Quilts

When I hear the word quilt, my mind pictures elaborately stitched creations like those made by the Amish. My wife & I love quilts and occasionally frequent quilt shows and exhibitions to see new patterns and cleverness of design. But I was reminded by a post at SurvivalBlog.com of the humble origins and true nature of quilts. My mental image of quilts was equivalent to thinking of hybridized orchids as the only "true" flowers or a gourmet meal as "food".

Quilts were meant to be practical. I have two "camping quilts" that my grandmother made that we still use in the winter. They are made with a simple design of large squares of old scraps. As the fabric gets old and brittle we've replaced some of the squares. In centuries past, quilts were highly valued, often being listed in the inventory of homes for inheritance settlements. 

A quilt is not the fabric design but the construction method of building a blanket sandwich with two outer sheets and an warm insulating center . "Quilting" is the stitching that keeps the insulation in place so it does not bunch up or slide to one end of the quilt. There are "whole-cloth" quilts with no cut pieces at all, just two white sheets and bunting in the middle and yet these can be amazingly beautiful with elaborate stitching patterns used to sew the layers together.

The elaborate stitching patterns are optional. My wife made a denim quilt a few years ago; she bought old jeans at tag sales, removed the seam stitching, ironed them flat, cut squares, and connected the squares on a sewing machine.  For the final "quilting" step we used a thick needle and yarn to tie the layers together with a knot every 6 inches or so apart.

I also learned from the SurvivalBlog.com post that denim is not the best choice for a quilt. It's heavy. (I'll say, you can feel the quilt pressing down as you sleep).

"when you want to stay warm, heavy is not what you want.  To properly insulate yourself from the cold, you need trapped air, and if the top layer of the quilt is of a heavy fabric, it squishes down the insulation and just doesn't keep you as warm."

Seven ways to warm a room

Toe-kick heater

Our house has many rooms and there's little point in trying to keep them all warm in the winter. And my wife likes the temperature colder than I so I've taken to using an electric space heater when I'm at the computer in my "office". Yet electricity is NOT cheap and space heaters have their drawbacks - they're hot to touch, a trip hazard, and perhaps even a fire hazard if left on unattended. Are there other options? Yes, theFamilyHandyman has seven ideas for warming a room safely.

1.; Electric toe-kick heaters. These are small heaters with a built in blower that are installed at toe level in the base board of cabinets where you stand frequently - the kitchen sink, the bathroom sink, and so on. It will warm your toes and since heat rises, your legs will be happy too.

2. Duct-booster fans. If you have forced-air heat like I do, then you have one fan trying to push heat to the entire house. If there's a room not getting its fair share of warmth, you can install a booster fan inside the air duct to increase the air flow to a given room or floor. The article suggests buying a "quality" fan and avoid the cheap but noisy models.

3. Cove Heaters. These install along the top of a wall and radiate heat downward.

4. Electric floor heat - you can install wires or mats underneath a floor warm it up. But watch out! A friend has this in her kitchen, set down a grocery bag full of chocolates, forget about them, and they all melted. :-)

5. Radiant Ceiling Panels - these inch thick panels mount on a ceiling and radiate heat downwards. Like cove heating you can target areas where family actually sit.

6. Ceiling fan heater - Very clever, a ceiling fan with a built in heater so the fan works great in summer or winter.

7. Room to room ventilators - or "through the wall fan". If you have one room that is always too warm, you can put a fan in a wall vent and blow the warm air to another room.

Bottom Line

Heat wisely. Apply heat to the places you work, eat, and play instead of trying to warm all the air in a house.

Staying warm when the heat is out

Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
~Sinclair Lewis

Here are some ideas for staying warm when your house/apt. heat is not working:

Dress warmly! Wear a hat and socks indoors and even in bed! Dress in many layers from head to fingers to toes. Put on a winter coat or make your own by stuffing your clothing with crumbled up newspapers, paper towels or other insulating materials.

