Seattle Home Inspector's Blog

     Sooner or later we all come face to face with our immortality.  It happens at different ages for all of us and with different degrees of angst.  I personally, was able to be in denial about it until I was 60 or so---then I too started wondered where everybody was going.

     I am not sure what triggers this awareness.  Perhaps the death of friends and parents.  It can happen when your own kids start having kids.  For some it is the physical limitations that prevent them from doing what they are used to doing that forces them to think about it.  It is most likely as "individual" as we are individual.

     I got to thinking about this while looking at Barbara Duncan's old pictures of Searcy Arkansas.  These "posed" pictures of people----are no longer people I don't know.  They are pictures of me and my friends and family that people find tucked away in drawers or between the pages of books----and they are wondering who I am----who I was.

     When I was 15, my perception was that most people over 60 would be too old to be on a roof----let alone working on a roof.  I think it started with my dad.  I am sure that when he was over 60 he was still walking the ridge of his greenhouses spraying white paint on the glass to provide some amount of reduced light for the African Violets below.  I have walked those ridges myself and I can tell you it can be un-nerving.  These greenhouses were more than 100 feet long and probably 40 feet wide and here you are walking on a ridge that is maybe 8" wide (and not flat) with nothing but cheapo-window glass on both sides----- a tank sprayer strapped to your back and a long spray wand in your hands.  Here is a really grainy picture of me in one of those big greenhouses when I was 13.

      As a builder in my 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's I would think nothing of walking on the uncovered joists 26 feet above the concrete basement floor.  I doubt that it would faze me in the least even today----I just don't have the opportunity anymore. 

     Is it really that there are always exceptions to the rule----or are 60 year-olds generally more fit today than they used to be?

     As many of you know, I play soccer a couple of times a week----on a men's over 50 team and a men's over 55 team.  Most of the players on these teams are over 60 and many are over 70.  There are currently at least 26 such teams in the Seattle area alone.  26 times 22 (average roster size) equals over 572 players-----can that many people all be in denial?  It would seem that the limits we place on ourselves are mostly in our heads.  I know there is the old saying that "you are only as old as you feel," but this seems to go well beyond that.

     Are we "actually" healthier in our older age than generations before us----is it regional----

     ----or is it all in my head after all?

     One of the things that would be different, is that there would be NO vented crawl spaces (actually if I thought about it long and hard enough, and took into account other parts of the world, there "might" be exceptions-----I just can't think of any right now).  Yesterday's blog started the conversation about these closed-type crawl spaces.

     Think about how a crawl space works. 

     It is the space under your house with a dirt floor covered (hopefully) with a ground cover (vapor retarder).  The cool thing about Planet Earth is that the ground temperature (if you protect it from hot and cold) stays pretty much the same temperature year round----45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. 

     What do we typically do in current construction? 

     We insulate the house floor, cutting the house off from that constant ground temperature, and then we vent that space so that it "communicates" with whatever temperature it is outside.

      As an example:  In Syracuse NY, the temperatures range from 30 degrees below zero in the Winter to 110 degrees in the Summer.  What this means is that in the Summer (with a floor that is insulated) one has to cool the house from 110 degrees down to whatever you can stand inside (with "cooling" even a 15 degree difference can be enough to feel comfortable). 

     In the Winter, one must heat the home from minus 30 degrees to plus 70 degrees-----a 100 degree temperature change.  Now if we insulate the perimeter of the foundation instead of filling it full of holes (vents); and, we forget about insulating the floor and allow the interior of the home to "communicate" with the crawl space instead of the crawl space communicating with the outdoors------the temperature differentials become radically different----and so does the impact on your wallet.  

     In fact, on the "cooling" side, much of the time, the crawl space year-round-temperature will be enough to provide some cooling for a well insulated house. 

     On the "heating" side, we will only need to heat the house from 45 degrees to 70 degrees----a 25 degree differential instead of 100 degrees.

     This approach is so simple and so basic that it seems to have eluded the oil companies (they have no vested interest in conservation) and the US Government----for the most part (they also have no vested interest in conservation), even though the knowledge to build this way has been around since at least the early 50's.  It is not that there is a problem with creating homes that take very little energy to run, it is that there is no political will to do so, and existing corporations (vested heavily in consuming fossil fuels) just raise the prices as we use less.  In a very real sense  is "un-American."  Obviously we need a change in the definition of what it means to be an "American."

     My Planet is looking for new inhabitants if you are interested (or if you like it where you are, but would just like to visit, just click on the License Plate below:).