I'm with you, Jenn. I like to be warm enough, but not too warm. I will tell you that although my mother has always been cold natured, once she had open heart surgery and started taking a blood thinner, it has been much worse. She is thin to start with, but add that thin blood, and poor thing about freezes in our house, summer or winter. That may have something to do with your dad's issues, too.

Right now, we are without any heat in the lower level of our home. I went to turn it on last Monday to knock the chill off, as it had gone down to 33º overnight and heard the worst noise ever. Turns out that something related to a combustion fan (I think that's what they said) failed and fell apart. We have gas pack heating/air conditioning for our downstairs and that means forced air natural gas heat in the winter and electric air conditioning in the summer. Anyway, it was going to cost $400 to replace the part and our unit is almost 20 years old, and we still wouldn't know if there was something else wrong until that part was installed and we fired it up, so we are getting a new unit tomorrow. The upstairs unit is holding its own. It is a heat pump, totally powered by electricity.

The downstairs is cold during the days and evenings, but we used our indoor wood burning stove two nights, just to warm the living area, if we were going to be in that room, and the electric blanket has come in handy, too. For several days in a row, the highest inside temp was 59º, while it was over 70 outside. Most of our leaves are still on the trees, so it is quite shady around our house. Our wood stove isn't all that great, but at least we have it, and it has helped during power outages and with the heat going out this time around. I have used an electric space heater, in spurts, for the sake of the birds and the fish. I worry about them the most. Butter (kitty) and the dogs have been just fine. And we did add an electric fireplace last spring in our kitchen/den area. Tacky, but it will warm up that room better than the heating unit does, when it is working.

Our home is poorly configured and most of the heat and cool are concentrated in the two rooms that are closest to the unit. We will live with that, though, as I don't see putting in new ductwork and a unit under the house at this point.

Logan