Snuggle and share body heat with family and pets.

Heat rises so stay upstairs.
Plug any air gaps around windows and doors.

Close doors to unused rooms. This will reduce drafts and retain what little heat your bodies give off.

Cover floors with a carpet or blanket.

Vigorous exercise warms the body and moves heat to fingers and toes.

When sitting still wrap yourself in a blanket or thick bathrobe.

Bottom Line

Know your limits to avoid frost bite and hypothermia! Sometimes the best thing to do is leave a cold house and find a shelter with heat.

Most fireplaces do a poor job of heating a room. NEVER leave a fire unattended or burning while you sleep and do not dispose of fireplace ashes near your house. Space heaters and candles are a fire risk when used near flammable items. Gas powered heaters are also a carbon monoxide risk when there is no ventilation.

NEVER use a power generator indoors. While TV news emphasizes tornados, hurricanes and earthquakes, the real killers in nature are heat and cold. Globally there are more deaths from extreme cold than from extreme storms. Freezing to death is very real, especially for senior citizens and infants. Freezing cold can also inspire desperate measures to stay warm which lead to death by house fire or carbon monoxide poisoning.

When is it too cold to stay home?

How low can you go?

- lyrics to "Limbo Rock"

I was asked yesterday, "If a house is without heat, at what temperature does it become unsafe to stay?" Or to put it another way, "At what temperature should one evacuate a home?"

I've searched the Internet and found nothing useful so I'm hoping that some reader can provide an answer. One site said that temperatures below 70 F can be dangerous (to the elderly perhaps???) if no protection is taken (like a sweater?). That seems way too extreme. At my home in winter, I'm lucky if I can convince the wife to set the thermostat up to 63 F. It's often 60 by day and 55 at night. For me 63 F is tolerable with layered clothing but below that my fingers become chilled.

When we lost power with the Halloween Nor'Easter we put on coats and hats and did OK for awhile as the temperature fell over several days. At 40 F we were becoming concerned but then the power was restored.

A site on wind chill said that -20 F was "dangerous". It may be true that even brief exposure to -20 F is dangerous but what about prolonged exposure? Someplace else warned about 30 F and below.  At that temperature you must to take active precautions to prevent your extremities from freezing with frostbite but it is survivable. When I attended an igloo making class the instructor warned against overheating the inside of the igloo. If the temperature got above 32 F the igloo would melt from the inside-out. So igloo dwellers must cope with the 30-32 F range.

Bottom Line

There might not be one simple answer. Temperature tolerance does depend on age and health and body fat. Still it would be nice to know how low is safe?

Without power for over a week

"That's the night the lights went out in Georgia"
-lyrics in song of the same name

The day before Halloween, a freak snowstorm dump inches of wet heavy snow on New York, New Jersery, and New England states. Because the trees still had leaves attached, hundreds of thousands of braches became too heavy and broke. Now this does not sound like a big deal, certainly not as flashy a disaster as a hurricane or earthquake, and yet the consequences have been extreme. The Halloween nor'easter knocked out power to over 3 million homes. Connecticut was hit especially hard and over 100,000 residents of Connecticut are without power a week after the storm and they are NOT happy about it.  See Tempers flare over 6 days of Conn. power outages written on Nov 4.

“Angry residents left without heat as temperatures drop to near freezing overnight have been lashing out at Connecticut Light & Power: accosting repair crews, making profane criticisms online and suing. In Simsbury, a hard-hit suburban town of about 25,000 residents, National Guard troops deployed to clear debris have been providing security outside a utility office building.”

Abusing the work crews is a VERY bad idea. Some of these repairmen have left their familes in mid-west states to work here around the clock.  (A loose wire at our house was fixed at 3:30 in the morning.)

What went wrong? One reader of Instapundit, surmises,

Not sure what goes wrong, but it sounds like greed in not wanting to hire enough workers, failure to pay out of state crews that came up to help with Irene, incompetence, and poor character.

