Winter Willies

I know that our weather is nowhere near that our families and friends are experiencing in the States, but it's darned cold down here. 

According to our nifty infrared thermometer,  it's 58F outside and 65F inside. Why so cold? 

Two reasons:  Due to a lack of trees, homes here are made of brick, cement, and plaster.  Once they get cold, they stay cold.  Once the weather turns to something warmer, it will take at least 3 days to warm the house up.  Until then, it's like living in an ice cube.  Walls are cold, ceilings are cold, and floors are cold.  With carpeting unknown, the tiles on the floor are cold, too.

Two: Without central heat you're pretty much at the whim of the weather.  Many homes are without a source of heat at all; some have fireplaces in which you may install a set of gas logs (firewood is limited).  We have the gas logs from our last house, but we have no fireplace in this house in which to install them.  Instead we have two portable gas heaters that use tanks of propane the size one would use for a BBQ.  The heaters produce an infrared heat source that works well when you're within striking distance of the heater.  Further away it's not so warm - though there is some heat thrown off. It just takes a long time to heat a room.

And with the type of construction of homes here, there is no handy way to install central heat afterwards.  It can be done in some circumstances, but not most.  There has come on the market a heating/cooling unit that can be installed after construction, but that uses 220V electricity, which presents another problem which is addressed in the second paragraph down the page.

We're lucky enough to have two heaters - one for upstairs and one for downstairs.  You just have to keep a spare tank or two on hand or you'll run out over a weekend.  It's not like it runs off our main tank for the house.  In our very first house we did not have gas heaters.  Instead we had a few electric heaters and January & February were especially cold and wet that year.  The dogs and we huddled in the office (the computers threw off some heat) during the day and moved to the bedroom at night.  Luckily, we had read up on living in Mexico before moving here and had outfitted the bed with a heated mattress pad that provided low-voltage warmth.  And there's a concern that the heaters produce carbon monoxide, so we really should have a warning system, but that hasn't happened yet, so we're very careful about using the heaters for any length of time.  This makes it very icy in the morning....

The electric heaters did provide some heat, but jacked up our electricity bill by eliminating the supplemented reduction in the rate - for a 6-month period!  The next year we went out early in the season and purchased gas heaters!

So we dress warmly inside and out, stay as dry as possible, use the portable electric heater in the bathroom only when taking showers, and think warm thoughts!

I suppose it's all relative....