Back Yard Dream or ???


My wife and I are ready to hire a landscaper for our backyard. We live in an attached house in Greenpoint that is 12 feet wide; the yard, too, is 12 feet wide by 30 feet long. Our desire was to have brick walls surround the yard and brick pavers on the ground. But someone told us that the brick walls would block a beautiful evening breeze we get in the summer time that comes into our house through the rear windows. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of this? I just don’t see 6-foot-high walls of any kind blocking a breeze, but this person seemed certain of it. Thank you.

Categories: Masonry
By haroldshouse | 04/30/2008 9:20 PM | Comment

Thermostat Placement


A year ago we completed a renovation on our masonry row house that extended the house to the rear, twenty feet beyond the other houses in the row. We also added a third storey, while the other houses in the row are two stories high.

Problem now is that the new part of the house–the two-storey twenty-foot extension in the rear and the entire third floor, is four to six degrees colder in winter than the original part of the house, which of course is nestled between the other houses in the row.

We have single-zone, gas-fired, radiator steam heat, with adequate radiators throughout the house. But currently the thermostat is in the second floor hallway, within the original part of the house, and so registers the temperature of the warmer original part of the house and turns off the boiler before the new part of the house gets to the desired temperature. Should I move the thermostat to the third floor to be able to better control the heat throughout? Or perhaps there are other solutions to consider?

Thank you for any and all suggestions.

Categories: Heating
By haroldshouse | 01/22/2008 12:47 PM | Comment