Last week the temperature dropped to – 20°C. We then noticed that we use a lot of wood for heating each day, while Postaja still stays a bit cold, so we decided to improve the insulation. This is what we have done so far:

Window

As one of the windows is old and doesn’t close properly anymore, we decided to add some extra insulation. We built a wooden frame and as ‘glass’ we nailed a piece of an old, transparent plastic bag to it. Then we fitted it on the windowsill and stuffed hemp fiber in the gaps around to create an air-insulation.

Old stove pipe

We still have an open pipe from an old oven, which is in ceiling above the place where now our new oven is. Unfortunately, it leads the warm rising air directly under the uninsulated roof where it can escape easily. As we were losing a lot of warmth through it, we stuffed it from both sides with paper and covered it with a cloth and carton to stop the warm air from flowing.

Attic

The wooden slide door to the attic let through a lot of our generated warmth, so we nailed sheets of carton to it from above, which makes a noticeable difference. We are anyway still losing heat through the ceiling to the attic, and the attic is very badly insulated. We started to close some of the biggest holes in the attic, to keep some more warm air there.

Doors

Cold air from outside was coming in from under the doors, so we fixed some old bags which contained corn for the bears under the doors, to close the gaps.

Curtains and shutters

A very simple way of insulating windows is to simply put up curtains. We made some nice curtains for the Postaja bedroom, and we will probably soon make curtains for the big room as well.

Floor

At the moment we are attaching planks to the beams at the bottom side of the floor (from the ceiling of the basement) and filling bags with wool. Later we will put them in the space between the floor beams and the planks to make the floor warmer.

Although the techniques we used are primitive and used materials are all recycled, I think that it makes quite a difference and that we will all profit from these few, easy measures when the temperatures get colder again – and the environment as well.

Dominik