It's possible that Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P) underestimated the massive scope of the damage and was slow to mobilize outside help. Regional disasters like this are particuallarly hard to solve because you cannot just call in workmen from neighboring states. Instead those states are desparate for extra repairmen also and everyone is competing for workers from outside the disaster area. And this is a repeat from just months ago during "hurricane" Irene so "favors" used up, emergency funds spent, emergency workers burnt out.

Bottom Line

It's events like this that show why you must be able to take care of yourself and your family. Can you supply your own heat, light and food for two weeks? If not, why not?

Consumer Warning: Beware of Hot Fireplace Glass

“He who wants to warm himself in old age must build a fireplace in his youth”
-German Proverb

Here's an interesting warning from Consumer Reports:

More than 2,000 children ages 5 and younger suffered burn injuries from gas fireplaces from 1999 through March 2009, according to research conducted by Carol Pollack-Nelson, Ph.D., an independent safety consultant.

The problem: the glass front on gas fireplaces gets blistering hot. Hot enough, according to Dr. Pollack-Nelson, to cause severe burns. Curiosity about fire leaves children particularly vulnerable. Industry standards for gas fireplaces allow the temperature of the ceramic glass to reach as high as 1,328°F. Tempered and annealed glass is allowed to reach 500°F and 446°F, respectively.

Bottom Line

We have a fireplace with a glass front at home. It never occurred to me that the glass could be 500°F. Ouch!
If you have young children keep them away from the fireplace, even if the glass door is closed.

Kerosene

Kilometers are shorter than miles.  Save gas, take your next trip in kilometers. 
~George Carlin

For the past ten years my wife has been a tour guide at Kykuit, the summer home of J.D Rockefeller. Perhaps you know that by most accounts, JDR is the wealthiest man in modern history. His fortune at his death (1937) was equal to nearly 2% of all the wealth in the nation. And you may recall that he made his money in Oil and created the Standard Oil Company (the world's first and largest multinational corporation until it was broken up by the Supreme Court in 1911.)

What you may not know is that Standard Oil's initial wealth was built not upon gasoline but kerosene which was used in oil lamps before the invention of the light bulb (1879) and the availability of electricity in homes (1905-1925). Before 1900, gasoline was considered a waste byproduct of oil refinement. JDR was very lucky. While the market for kerosene vanished in the early 20th century, a new market for gasoline powered cars was created and flourished and kept Standard Oil in business.

If you're like me, you may be clueless on what the difference is between kerosene and gasoline. So here's what I found...

Crude oil pumped out­ of the ground is a black liquid called petroleum which is composed of hydrocarbon molecules of different lengths. The length affects the molecular properties. The shortest chains are gases: CH₄ (methane), C₂H₆ (ethane), C₃H₈ (propane) and C₄H₁₀ (butane). The chains above C₁₉ are solid at room temperature while the chains in the middle are liquids. If you deduce from this that molecule length changes the boiling temperature, you're right!

According to HowStuffWorks.com,

The chains from C₇H₁₆ through C₁₁H₂₄ are blended together and used for gasoline. All of them vaporize at temperatures below the boiling point of water. That's why if you spill gasoline on the ground it evaporates very quickly.
Next is kerosene, in the C₁₂ to C₁₅ range, followed by diesel fuel and heavier fuel oils (like heating oil for houses).
Next come the lubricating oils. These oils no longer vaporize in any way at normal temperatures. For example, engine oil can run all day at 250 degrees F (121 degrees C) without vaporizing at all. Oils go from very light (like 3-in-1 oil) through various thicknesses of motor oil through very thick gear oils and then semi-solid greases. Vasoline falls in there as well.
Chains above the C₂₀ range form solids, starting with paraffin wax, then tar and finally asphaltic bitumen, which is used to make asphalt roads.

