Insulated

It's been on our TODO list for a long time, but the January freeze gave us new motivation.

When we bought our 1908 house, we removed all of the old radiators from the main floor, and installed in-floor heat in the basement. I love hot water heat, but this choice was about space economy: removing four giant radiators gave us more options for furniture placement. So we now have flexible PVC tubes, filled with hot water, running between our basement joists, with the expectation of warming the upstairs.

Conventional wisdom says that heat rises. One thing I learned during the past two years is that heat is less motivated to rise when confronted with a few inches of subfloor and hardwood. Faced with such an obstruction, the heat is pretty satisfied to hang out in the basement until it reaches sauna-like temperatures. The concrete floors further absorb the heat, and reflect it back to you as you walk to the laundry room.

It's actually really nice. But our living room, dining room and kitchen? Much less nice.

The solution for this problem is to install reflective insulation beneath the water lines. Our confrontation-averse warmth will choose an upward path when the alternative is to push downwards through reflective plastic.

Or so we've been led to believe! Tomorrow, we will test this theory with a high temperature of 4 degrees.

I wish I could take credit for a day of such hard work, but it was all Jer. I'm grateful to have such a handy guy in my life.

And, yes. Our unfinished basement has popcorn ceilings 🙃.