May 16, 2005

Nathan not loving the heat

This week, it has suddenly become warm in Mountain View. Not even really hot, really, but much warmer than it has been, with temperatures in our house getting up into the upper 70’s. And, since our house doesn’t really cool down at night, it’s still (at 9:30 at night) in the upper 70’s in our house. Our house doesn’t cool down at night because we can’t open our windows. We can’t open our windows because we have indoor cats, and the windows do not have screens on them.

And, we don’t have air conditioning. Because our house has no crawl space to speak of, we can’t easily install central air.

But Nathan, he does not like the heat. He expresses his dislike by refusing to go to sleep. Or, by going to sleep, then waking up 20 minutes later, grouchy as hell because he really, really wants to sleep, but can’t. (Can you tell this child was born in the winter in Salt Lake City?)

So we’re trying to figure out what to do. A couple of the contractors I’ve talked to have no real interest in digging out the crawl space, because the job sounds both too small and too complicated. Excavating it ourselves isn’t an appealing option, as the only obvious way to do it is to walk down the narrow staircase and start hauling dirt up. Presumably there’s some way to take the siding off the house and do it that way, but that’s getting far beyond my skill set.

Or, we give up on central anything and just put an air conditioner in somewhere in the house in a window.

Or, tell Nathan to suck it up and deal with the heat.

Choices…

But if anyone has ideas on digging out a crawl space, please let me know.

Posted by Mike at May 16, 2005 10:07 PM