The boiling point of hydrocarbons also impacts its flammability. A lit match tossed onto gasoline will burn aggressively. If you drop a match into diesel or kerosene, the match will go out. For this reason kerosene is safer than gasoline in the home and Diesel fuel is safer for trucks with giant gas tanks and for military vehicles. It takes a very high pressure for Diesel to burn. 

Bottom Line

Kerosene is typically (and in some jurisdictions legally required to be) stored in a blue container in order to avoid it getting confused with the much more flammable gasoline, which is typically kept in a red container. Diesel fuel is generally stored in yellow containers.

Today kerosene is used as a cooking fuel in less developed countries and for portable stoves for backpackers. There are also kerosene space heaters for use during power failures. (Not recommended for closed indoor areas without a chimney due to the danger of build-up of carbon monoxide gas.)

The Amish, who abstain from electricity, still rely on kerosene for lighting at night.

A Cord of Wood

"It was a cord of maple, cut and split

And piled- and measured, four by four by eight.

And not another like it could I see.

No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.

And it was older sure than this year's cutting,

Or even last year's or the year's before."

-The Wood-Pile by Robert Frost

If you burn wood to keep warm in the winter, heed the advice from Comsumerist with
Measure Your Firewood Before You Pay For It

Unless you have a scale that can accurately weigh several hundred pounds of wood, never buy your firewood by the ton or the "truckload." In many states, unpackaged firewood must be sold by the cord

.A Cord of wood is 128 cubic feet. For example a wood pile 8 ft by 4 ft by 4 ft = 8*4*4 = 128 cubic feet.

Be sure to measure the height, length and depth of the stack. If multiplying the three measurements together doesn't equal 128 cubic feet, it's not a cord.

And make sure the wood is properly stacked like a box of matchsticks.

The pieces should be stacked neatly with individual pieces touching and parallel to each other. If it looks like a Jenga game or a log cabin, it's time to re-stack. [or find another seller.]

Bottom Line

For your protection, you should always be sure to get a receipt. In some municipalities, sellers of firewood are required by law to provide customers with detailed receipts of firewood sales.

The Weights and Measures Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology has a handy PDF you might want to read before investing all the time and money in that stack of firewood.

Carbon Monoxide

"It's a Gas! Gas! Gas!" - lyrics to Jumping Jack Flash

If you live in the New York City region, subscribe to Notify N.Y.C. at https://a858-nycnotify.nyc.gov/notifynyc/  Alerts and notices are available via email, SMS, phone, Twitter or RSS feed.

Registrants can select five notification types for up to five ZIP codes across NYC.

• Emergency Alerts – messages about life-threatening events that may require immediate action. All registrants are automatically added to this list.
• Significant Events Notifications – important information about emergency events, utility outages and other types of high-impact events in your ZIP code.
• Public Health Notifications – information about important public health issues in your community
• Public School Closing/Delay Advisories – updates about unscheduled public school closings, delays and early dismissals
• Unscheduled Parking Rules Suspensions – updates about unscheduled suspensions of citywide parking rules

Bottom Line

As an example, here is a NYC message from 12/17 ....

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reminds New Yorkers to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning by clearing snow from exhaust pipes before starting car engines, avoid running cars in enclosed spaces, and clear snow from the vents of combustion appliances. Never heat your home with a stove or oven.

I should know better but it never occurred to me to check the exhaust pipe of my snow covered car after the blizzard last weekend.

Save Money this Winter

"Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to" - John Ed Pearce

This week temperatures plummeted and we had to throw some quilts on our bed to keep warm at night. So this is a good time to start thinking about heating the house for the winter. What can be done to lower heating bills?

1. Microsoft Holm, www.microsoft-hohm.com/Home/, offers advice. I entered my address and it popped up a satellite image of my house with guesses at the number of rooms, types of heating, age of home, etc, and estimates my energy bill. Spooky. I'll have to work with this more to see if it will be useful or not.

