Seventy-two degrees

Tomorrow morning, some home heating consultants will perform an evaluation on both houses up here. It will involve hooking up a massive fan to a blower-door, attaching that to a door in our house, and pushing positive pressure inside. This in turn will push warm, interior air out through any leaks or poorly insulated regions. The consultants will be outside with either IR sensors (high-tech) or smoke wands (low-tech) to spot where the warm air is coming out.

In order for the test to work, the air inside has to be a lot warmer than the air outside; they’ve rescheduled this test twice because the ambient temperature outside was forecast to be higher than 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The annoying requirement is that the house has to be set to 72 degrees for the 24 hours leading up to the test – for comparison, we’re used to having the house set between 64 and 68 degrees, dropping to 60 while we sleep – so I’m sweltering already.

The cats are loving it, though. It’s just a little bit of summer as far as they’re concerned.