Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The Newest Addition To the Family






(The reason I no longer have to wear a winter jacket in my own house.)

The Peterman House  is not your ordinary house. Between the  90 foot hallway that is as long enough to bowl down, to the master bathroom with four huge closets AND a bidet, it just isn't. And my dad, an engineer, will assure you that he didn't design the place... it's terribly inefficient when it comes to heating and cooling the place. It's not well insulated, and I suppose it probably doesn't help that our house is a sprawling 4000 square foot house!

The first winter in our new house was, well, cold. One time when my friends came over for a sleepover in the winter, they forgot to pack for our room, which peaked at a balmy 50 degrees. They went to bed with their jackets on and still froze! When friends came over, we offered to take their jackets for them, and declined!!! We layered our beds with four to five blankets, and once we woke up, we all put on our winter jackets like Eskimos in the arctic.

My dad decided to change all that! He decided to put in a wood stove. After much planning, decision making, measuring, and doing all the thorough things engineers do, he bought the stove and had it installed. All the while, he was predicting how warm we would be, how nice it would be to be warm throughout our house, etc, etc.

Three months later, the stove was in, and our the room our stove was in topped the upper 60's!!!!! It was great.... at least in that one room! The rest of our house was still freezing! Our family would take our supper from our kitchen into our living room and have an arctic picnic sitting inches from our woodstove. When our friends came over, our games were centered around the woodstove. When it got really cold, and barely broke 60 in the room with the fire going full blast, my dad decided he would fix that. We put up blankets in all the open walls between the living room and the rest of the house. Our "tent" was finally warm... but going to bed was a different story.

This year, he decided a second wood stove was in order... maybe then we could keep this house warm. We all smiled and laughed and agreed, but inside I was thinking,
"Haven't we tried this already???"
Well, the woodstove is in! Right now it's going full blast! Are you expecting to tell you we're thinking about getting a third wood stove?
Let me put it this way: I did my school in athletic shorts this morning... and it was thirty degrees outside. Do I like the new woodstove? You betcha!

3 comments:

  1. I am ALWAYS cold, so I love the idea of a fireplace or wood stove! We don't have one right now, but I told my husband I would like that to be on the "wish list" whenever we decide to move into our own home. :)

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  2. Mom speaking here: I agree, Hannah, the new wood stove has transformed our home to a cozy retreat. I, too, was skeptical that this fix would work after so many attempts to make our house warmer. It has been a wonderful surprise!

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  3. cool we have a wood stove. Is that the only heat you have in your house? We have the some problem with it not heating the whole house. We have a better set up though. My dad says when we get the money we will buy the bigger one and the whole house will be toasty!!!! The stove is in between the living room and dinning room so we can eat in warmth. I'm homeschooled and live in Kansas, have a blog that started as a school project to help me write and type better. Hope you check it out I will read you blog because it is about nutrition. My mom said I should start eating healthier and start loosing weight before it gets to bad. Man that was hard to admit sorry for commenting so long but make sure to check my blog out its fairly new and not on a regular schedule yet.

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