It's cold around here

I started this blog recently, intending to sort of back-fill with posts to describe what we've done around here so far and then add updates as we go along. Though we've only owned this Building of Adventure for about four months, it feels like we've done a lot of work to the place already, so I'm abandoning the original plan and will just explain things as I go.

Our town is situated just east of the Cascade Mountains and sits atop a  hotbed of geothermal activity. My understanding is that this is related to our local volcanoes, in some way! Geothermal wells around here can supply water at 200 degrees or hotter.This hot water is cycled through closed loop systems and used as a heat source for many homes and businesses in town. The downtown business district has a geothermal loop that both melts ice on sidewalks and roads and, for a fee, can be used to heat buildings. Since our building (which is of course now our home) is in this downtown business district, we're able to use this resource for heat. (We also have natural gas as a backup.) In fact, the city's website has a picture of a smiling city utility worker frying an egg on the sidewalk next to an obvious pile of snow. Sometimes this place feels magical!

We haven't been using the heater much because a) it would still take a lot of energy to heat our 4,000 square foot "loft" home space, and b) the unit sounds  like a jet plane taking off. It's old and clunky and just plain loud. When we first cranked it up it had a broken valve an we had to mail order a replacement fast: it was leaking hot water! It now works ok, but it's too expensive. Homeowners around here who have private geothermal wells get free heat (though the wells and heating systems are expensive to install, they're free or near-free to operate). Since ours comes from the city loop, we pay by the therm for its use. My fairly uninformed understanding is that this means a gauge measures how much heat we take out of the water before it returns to the system, and we pay accordingly. The rates are pegged at 80% of natural gas, which is nice, but for a ridiculously big space it's still too much for our shoestring budget.

And yesterday it broke down. Yes, on Thanksgiving. We were actually planning to fire it up and make the place comfy for our guests! But when we got ready to flip the switch we found no water pressure coming into the building. Turns out there was a leak about three blocks away, which was gushing hot water into a parking lot and generating an impressive steam cloud. Without us living here and calling the emergency line to find out why we were so chilly, they might not have heard about it on the holiday! We huddled around our space heaters, drank a lot of hot apple cider (or coffee with Kahlua) and were thankful we weren't experiencing a plumbing catastrophe or something. Our feast cooled down from the oven pretty quick, but a good time was still had by all. The kids ate sugary things and ran around, doing laps in the "living room" and staying fairly warm and hyper. I think they added a few degrees to the room with their antics.

So, the house has been about 40 degrees inside for the most part lately. Makes going to work that much easier! Here's the plan:

!. We're building a wall to separate off the 1,000 or so square feet at the furnace end of the loft space. This will most likely be a temporary wall, but will certainly last for this winter. The kids will still sleep in their same area, the "living room" and "dining room" will scoot over into the new smaller space, and the kitchen will stay right where it currently is. My husband and I will move down a flight of stairs to the rear mezzanine. This is the former men's room for use during ballroom events. It has a room that's probably about 15 by 20 or 25 feet, next to the bathroom we've all been using: it has the only bathtub. And this mezzanine has a gas wall furnace. So with heating a smaller space for the kids and common area with geothermal and a nice master bedroom with gas, we'll be comfier for the winter. We tend to get some days of single digit temperatures in January and February, so this is no joke!
2. We had an energy audit from our local natural gas utility, and they have an incentive program that, it turns out, will pay for new attic insulation! My husband found a good local contractor who'll be blowing in chopped fiberglass next week. Yippee!
3. We all have really warm blankets. As long as we're warm at night, it'll be ok. We discussed the possibility of this being a tough winter when we were deciding to buy the place, so this is pretty much what we expected. Whenever I feel especially chilly, I make a cup of tea and remember Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter. We've got nothing to worry about!

The adventure has begun

Background information:
     We live in a small town in southern Oregon. Inside city limits we have about 20,000 people, with another 20,000 in the adjacent suburban zone. The place has an agricultural foundation; logging was big business here until the 1980s and ranchers are still a significant demographic in the county. The surrounding area includes significant forested mountains, and many of our friends are biologists of one sort or another working for the Forest Service or the Bureau of Reclamation. It's the smallest town I've ever lived in for more than a summer. So why am I calling my experience urban? We live in the downtown area in a converted commercial building. We are sandwiched between the traditional Main Street, with its mostly brick office, government, and retail buildings, and the light industrial zone that lies along heavily used railroad tracks a few blocks from here. Our town is small, but we live in the one part of it that maintains urban elements. We feel like we have the best of both worlds!

Our building used to be a Fraternal Lodge, which is a bit mysterious to me but pretty much sounds like a bar and ballroom. There is evidence of BINGO games and fried food in the basement. The top floor was a ballroom with a small bandstand/ stage, a kitchenette,and large built-in-place benches around the perimeter of the room. The ground level had a wooden dance floor, another bandstand, a bar, and an area that was probably for a pool table.

Next installment:
Our first job was to get the place re-zoned residential.