[Today’s run: 3.4 miles tapering down toward 1/2 marathon this Saturday]
We live in Mississippi, closer to Tennessee than to the Gulf of Mexico. It does sometimes get a bit cold here in the winter. This morning it was in the mid 30s and tonight it is supposed to get down near freezing. A couple of years ago we had snow flurries on Christmas.
But the weather in general is much warmer than the various places I have lived in the past. Our house is constructed with the climate in mind. The roof would not hold up a 2′ snow.
We have central air. And we have a “toaster” type heating element in that air/furnace unit which will send warm air through the duct work. But it is electric and kind of expensive to run.
So most of our space heating comes from this little fake fireplace in the living room. It uses propane gas. We got our propane tank topped up about a month ago. So far we have never used a whole tank of propane in the course of a single winter. I think last year we used about 70% of the tank.
We generally keep the thermostat of the fake fireplace at about 68 degrees. I’ll set the electric furnace/toaster to maybe 65. That way we won’t have frozen pipes if either the pilot light goes out or the electricity goes out. We use our ceiling fans to move the hot air around the house.
I enjoy wearing long sleeves and taking hot baths and other aspects of winter life. I wish it weren’t dark. But otherwise I enjoy winter in Mississippi over summer by far.
This thing is in the living room. The builders put some cabinet work around it, but it really is just about 6 inches in depth and is a drop-in unit, nothing fancy at all. (In the picture I’ve removed one of the wood trim pieces to fiddle with the thermostat knob.)
