[Greenbuilding] please rant: thar she blows

[Alan Abrams]

<John, please rant. We have a Japanese student who lives in my mother's 
apartment who said how odd it was that we Muricans heat the whole space 
of our houses. Koichi explained that in Tokyo people wear coats indoors 
and drop the temperatures of their homes to the point of seeing their 
breath. >

we mur'kins were once wiser; as Ishmael observed to Queequeg, misty mouthed
and huddled in a shared bed in a decrepit Nantucket rooming house on a
blustery winter night, "to be truly warm, some part of you must be cold."
Lisa Heshong develops that notion in her recent delightful tract, "Thermal
Delight."

But insulating the basement ceiling--a theoretically sound concept--is
subject to the practical difficulty of insulating the stairwell and adjacent
door.  As we reduce the overall footprint of the house, we fight headroom
requirements, shaving every possible inch out of the sections of landings
and carriages.  And as often as not, we also create habitable space in our
basements.  So it still strikes me as reasonable to insulate the basement
and capture the heat of the water heater and heating equipment.  

Alan Abrams