were being sold as altars or offertory tables. They were ungodly expensive, even though most of them seemed to involve veneer and plywood.

Solution: Commission a table from my brother, who also built my kitchen cabinets. No veneer and no plywood, please. The new table is solid cherry. It’s 28 inches wide and four and a half feet long. The legs are three and a half inches square. My brother gave me a steep discount on the cost of the table. But, in a sense, the table is really family property. It went into my brother’s workshop as cherry boards and came out as an heirloom for his grandchildren.

I’m going to commission two more tables. One will have the same dimensions as the first table; the other will be shorter. Two of the tables will sit at the sides of the room normally. But for special occasions the tables will be lined up in the center of the room for a 12-foot feasting table.

Now where the dickens am I going to find suitable chairs?

Another piece arrived unexpected this weekend: a rug. My sister found it at a moving sale. She knows my color scheme here, so she bought it for me. It’s a wool rug from a famous rug maker, and it was a steal. The cat approves.