As I write this, 11 pm on a Sunday night in December, it is 46 degrees in my home office. It should be no surprise that I am not writing this in my office, because working inside of a walk-in refrigerator is not exactly conducive to writing or any kind of work. Same with most forms of recreation, too, since it is a home office after all. But this is what I have to work with - an unheated, semi-insulated attic space that, due to the strange configuration of my house, isn't itself above any heated space from which it could draw some sort of residual heat. It is just cold. Very, very cold.
I heat the space using a portable oil-filled heater but it just cannot pump out the BTUs to heat the space beyond around 25 degrees above the outside temperature. Given I live in an area that gets down to 0 Fahrenheit regularly and has gone as low as -20 a few winters, this is more than a minor inconvenience. I have tried various portable heaters, from ceramic to forced air (just not powerful enough) to a parabolic heat discs (okay if you are in the heated zone, expensive to operate and dangerous with kids). An oil-filled heater has so far been the best combination of cost, heat and safety, but it still cannot do the job.
That affects, of course, how I do my job. I work from home but I am not required to work there or have a home office. It is strongly encouraged to have a dedicated space, however, even though we are allowed to work from libraries, coffee shops, or any place with a decent connection. But I work from home precisely so I don't have to commute anywhere. I've done my time, with 4 years doing a 5 hour round trip 4-5 days a week, and 4 more years with a 2.5 hour trip 5 days a week. Telecommuting is a perk of my current job and I want to make the most of it. The local library isn't open every week day and I don't want to be one of those guys parked in front of the library with a laptop for hours. There are lots of choices 30 minutes from here, but what's the point of working from "home" if there's still a commute, no matter how short?
During the work day in winter, I'm often wearing 4 layers - long underwear, regular street clothes, sweater or chamois shirt, and a hoodie, topped with a lap blanket, but I'm often still cold. There are, of course, other areas in the house where I could work and I often do, but I chose my space because it was in the back, away from the rest of the house and its associated noise. I could work downstairs in an old parlor off of the living and dining rooms, but my work day would then end at 3 pm, when the kids got home. By being far removed I can minimize distractions for the couple of hours until the end of the workday, but that would be impossible downstairs. Like many others, I also need a space to which I can simply retreat and be alone. Some men have a shop, some a "man cave" (ugh, I hate that insipid term. Show some dignity and call it a den), some have a home office like me.
Several years ago I got a quote for extending our existing steam system (it's an old house) which was basically "no you can't" that so I'd need a whole separate heating system installed at ridiculous expense. It wasn't even a replacement to the existing oil-burning boiler, just a second electric boiler and a second set of pipes running through my house, and the quote didn't include all the finish work involved to repair walls after the pipes were run through them. That is also the reason why I have resisted trying natural gas heaters or wood stoves. What if that too failed to heat the space, and now I was left with a hole in a wall or the roof that now needed repairing? Although, one of those triangular/conical center of the room fireplaces from the 1970s might be funky enough to try, especially if it was still painted in the delightful color schemes of the period. Avocado green or harvest gold, with sepia detailing.
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