Dave Barry: The Taming Of The Screw

Heat pumps are a new wrinkle on the heating and cooling scene: in the summer, they cool your home, and in the winter, they heat it! How is this possible? Heat pump manufacturers tell us the secret is that even on the coldest day, there is some heat in the outside air, and the heat pump extracts this heat. This is a lie, of course. There is no heat in the air on cold days. That’s why we call them “cold days.” If there’s so much heat out there on cold days, how come you never see heat pump manufacturers frolicking outside in bathing suits, huh? Answer me that.

The truth is that heat pumps work via theft. Even on the coldest days, there is heat in your neighbors’ houses. The heat pump sucks up this heat, like some kind of gigantic electrical leech, and uses it to keep you warm. On a really cold day, your heat pump may have to range for miles to keep you warm; it will steal heat from churches, old peoples’ homes, or phanages, hospitals, etc. It will even suck the heat out of newly born puppies. This is definitely the high-tech heat source of the future. You should get one before your neighbor does.

During the winter, heated air is constantly escaping from your home. During the summer, cooled air is constantly escaping from your home. If you had a brain in your head, you’d get the hell out of your home before you die of oxygen deprivation. Your other option is insulation.

Even though insulation is one of the most important and boring issues of the day, many people don’t know how it works. I certainly don’t. I have read dozens of articles about how to insulate and weather-strip my home, and they’re all full of terms I don’t understand, like this: “When caulking your windows, be sure to put a 1/8-inch bead of polyvinyl-butylacetate caulking between the jamb and the main soffit adjacent to the eave cornice, taking care not to dislodge the newels.”

Now I have looked at my windows, and I cannot for the life of me locate any of these things. All I have in my windows are pieces of wood and poisonous spiders. I don’t have the vaguest idea where to put the caulking. This is a problem because, as you have probably noticed, caulking guns are designed so that as soon as you pick them up, the caulking starts oozing out, and it keeps on oozing out until there is none left. This is a clever ploy of the caulking manufacturers to keep themselves in business.

So anyway, I end up standing outside my window, looking for the eave cornice, with caulking oozing onto my pants, until finally I give up and smear some caulking on the spiders and go inside.

So I thought, as a public service, I would explain home insulation in layman’s terms. I will do it in the handy question-and-answer format in which I make up questions and then answer them, which is a heck of a lot easier than answering real questions.

Q: Where should I put insulation?

A: Wherever you can work comfortably. The worst place is the attic, because attics are hot, dangerous places, full of filthy objects and rabid bats. Oh, I know do-it-yourself home insulation articles always have pictures showing a cheerful homeowner cheerfully insulating his attic, but these pictures are frauds. I mean, look at the attic they show: It always looks clean, well lit, and safe, unlike any other attic in the known world. What those articles don’t tell you is that when the pictures were taken, dozens of highly trained men were standing just out of camera range, holding the bats at bay with semiautomatic rifles. So stay out of your attic. Put your insulation someplace safe and convenient, such as in your den or along your driveway.

Q: What kind of insulation should I buy?

A: You should definitely not buy synthetic insulation, which comes in grotesque colors and is harsh and scratchy and leaves you covered with prickly little things that will never come off as long as you live. I suggest you buy insulation that is naturally soft and washable and can be dyed to match your den decor. Cotton is a good choice.

Q: How much insulation do I need?

A: Four thousand dollars’ worth.

Q: What about blown-in insulation?

A: Blown-in insulation is fine, if you don’t mind a fuzzy tongue and wads of spit-covered insulation all over the place.

Q: How does insulation work?

A: To understand how insulation works, conduct this simple home experiment.

1. Mix yourself a stiff gin and tonic in a tall glass, then drink it. Notice how cold the glass feels? Repeat this procedure several times, until you have a really good idea how cold the glass feels.

2. Now wrap a piece of insulation around the glass and pour yourself several more gin and tonics and drink them. Notice how much warmer the glass feels? Even your stomach feels warmer, doesn’t it?

3. Repeat the procedure several times, and you’ll start having all kinds of major insights about insulation. It also works fairly well on the Middle East crisis.

Q: Do I actually have to install the insulation in my house to qualify for the federal tax credit?

A: No. You can leave it in your garage, or, if you prefer, simply toss it out of your car window on the way home from the insulation store.

Q: What is “R-value”?

A: I don’t know. It was one of those things that were in vogue back during the 1970s, like disco and the metric system, but you hardly ever hear anybody talk about it any more, so I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t think it’s suspected of causing cancer or anything.

Q: What about dirt?

A: Dirt is a superb natural insulator. It is not mere coincidence that the Amazon jungle, which is filthy, is one of the warmest places on Earth. During the great energy crises of the 1970s, many smart, energy-conscious, patriotic homeowners stopped cleaning their houses or bathing or even wiping off the slime that grows around the base of the toilet, and today their heating bills are extremely low, although I should point out that they spend an average of $65,000 a year on antibiotics.

Energy experts tell us that caulking doors and windows is one of the easiest ways to get caulking all over yourself. Here’s how you do it:

1. Take a good, close look around the edges of your front door. See all those tiny cracks? Ignore them. I mean, why waste your time on tiny cracks? It’s the door hole (the hole that appears in your house when you open the door) that you should be worrying about. Old Man Winter isn’t going to mess around with cracks when he can just waltz through the door hole.

2. Go to your home center or hardware store and get a caulking gun and enough caulking to plug your door and window holes. A typical door hole will require 750 tubes of caulking, but you’ll save so much energy that the caulking job will easily pay for itself by the time the Earth establishes permanent colonies on the planet Jupiter.

3. Apply the caulking in such a manner that Old Man Winter will be unable to waltz through the door hole.

“Masonry” is a term used in the building profession to describe any kind of building material that can fall on you and kill you. The big advantage of masonry structures is that they last thousands of years; the only real drawback is that they eventually become haunted. The two most popular projects for do-it-yourselfers are walls and pyramids.

1. Drive two stakes into the ground and stretch a string between them to serve as a guide for where your wall will be.*