Feb 3, 2007
Oh, it's cold!
By Timothy R. Butler | Posted at 0:1:8
It has been hovering between 10-25 degrees all day. It's down right chilly, you might say. For some reason, I don't think Covenant had its heaters running in some rooms today, which made my first class and Friday chapel really cold. Ironically, although the chapel itself was cold, the next class I had, which was in the basement of the chapel, was quite comfortable.
At least I was comfortable on the way there and back. One option I probably would not have sought out, but came with most of the Beetles that the dealers had last summer, was the cold weather package. That provides heated seats, and I must say I am surprised at how nice that is! It was a very small package, so now I'm quite glad they ordered the car with it.
A lot of larger buildings have an automated heating (and cooling) system, that has to be programmed. What happens, often, is that a poweer failure (I think you had a few of those recently?) gets the schedule off, and the building thinks it's 5 PM when it's really 8 AM. Or it thinks it's Saturday.
And a few hundred rooms are hard to track. I'm sure there is a contact person that handles heating requests. One trick that might work is to “fool” the thermostat. Many modern systems have a “high-high” and a “low-low” setting. What that means is that rooms aren't allowed to get colder than 60 or hotter than 80, even when unoccupied. To turn on the air conditioner, take a hot (paper) cup of coffee and thumbtack it below the thermostat. To turn on heat, take ice water (with crushed ice) and stir in a dozen salt packets (more, if you have them), and thumbtack it above the thermostat. Those thin plastic cups work best, paper is okay, but styrofoam doesn't work.
The salt keeps that water from freezing at 32 degrees making the temp colder.
Wussy!!!!! Where is the wind chill? We're hovering around 19F at the moment with a wind chill of 6. And tomorrow is going to be a high of 17 with winds forcasted for 13 to 22 with gusts up to 40mph (if you believe noaa.org)
Why waste this time let's have a cook out.
Sorry could not resist the “all in good fun” jab.
BTW, my gatorade got very close to going solid on me during out weekly mTB ride. Instead of drinking it thru the mouth piece I was forced to pop the cover and down it that way. Brrrrrr a slushy in 20 degree weather.
Michael: Thanks, that makes sense.
Mark: Hmm… you are a braver man than I. We've had real temperatures of about 6 on and off. Who needs those wimpy wind chill figures.
Ed: That must have been quite a picture. Shall we all gather for the BBQ at your house?
Somewhere in my box of old printed photos from Europe, I have a picture of myself cooking on the grill in full winter gear, complete with snow in the background. My Dutch neighbors never forgot that.
Hmm… fascinating, Mike. You are probably right about the reason (though I'm not sure why they haven't realized it yet — especially with the chapel — but…). that's an interesting technique you mention. What does the salt do?
Thanks for the tips!