Entry #25
November 30, 2023 — 11:45 AM
Cold morning. I set the thermostat to 60 before breakfast and let the boiler run. The radiators ticked and the kitchen warmed to something livable. The front hall felt the same as ever—cooler than the rest, a draught that doesn’t move. The place I stopped two nights ago at the stairs is still where the air thins.
I don’t want this to be an impression. I brought tools. A $9 digital indoor/outdoor thermometer from the hardware store (the kind with a wired probe and a magnet). An old infrared temp gun I borrowed from a neighbor. A stick of incense for draft tracing. Blue painter’s tape. Notebook.
Calibration: at 8:05 AM both thermometers agreed on the kitchen table—58.7°F. Outside, according to the phone and the porch thermometer, 34°F. I took baseline readings through the ground floor: kitchen 61.2°F (air at chest height), dining room 59.4°F, parlor 57.9°F, front hall 56.3°F. Floors read warmer near radiators (up to 70°F surface), cooler by exterior walls.
At the foot of the stairs the numbers step down hard. Air at chest height in the hall: 56.3°F. Step onto the third board in from the door, in line with the newel: 47.1°F at knee height and dropping to 45.2°F six inches above the floor. Surface temperature at the center of that board: 44.9°F. One board over, it jumps back to 52.8°F. I swept the IR dot in a slow grid and sketched a rectangle with tape as the numbers fell and rose. The cold zone measures about 28 by 32 inches, long side parallel to the stair.
Incense test: smoke column straight up in the hall, slight sway at the door, dead still within the taped rectangle. A strip of tissue held at ankle height flutters near the mail slot, does not move inside the tape. Probe readings show a gradient in the rectangle—coldest at center, a dull ring around it. No vent under there; the nearest register is halfway down the hall and off. I checked the basement before I started: directly below this spot is an interior beam, not an exterior wall or open crawl. No obvious path to the outside.
Breath test is stupid but persuasive. I stood with my toes against the tape. Breath didn’t show. I stepped inside. Thin white fog off my mouth, then gone as soon as I moved back out. Repeated three times, same result. Hands tell the same story: skin prickles inside the tape, not elsewhere. Not pain, just a winter-air feeling that sits a little too low to be explained.
Timed readings:
8:10 AM — Outside 34°F. Hall (outside tape) air 56.3°F. Inside tape air at 6 inches 45.7°F. Center surface 44.9°F.
9:40 AM — Outside 39°F. Hall 57.0°F. Inside tape air 46.2°F. Center surface 45.1°F. Incense unchanged.
11:32 AM — Outside 43°F. Hall 59.1°F. Inside tape air 46.0°F. Center surface 45.0°F. Same boundaries. I re-laid the tape to be sure I wasn’t steering the readings; the rectangle stayed where it wanted.
I am writing this down because I have been wrong before when tired, and because a person convinced of his own sense is not proof. The numbers are better than mood. I will repeat this at dusk and after the boiler cycles off. I will photograph the thermometer display with the tape in frame.
Weather warmed by nine degrees since dawn, and the rest of the house followed. The taped space did not. The cold remains fixed to place rather than weather.
— Thomas Hale