My daughter and the energy monster

You wait a lifetime for a reference to draft excluders then two come along in a single week.  To be strictly correct, my daughters use of a discarded pair of tights is a temporary fix for a broken roof window.

The second was in an ad for an energy company, in which two cute children make an energy monster out of old tights and newspaper and save the family lots of money and blocking up gaps under doors.  I am not wholly convinced by this scheme, its a nice thing to do, but I doubt that it will be visible on the energy bills of a home with central heating.  However, it does make a connection between energy management and  home economics.

When houses were heated with coal fires drafts were a problem, in order to burn, a coal fire sucks in cold air from between gaps under doors, badly fitting window and from under the floor and some place that no one ever managed to find.  In this situation draft excluders did make a difference.  They turn up a car boot sales where they often resemble the discarded limb of a diseased pantomime horse.  they may be stuffed with vintage stockings, historic newspaper or just something old and disgusting.

I should be writing a paper, working on software, but I am renovating my house.  Whilst its easy to lounge around thinking great thoughts, its also good to contemplate why one's feet are cold.  On a winter's evening we draw the curtains, and turn the central heating on for an hour or so and then light a fire in the living room for warmth during the evening.  The previous owner installed the radiators in such a way that curtains masked them off from the room.  As 100 years of interior decorating is scraped off the walls, one task is to replace and relocate the radiators such that they approximately four inches from the wall.  Thus when the curtains are drawn, they form a barrier between the radiator and the window rather than a union.

I won't know how effective this has been until the coming winter departs.  As part of a major overhaul, its not difficult to add this task to the list, it might not be so attractive as an isolated project.  The more I mess with domestic energy, sustainability, the more convince I am becoming that a lot of small things add up to something worthwhile, so maybe I was wrong to dismiss the energy monster.