Into the Woods – Page 181 – Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere

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.”

The history of nerds

From an old advertisement

It occurred to me recently that, by now, somehow had probably written a history of nerds. I Googled. Indeed, someone has: American Nerd: The Story of My People, by Benjamin Nugent.

I have not read this book, though I’m considering buying the eBook version for my Sony Reader. I am curious to know when Nugent begins his history. As I reflect on the history of nerds (they’re my people, too), it seems to me that nerds have always been with us. It’s just a matter of figuring out who they were and what they were drawn to at any particular point in history.

American nerds, it would seem to me, burst onto the scene fully liberated and empowered when amateur radio got its start around 1900. When computers became available, ham radio ceased to be cool, though there are still plenty of hams. About 650,000 people hold amateur radio licenses in the United States, though not all of them are active. Most people have no idea how cool ham radio was, once upon a time. Just the word itself, radio, used to express the cutting edge of human progress and ambition. They named those wagons Radio Flyers because radio was cool.

Times change. Now we have digital nerds. They rule. They are highly paid. No one kicks sand in their faces.

In a sense, it seems to me, ham radio might be considered the first real democratization of nerdness. Scientists have always been nerds, but most scientists had educations and equipment that was far beyond the average person. Orville and Wilbur Wright certainly must have been nerds, as were other people who worked on inventing flying machines. But working out the science of aerodynamics, and building flying machines, was way beyond the means of most people, intellectually and financially. Thomas Edison was a nerd. Nikola Tesla was a nerd. But Edison and Tesla were uber-nerds, with tremendous resources at their disposal.

Because nerds have always been a common human type, and because the equipment and knowledge for actualizing one’s nerdness have not always been available, I have to suppose that, in the past, many nerds lived and died with no means of exploring and exercising their nerdness. They could only read books, and dream.

I find that very, very sad.

Fried apples

Fried apples are a Southern standby. The grocery store apples have been good, and cheap, this winter. When the choices are poor in the produce department, those apples start looking more and more like a winter vegetable, which is not how we usually think of them.

Slice them fairly thin and cook them gently in a tablespoon of butter. Some people prefer them plain. I like them with a little raw sugar and cinnamon.

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.

Quiche

I wonder why quiche is belittled as a food for wimps. Quiche actually is a very rich food. And, like apple pie and pizza, it’s a pie. But quiche can be a huge fat, cholesterol, and sodium bomb.

Even though my chickens have made me egg rich, I had not made a quiche in ages until today. It’s not so much the eggs I fret about, it’s the milk and cheese. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, the milk and cheese that is easily available around here is of very poor quality, from cows pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. I do buy organic butter. I gave up half and half when I quit drinking coffee. And I sometimes buy organic yogurt. But I never buy milk and cheese.

So, how might one make quiche?

Whole Foods carries some imitation cheeses that are based on almonds. The mozzarella version melts, the package promises. And there’s always soy milk. Just be sure to buy the organic soy milk that contains nothing but soybeans and water. The flavored and sweetened soy milk is full of sugar carbs, and of course you wouldn’t want vanilla in a quiche.

I used the same quiche recipe I’ve been using for 30 years. It’s based on 3 eggs and 2 cups of milk. To that I added the grated almond cheese, cooked spinach, and lots of garlic.

I used my trusty old basic crust recipe, which has one and quarter cups of flour, a quarter of a cup of olive oil, and three or four tablespoons of soy milk.

The quiche was delicious.

Let’s compute the cholesterol. Three eggs at 235 milligrams of cholesterol per egg equals 705 milligrams of cholesterol in the quiche. At eight slices, that comes to 88 milligrams a slice. Eat two pieces, and that’s 176 milligrams, well below your daily allowance of 300 milligrams.

That’s a whole clove of chopped garlic on top of the spinach.

Country-fried chow mein

Frankly, I’m pretty bad at cooking Chinese food. I often wonder if one doesn’t need to be born Chinese to do it properly. But, if you’ve got a pile of home-grown mung bean sprouts, what are you gonna do?

It’s the noodles that make the chow mein. I have no idea where one might get proper chow mein noodles around here. But whole wheat linguini will do in a pinch. After the linguini has been cooked, brown the noodles lightly in an oiled pan and add some soy sauce, then add the vegetables and stir-fry.

You do make your own sprouts, don’t you?

Mushrooms, onions, garlic, and celery — easy winter vegetables

You know you like ’em fried.

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.

Make your TV smart

MIT course on electricity and magnetism, iTunes

I got rid of my television when I left San Francisco, and I didn’t buy a new one until two months ago. As a movie-watching machine, I missed having a television. But I had almost forgotten how appallingly, incomprehensibly stupid broadcast television is. I don’t have cable or satellite. I just can’t justify the cost of it.

But here’s a cheap way to smarten up your television. Apple’s iTunes is available for both Macintosh and PC. The iTunes application is free to use, unless you buy a song, or a movie, or a television show through iTunes. It comes installed on Macintoshes, of course, but you can download it for your PC. In addition to songs and videos for sale, iTunes also has a lot of free content in the form of audio and video podcasts. There is also “iTunes U” — podcast courses from ivy league schools like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. I’ve been downloading the courses on physics and electrical engineering, but there’s also history, literature, language, health and medicine, etc.

You can watch these podcasts on your Macintosh or PC, of course. But I prefer to watch them on a larger television screen in a more comfortable room. There are two ways to get iTunes video to your television. You can use your computer to burn a DVD, and then play the DVD in your television’s DVD player. Or you can buy Apple TV, a $229 box that attaches to your television and wirelessly copies all your video and audio from iTunes to your television set. I aspire to having an Apple TV, but that has not yet come up in my miserable budget.

Downloading video over the Internet may take some time, but it gives your computer something to do when you’re not otherwise using it.

What do cats do all day?

A recent experiment, which involved putting cat cams on 50 cats, found that indoor cats spend 22 percent of their time looking out windows and only 6 percent of their time sleeping.

That’s consistent with what my cat, Lily, does during the day if the weather is rainy and she wants to stay in. However, though she has a favorite window (my bed upstairs, where she can either sleep or look out the window), she moves from window to window, all around the house. I call this “patrolling.”

During the summer when the foliage is high, I rarely see her when she’s outside, and it’s not at all clear what she does. But, during the winter, I can see into the woods, and there are fewer hiding places, so I can watch from the windows and often see where she is and what she’s doing. Guess what. She patrols. Roughly, she makes big loops around the house, moving from point of interest to point of interest. Favorite places include the woodpiles (where she finds mice), the rock pile (where she also finds mice), the stream below the house (where I am pretty sure she fishes), and the woods (where she often climbs trees, just for fun).

I believe she seldom goes more than 100 yards from the house in any direction. She sometimes digs (for voles?) because she sometimes smells like fresh soil and moss when she comes indoors. All these are hunting behaviors, I think. Lily is a lucky cat, because she has a safe place for what cats instinctively do: solitary hunting. I have seen her with mice many times, but fortunately I’ve never seen her with a bird, though she has climbed on top of the bluebird houses a few times.

A milestone for eBooks

What the Apple tablet is rumored to look like

Clearly lots of people got Kindles for Christmas. Amazon reported that on Christmas day, for the first time ever, they sold more eBooks than printed books.

So we see which way the money is going, and it’s clear why Apple needs to be in this market.