2. There are tax credits for home improvement that will expire Dec 31. Check out www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=tax_credits.tx_index

3. Trees are said to be good for your house - they provide shade in summer and a wind break in the winter. I'm not sure I agree. We have many trees, a forest, around our house. What we might gain in temperature control is surely lost in tree maintenance, roof/car repair from fallen branches, no sunlight for backyard garden, poor TV/satellite reception, and paying someone to rake the leaves in the fall.

4. Use a programmable thermostat that changes the house temperature based upon rules that you set up. We keep the house cold at night, warm it up to get us out of bed, cool down during work hours, warm up for our return and back to cool for sleeping again.  Modern high-end  thermostats can be remotely controlled via your cell phone or iPhone.

5. A lot of heat is lost through single-pane windows. Sadly Energy Star windows are expensive, an estimate for just one wall of our house was $18,000. So each winter we cover our windows with a layer of transparent plastic sheeting.

6. Plug the leaks in your house. Caulk around windows and any cracks you find. Thermal images (above) can show you the hot spots in your house.

7. Cover hot water pipes with insulation.

8. Insulate your attic and basement.

9. Open the drapes by day to let in the sun and close them at night.

10. Dress in sweaters. Don't try to heat the house to summer temperature.

Bottom Line

Heating oil and natural gas are expensive! Make your house as energy efficient as you can. But don't go crazy. If we purchase the $18,000 windows we would never make back the money in energy savings.

More ideas at http://www.moneytalksnews.com/2010/07/07/searching-for-lower-energy-bills-this-summer-13-cool-tips/

A Late Turkey Dinner

"Most turkeys taste better the day after, my mother's tasted better the day before"-Rita Rudner

Now this is an unusual story, “Wife who went to buy Christmas turkey and got stuck in the snow returns home... a month later”. Kay Ure left her home in Cape Wrath, Scotland (the most northwesterly point of the UK) to buy a Christmas turkey in Inverness 11 miles away. But she was unable to return when snow & freezing winds made the roads too icy for travel. Mrs Ure lived with a friend for a month before her husband managed to bring her home by boat.

And curiously it was the husband who seems to have suffered the worst for this. He had to live on the contents of his cupboards, baked beans and pasta, for a month. [ASIDE – see why food storage is important!]

Two weeks into his isolation, he ran out of heat and power when his coal fueled electricity generator blew up. Fortunately he had a battery powered radio for weather reports and logs and fireplace for heat.

Bottom Line

You never know when an “emergency” incident will occur. Ice storms are common the world round though usually not as severe as what the Ures encountered. How well could you get buy if stranded in your house for a week?

Winter Insulation

“I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.”- Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)

Popular Mechanics has some ideas to reduce your Winter heating bill...

1. Plug the gap into your attic (shows pictures of how)
2. Stuff your Chimney (to block the inflow of cold air)
3. Upgrade your windows (or cover them)
4. Put a blanket on your hot water heater
5. Wrap your hot water pipes
6. Fill cracks and gaps in the house walls

Bottom Line

Check out Popular Mechanics for a cost estimate on these ideas. Most pay for themselves in the first year.

Winterize your House

“Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat” - anon

Kiplinger.com had published Your Fall Home-Maintenance To-Do List with 9 ways to winterize your home:

9. Have your lawn-irrigation system professionally drained.

8. Trim landscaping.

7. Turn off exterior faucets.

6. Add extensions to downspouts so water runs at least 3 to 4 feet away from the foundation.

5. Clean the gutters.

4. Caulk around windows and doors.

3. Make necessary roof repairs.

2. Buy a programmable thermostat.

1. Tune up your heating system.

Bottom Line

Forecasters are predicting an extra cold winter in the North East due to a weak El Nino. Prepare now!

Ways to Keep Warm

"May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night and a smooth road all the way to your door.” - Irish Blessing

I can cope with most things during a power outage. I'll light some candles (protected by hurricane lanterns or similar), eat cold tuna fish or peanut butter on crackers, and drink the bottled water in my basement. But one item has me worried. If it's winter and freezing cold outside, how will I stay warm? Here are a few ideas I've found.

