The dogs of war

"It is desperately cold...a damp clammy cold that almost never amounts to freezing or frost, but it is harder to keep warm than anywhere else I have been, unless Italy."

So writes Frank Lloyd Wright in his book, The Natural House. He was actually writing about Tokyo, Japan, but that description just suits our weather today and what is forecast for the rest of the week. A damp, clammy cold... Welcome to the south.

And we have started our annual bickering. Pat turns up the thermostat because it is cold as hell when the rains and wind blow (and I always think of Hell as cold-absence of God and all that) and almost immediately, I race over to turn it down because I get so "stuffy."

Wright's answer to this conundrum is what he calls "gravity heat," or what is more commonly referred to as radiant heat. He became a believer during his stint in Japan whilst building The Imperial Hotel. Froze to death until he was introduced into what his hosts referred to as "Korean Room," which had heated floors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Hotel,_Tokyo#The_Imperial_Hotel

Heat- that physics bound commodity- MUST rise. Therefore, if the floors are warm you've won the major part of the battle in making your house comfortable. Right now, we don't have radiant heat. The house was freezing, Pat kicked in the furnace and now I'm stuffy.

The dogs of war have been let loose.