A week ago, it was cold outside. Bitter, painful cold. Early Friday morning, I was in my Lloydminster apartment posting the “Restaurants are Better” piece. The cold north wind was moving my curtains. My fingers got numb from the cold. I had to move my table into the middle of the room to finish.
Later in the day, I drove to Regina. When I got home, the house was (almost) as warm as the greeting from Marilyn. The curtains were not moving. There were no drafts. The walls were not emitting cold.
Regina home was better than my Lloydminster abode.
The reason?
The fourplex that I live in in Lloydminster was built in the 1950s. The Regina townhouse was built in the 1990s.
Our houses are better at keeping warm air in and cold air out. When it is forty below, this is a “something that is better” with meaning.
Keeping houses warm in the 1960s
When I was a child growing up in the 1960s, we lived in Uranium City. It was pretty far north and so cold that we could use frozen farts for firewood. We had a good furnace, but spent a lot of effort trying to keep the warmth in and the cold out. In the fall, we would put insulating strips around the doors to reduce drafts. Many people erected crude plywood sheds around their doors to create a kind of winter porch. The windows were single pane glass. They would frost up mightily – you could get an idea of just how cold it was by the thickness of the ice on the windows. At first snowfall, everyone would be out shoveling snow against the house. A good snowbank kept the pipes from freezing.
All these things are and practices are just nostalgic (??) memories.
The reason?
Better windows and insulation.
In our Uranium City house, our furnace was modern but our windows were not. Even though double pane windows were invented in 1870, we still had single-pane windows. One pane of glass gives an R-value (a measure of insulating capacity) of 0.9. If we would have had the 1960s version of high-end, modern, insulating windows, the double pane would have given us an R-value of about 2.1 (which is what my Lloydminster apartment has).
In our Regina home, the R-value of our five-year-old windows is over 7. That’s a lot more warmth conserving capacity as the windows in my childhood home. There’s no ice on these windows. What’s more, the frames are a lot better. They even keep out a north wind.
Then we come to the walls.
In the 1960s, the walls of a typical modern home had an R value of 13. I am guessing that is what our home had. Today, the building standards call for an R-value of at least 30 on Vancouver Island and in BC’s lower mainland – and goes all the way up to R-45 way up north in places like Uranium City.
Warmer windows. Warmer walls. Better than they used to be. (Don’t get me started on furnaces!)
Insulation that does not kill
I’ll add a cautionary note. Better is not an inevitability with change - and sometimes better in one attribute means worse in another. The history of insulation in Canada contains two cautionary tales.
In the 1970s, the price of energy started to rise. The federal government responded with a massive subsidy program to encourage people to put more insulation into existing housing. A favorites method was to inject urea formaldehyde foam into spaces between walls. The foam would harden to create new insulation without having to rip out any walls. All was good until people started to get sick. It seems the formaldehyde insulation gave off formaldehyde gas. Formaldehyde is good for preserving dead people, but apparently not so good for the living. By 1980, use of this kind of insulation was banned and a long, expensive process of taking all this stuff out of walls began. Oops.
There is still some debate about how much gas was given off by this formaldehyde insulation and how harmful it was for people. However, there is no debate about the lethality of another formerly popular insulating material.
Asbestos killed.
Asbestos was widely used in insulation in Canada from 1866 until 1978. It worked great. The problem was that when it frayed or was disturbed, tiny fibers would float around in the air. These got into people’s lungs and caused lung cancer and mesothelioma. If there is a bit of residual debate about the potential harm of formaldehyde gas, there is absolutely none about asbestos fibers. You really do not want to be breathing this stuff.
So, as I think it through, I guess that is another thing that is better today (hopefully).
The insulation in our walls not only keeps us warmer – it doesn’t kill us.