1. If you wear your warmest coat/gloves/hat, your odds of freezing to death are quite low. You are more likely to die by fire, lack of oxygen or carbon monoxide poisoning trying to get warm with the wrong methods.
2. No coat? Then wear multiple layers of clothing. Stuff your outer layer with crumpled up newspaper.
3. Still cold? Don't try to warm the entire house. Heat just a single room on the "warm" side of the house, opposite the blowing wind. Don't pick a room with lots of single pane glass or thin walls. Close doors or hang drapes to isolate the room.
4. Still not warm enough? Pile all your blankets on the biggest bed and put the whole family underneath.
5. If you live on a farm, you can emulate the Holy Family on Christmas Eve and sleep near the animals. The barn may be the warmest place around.

Bottom Line

Safety First! Do not burn anything larger than a candle inside the house without proper ventilation. It seems silly to open windows when you're trying to get warm but see item #1. And don't forget you need to open TWO windows (one inch gap) on opposite sides of the room for air to circulate.

• Never burn BBQ charcoal inside the house. This is deadly.- If you have a propane grill instead, don't get clever and try to hook this up to your stove or natural gas heat. Special regulator valves are required for this to safely work.
• If you have a fireplace or are using a space heater, take turns staying awake so one person is always watching and maintaining the fire. Don't let it burn unattended while everyone sleeps. Keep a fire extinguisher nearby. Also recommended is a battery powered Carbon Monoxide (CO) detector.
• For your fireplace, you can make emergency logs from rolled up newspapers and magazines.
• Do not put a space heater on carpets, rugs or uneven surfaces. Keep it at least 3 feed away from bedding, drapes, furniture or anything that could burn.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Taxation with representation ain't so hot either. ~Gerald Barzan

Would you like to save money on your 2009 taxes? Then check out the new US Government tax credits for environmental (green) home improvements. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, passed in February, allows homeowners to claim tax credits for up to 30 percent, up to $1500, of the cost of energy-efficient upgrades like windows, doors, roofs and insulation. Tax credits are better than tax deductions. They directly reduce the taxes you owe ($ per $) as opposed to reducing your taxable income.

Because of the double cap, you would have to spend $5000 so that 30% of your cost hits the credit limit of $1500. Now $5000 won’t buy much in home improvement but it could replace some doors or some old windows. Be aware that the work must be completed by Dec. 31, 2010. According to Popular Mechanics,

"Taking advantage of it can be tricky. For example, not all Energy Star–certified doors and windows qualify for the program's strict standards ... Homeowners should keep the Manufacturer's Certification Statement saying the item qualifies for the tax credit"

• Window and door replacement must have a U-factor and solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) of .30 or less, which is more stringent than Energy Star. See http://www.garagewownow.com/ for which garage doors qualify for credit.
• All Energy Star metal and asphalt roofs qualify. Download "Find A Product" from Energy Star's "Roof Products" page for more info. Synthetic roofs are not covered.
• Insulation installations must last five years or have a two-year warranty. Insulated siding and cladding won't help you with a tax break, but vapor retarders will. It's not clear yet if spray foam and air sealing are covered, according to the EPA.
• See the Consortium for Energy Efficiency product directory for qualified types of central Air Conditioners and air source heat pumps. Consult the Gas Appliance Manufacturing Association for natural gas and oil-using heating products. Check pelletheat.org for information on biomass stoves.
• See "Residential Water Heaters Key Product Criteria" under Energy Star's "Products'" tab for qualifying Water-heater replacements.

If you have money to spend the following “big projects” are not limited by the $1500 cap. You get credit for %30 of the cost through 2016 but not to exceed your tax liabilities (i.e. no tax refunds via credits).

• Geothermal heat pump
• Solar water heater for home use (not pools or hot tubs)
• Solar/photovoltaic panels
• Small wind energy systems.

