I’ve mentioned before that because in-floor heating, while wonderful in many ways, is a very slow way to change the temperature in one’s house, I stopped using it as of May. That’s mainly because my living room and kitchen face south with huge picture windows, so the afternoons and often evenings can be quite warm. And, because it’s light until after 11, and again by 4am, I have to leave the curtains closed in my bedroom. But, if I were to put the heat on in the evening in preparation for the morning chill, I would be sleeping in a stuffy room and sweating each afternoon. So, the heat is off and I’m living with wild temperature swings throughout the day.
Therefore, in order to cool the house down and air it out, I have to open my windows in the afternoons. In the UK they don’t have window screens, or A/C, so everyone just opens their windows to the open air. My cousin leaves her French doors wide open from March on – her garden is absolutely lovely, so it is quite nice to have this additional ‘room’ to wander in and out of, and look out on to. But still, it feels weird to my North American sensibilities.
Open windows lead to a whole new set of challenges. Insects. It’s not like Australia, with monster cockroaches or poisonous snakes, but there are bugs. House flies, mosquitos, etc… It seems to be a non-issue here in the sense that no one mentions the incoming insects, or seems to care. And it’s not just bugs. Last month a bird flew into my patio door; if that door had been open, it would have flown right into the house. And I’m constantly hearing people on the radio talk about neighbourhood cats wandering into their houses and either getting comfortable on the sofa or getting into fights with the house pets who already live there.
The best work around I’ve found is to partially open the patio door and pull the floor-length curtain in front of the opening. There’s air coming in (and yes, some bugs), but no obvious invitation to the local cats and birds. But it just seems to me – get screens. Seriously.