Oh, The Horror of the Penetrating Cold.
This may sound like the title of a horror movie, although most good horror movies tend to have some scantily clad people running around and you don’t get many of them out and about when the temperature drops below -30 C and the penetrating cold sets in.
When I was a kid, we lived in a rather old house and I had the attic room all to myself and I loved it. I could sit or lie in bed and look out the dormer windows and see the real world outside and enjoy the weather in summer and winter.
I was sitting propped up in bed one cold winter night and a character in the book proclaimed, “It’s a penetrating cold out.” I could certainly identify with that because an icy cold blast of breeze was coming in the poorly-fitted dormer windows. It was time to get some old newspapers, fold them up in strips and stuff them around the cracks of the windows letting the cold air in. Houses, particularly old ones, tend to leak a lot of warm air out and let a lot of cold air in.
I have lived in tents, trailers, cabins and houses and at 40 below you can walk around and feel the penetrating cold trying to get in. Touch the windowpanes and they are cold and giving off the cold — same with the walls, floor, ceiling, pipes coming in and doors going out. Think about most doors. They open directly to frigid air outside and when you open them, warm air rushes out and cold air rushes in.
You paid to heat all that warm air you lost and now you must pay to heat all the cold air that rushed in. So, the heat you lose costs money. The heat you must now add costs money. In winter, the way most buildings are designed, they lose a lot of heat and you lose a lot of money to heat them.
Cold really is one of those things the North should study a whole lot more, and any building put up in the North should be designed to deal with it. I often hear people who live in older apartments or townhouses complain that in winter they have to wear extra clothes inside their units to stay warm and this is because the cold penetrates and their windows and walls are giving off cold, making them uncomfortable.
Also, it never ceases to amaze me that we spend a lot of money on electricity in winter keeping fridges and freezers running inside when there is an abundance of cold sitting outside that we don’t use at all. If we really wanted to cut down on energy costs and usage, we would come up with a design for fridges and freezers that would use all that cold air to cool and freeze things. That would save us energy costs.
Here is something to think about: in winter people go into the stores and buy bags of ice that are shipped up here from Edmonton. Does that make any sense at all? If you want ice, just put ice cube trays full of water outside for an hour or so and voila, you have all the free ice you could ever use.
One year, during a very cold December, I had to go out and do a winter job on some of my mineral claims. A friend allowed me the use of their summer guest cabin, an uninsulated plywood guest cabin. The walls were an eighth of an inch of plywood. I got there at 35 below, just as it was getting dark. I got a fire going to heat the place up. Soon I had the inside air heated up but when I went to get a mug from the cupboard, 35 below air came rushing out and the mug was at minus 35 degrees. It took hours and a whole lot of firewood to heat the place up and to keep it warm.
So, beware of the penetrating cold during a really good cold snap. You can get frost growing inside on your windows or any place that cold can penetrate.
Stay warm and stay safe out there.