Bottom Line

This is a great way to save money. These home improvements will reduce your energy bill and you get a tax credit. How can you lose?

See http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_tax_credits for more information.

No Power on Cold Winter Nights

“Three feet of ice does not result from one day of cold weather.” - Chinese Proverb

I really like the story, Ice storm tests mettle of Harvard residents by the Harvard Press. It goes into details about how families survived in mid-winter with 4+ days without power.

Sleeping arrangements were dictated by the location of a fireplace in the master bedroom. The whole family could fall asleep while that room was still warm, alongside their cats and a pair of birds. ... the room dipped to about 42 degrees on the coldest night.

Even the four cats slept under the bed covers.

The group showed ingenuity at mealtime too, boiling water in a sterno-powered fondue pot and powering the coffee grinder from the car adaptor. Ten-year-old Julia LeBlanc used her Girl Scout training and some aluminum foil to grill ham-and-cheese sandwiches in the fire, though she found that bagels tended to burn. Their frozen food was saved by the next-door neighbors, whose home had some power from a powerful generator. To power their plumbing, the LeBlanc family tapped the five-gallon drums of water that Peter had stashed in his basement some three years ago for just such emergencies. A healthy supply of firewood kept the fireplaces burning, and Peter LeBlanc even took the time to rent a log-splitter and share it with his neighbors.

Bottom Line

If you're prepared, a winter crisis can be a time of family bonding and adventure instead of hardship and suffering. “We’ve done very well!” said Elizabeth LeBlanc.

Winterize Your House & Garden

"If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day" - John A. Wheeler

Today I recommend an excellent blog on ways to winterize your garden and house at http://gallimaufree.wordpress.com/. It's a check list of tasks to do before winter hits with freezing temperatures. For example:

• Empty your garden hoses and put them up for the winter
• Check your furnaces and filters
• Wash all your blankets, feather beds, duvets, duvet covers, flannel sheets, and winter curtains.

Bottom Line

I'll personally vouch for one of the recommendations, "Make bags of long grain rice - tubes long enough to drape over your neck or squares to lay against your back or head or joints. These can be microwaved and used as heating pads. If you mix them with fragrant herbs, it will also smell nice."

My wife uses this trick every night in winter to warm her feet. I microwave two cloth bags filled with rice for about 3 minute and place them in the bed. It's a modern version of the coal filled bed warmer.

Help with Winter Heating

"If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?" - Steven Wright

In New York there are signs that winter is approaching - frost on the ground in the morning and even a snow forecast! So with much regret we turned on the house heat and started burning oil. I say with regret because heating oil is VERY expensive this year - a delivery we got last week cost nearly $4/gallon.
Unlike most of America which uses gas or coal for heating, there are many in the North Eastern states that use oil. And not everyone will be able to afford the bill. If this is your situation then check out Consumerist.com on the topic of heat. A recent story, Ways To Get Help With Paying For Heat, recommends the following...

1. Low-Income Housing and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) Direct funding for heating bills from October to March

2. The Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) Funds "low-income" homeowners to make their homes more energy efficient

3. Check with your local electrical company for winter assistant plans.
For example: Con Edison provides assistance with bills through the winter months with Level Billing, energy grants for needy families, and payment plan options; 1 (800) 75-CONED.

4. Look for a Salvation Army, an American Red Cross, or a local advocacy center in your town or city.

BOTTOM LINE
Data collected in 2001 indicates that nearly 600 deaths a year are caused by extreme winter weather. Over half of these will be elderly, children or disabled adults in homes unable to afford adequate heating. In late 2008 gas/electricity shut-offs have been running 17 percent higher than last year among customers of New York state's major utilities, and 22 percent higher in economically hard-hit Michigan. Also up are Pennsylvania, Florida and California.

Under the laws of New York and many Eastern and Midwestern states, power CAN NOT be shut off for nonpayment during winter months.