Being a southern girl, it took me a long while to get accustomed to living in a region where there was just so much winter.
And it’s not just how long it lasts but just how dang cold it gets.
I grew up in a climate where I could pretty much go barefoot year round. Now, during the winter, that meant being barefoot in the house. But still, those winters were so mild and just nothing compared to what I’ve lived with now for 25 years. The winter I deal with now comes with about 5 months of freezing or worse temperatures. And that means there’s a lot of gas furnace heating happening in the house. Plus, I’ve never really been into the outdoor stuff that folks do around here. So, I’ve spent a lot of my winters inside the HVAC heating just trying to stay warm. Of course, I’ve enjoyed having white Christmases and loved raising kids up here. But I’m finally getting a chance to go barefoot during the winter again. And no, we aren’t moving south. But we did build a home after selling the family home we raised our children in. With the new house, we chose to go with a geothermal heat pump which gets most of the heating and cooling energy from the earth’s temperature. And the heating for this system is transferred through copper pipes under the floor. This is called radiant floor heating. And yep, you got it. I’m barefoot all the time in the house now and it feels just as good as it did when I was a teenager.