Sweet summer relief

Friends, Romans, countrymen… it is with great satisfaction that I announce the best money we have ever spent. For we are now the proud inhabitants of a house containing an attic fan.

Yes that’s right! After two summers of sweltering in this plaster-and-lathe oven, we finally bit the bullet and bought ourselves a whole-house fan cooling system. Behold:

(That giant fan vent is in the ceiling of our back hallway, in case that wasn’t obvious.)

It is neither a swamp cooler (more expensive) nor an air conditioning system (waaaaaay more expensive). It’s a giant fan that sits in our attic, connected to the outside through three round vents in our roof. It works by sucking cold air in from the outside through the house’s open windows and pushing hot air out through the attic. As soon as the sun sets, we open all the windows, turn this baby on, and let it run through the night. In the morning we turn the fan off, close the windows, and the house stays nice and cool throughout the day. Rinse and repeat daily.

Living in a desert as we do, this is an extremely efficient way to cool the house. Even on abysmally hot, 100 degree days during the summer, the temperatures drop dramatically at night in this climate. So if we can capture that cool, desert night air, we’re just using our natural habitat to our advantage. And it’s more energy efficient than a giant air conditioner! So I call this an environmental win.

As I write this, I’m sitting very comfortably indoors in jeans even though it’s almost 80 degrees outside. Wild, right? Like I said: best money we ever spent. The fan itself is much quieter than I expected, certainly more quiet than our window AC unit.

Thanks to the team at Colorado Home Cooling for making our summer bearable! They even gave us a discount for paying in cash. CHA-CHING.

We’re all tucked in!

On the hierarchy of unsexy home improvements, insulating the attic is pretty close to the top. But it had to be done, because when we were in the process of buying the joint the inspector took one look at our attic insulation and laughed out loud. It was covered in a paltry 3-4 inches of loosely blown-in insulation, with wires running willy-nilly throughout the whole seedy mess. Also the attic door cover was made of wood and the fireplace was lined with (wait for it) cardboard of all things. It’s almost like the previous owner wanted the house to burn down.

Clearly, this would not stand.

Now, the Fickbonnes are hardy New England stock. We come from an arctic wasteland of bone-chilling wetness and despair. So living in perpetually-sunny Denver, we tend to keep our heat at about 60 degrees Fahrenheit and walk the dog wearing sweatshirts in the dead of winter (read: the random 70-degree days we frequently get in January around here). But we’re also dyed-in-the-wool tree-huggers, and we simply cannot abide by the utter waste of heating a virtually un-insulated house.

We did some research, and local Denver Highlands company All Tucked Insulation came highly recommended. David came over and gave us a free estimate, which further research revealed to be not only fair and reasonable but significantly better than his competitors. Plus we liked the guy and he lives in our neighborhood. A few weeks later David and his team came over and knocked out the attic insulation in barely four hours.

Not only did they blow in the necessary depth of insulation to get us up to building code, they cut a new attic hole cover made of non-flammable material, lined the chimney with metal to further reduce our risk of dying in a sudden inferno, and took care of the tops of random walls that a previous owner had just cut off when they were running electrical wiring (I shit you not). The whole thing was embarassingly inexpensive (no seriously: we’d budgeted three times as much as we ended up paying), over quickly, done professionally, and just an all-around awesome experience. Two thumbs up! Would totally hire All Tucked Insulation again! (Plus how cute is their name? I mean come on you guys.)

There’s no pictures with this post because I’m embarrassed to follow up my adorable throw pillows with something as ugly as piles and piles of gray insulation. So really the take-away is this:

1. Sometimes it’s 100% the right decision to hire professionals to do a job right that you have no experience doing yourself.
2. It is an absolute joy to work with local companies who care about their customers and treat you well.
3. Our house is noticeably warmer and the furnace is running much less often, which means that the insulation is making our heating way more efficient. Take that, winter!

Next up: Mrs. Fickbonne paints some stuff!