Forty Below

Forty Below: A Long-Overdue Essay on Cold and Balintore Castle

the first heating at Balintore Castle

At secondary school, I was impressed by a Jack London short story, possibly called "Forty Below", which detailed life in the extreme cold in the far North of America. Not only was this level of cold mind-blowing, but it could be poetically unit-free as -40 Celcius is the same as -40 Fahrenheit. And while I have never experienced such temperatures, it is only since buying Balintore Castle that I have experienced -18C, and got rather too close to hypothermia for my own comfort on a number of occasions.

I knew before purchasing Balintore Castle that "cold" would be an issue. A castle is the archetypal cold and drafty building, and nearby Braemar is the coldest place in the UK, so how was I going to heat this vast building, let alone afford to do so?

It swiftly became apparent that people in the past were hardier than nowadays. The Victorians had no notion of building insulation, but wore more layers of clothing in heavy fabrics, were more physically active and must simply have had a different mindset.

The only sources of heat originally at Balintore were coal fires. Getting these going again has been very rewarding, and although a coal fire does heat a room somewhat, a whopping 80% of the heat goes up the chimney and only 20% goes into the room. The effect is certainly nothing like modern central heating. Huddling round the fire is the order of the day.

When I first lived in the building, there was no heating full-stop so winters were a challenge. I recall one night early on, where despite a four season sleeping-bag, my body temperature continually dropped throughout the night and I was woken up again and again by the cold. Normally, you expect to warm up in bed, so this experience was my literal and metaphorical wake-up call.

I evolved a sleeping solution using 3 high tog duvets. My discovery was that the 4th duvet adds weight but no extra warmth. When I was sleeping in a tiny caravan round the back of the building, I was inside a 4 season mummy sleeping bag with the zip on the right pulled fully up and my head in the hood, with a woolly hat on. On top of the sleeping bag were two plump duvets.

If I moved at all in the night, and the zip came down even 6 inches or so, the pain from the cold in my right arm would wake me up. I taught myself to sleep absolutely stationary and flat on my back, using mind control to resist the temptation to sleep on my side, which is my natural inclination,  I went to sleep like an Egyptian Mummy and woke up in the exact same position.

I kept a litre bottle of water by my bed, and this regularly froze completely solid overnight. I had rain butts to collect water and the huge volume of water inside them froze totally solid during the record-breaking winters of 2010 and 2011. In normal winters, you only get a frozen outside with liquid water inside.

The caravan was totally uninsulated, and only consisted of a single metal shell, reminiscent of a tin can. I had set up an electric heater there and a small computer desk. With the bed folded out, only a square foot of floor remained and it is hard to believe that for 2 years I lived on that square foot.

In the middle of the second bitter winter in the caravan, I reach the point of stir-craziness or cabin fever. I knew that with one more night in the caravan, I would go mad, and moved into the castle for good, even though my bedroom there lacked glass in the window and even lacked a floor. I had to skip across floor joists to reach my bed, and had to remember in the mornings not to step out normally as I would fall through the joists to the dirt floor three feet below. There was only one morning I absentmindedly forgot about the joists and tumbled onto the earth.

Anyhow, things got better in the castle with an electric underblanket and I would switch this on for the first part of the night to warm up the bed. In the extreme cold, it is sometimes worryingly touch-and-go whether the bed is warming up with body heat alone. I would often fall asleep with the electric blanket on and wake up at 2AM absolutely stifling! 

In fact the first evening with the electric blanket I was able to watch "Frozen Planet" in bed. I hadn't been able to watch this documentary series before because the combination of real physical cold and on-screen cold was too much to bear. As I settled down in bed, I thought "Do your worst, David Attenborough!". :-)

The first heating in the castle was a green enamelled Norwegian Jøtul stove which I bought on eBay and picked up in Milngavie. It had originally come from Mull. My friend Andrew and I lit it tentatively the first time, and thereafter I would always put it on for his visits. We would side astride the stove like riders on a horse as it started up, so desperate were we for any kind of warmth. We both recall the first occasion we got the temperature in the room up to double digits. It was a moment to celebrate and somewhere there is a photograph.

At Balintore, piling stoves high with wood is the order of the day, and we always knew the Jøtul stove was pumping out the heat, when the caribou's bottom on the moulded cast iron side panel of the stove started to glow red. I have subsequently found out this is not good for the stove, and no longer do I aim for this.

A friend visited from London. I made him dinner, and between courses I announced "It is time to run round the castle now". The order was met with complete disbelief. I had got into the habit of running round the castle between courses as it is when you are sitting still that your body temperature starts to drop. So laps round the castle were the quid pro quo for formal dining. I normally never kept still inside the castle and danced to keep warm from waking up until going to bed. I was living a cold-induced rave lifestyle.

I have lived in the castle with a foot of snow inside the building. There was no glass in all the windows of the Victorian kitchen for the longest time so fine snow could blow in, and I found myself walking on top of a foot of snow while cooking for about a week.

My friend Andrew and I remember one time each of us was sitting with a cup of tea at the kitchen table, obviously with our coats on. The windows on each side of us had holes in the glass, and the wind was just howling through the kitchen where we were sitting. This was a common occurrence, but the bleakness of this particular occasion when we tried to have a normal conversation while both shivering has imprinted, with both of us clinging desperately onto the cup of tea for residual warmth.

So over the years I have "toughened up" a bit. Although, I am never quite sure if I have actually just learned to discern "feeling cold" from "being cold". Now "feeling cold" can be unpleasant but one can still get on with things. However, "being cold" is another matter. This is the bone-chilling cold, which brings pain to one's feet and hands, that drains one's soul, and renders tasks impossible and requires intervention. At the castle intervention used to be taking to one's bed. Andrew who works in agriculture engineering in all weathers, will work through the "pain in hands" stage to the "no feeling in hands" stage. I take the pain as the warning sign and stop there.

One Christmas early on, I stayed up at the castle instead of visiting my friends in Norfolk, as the 14 days off would give me a lot of uninterrupted time to work on the building. I was doing some wiring in the loft of the kitchen wing. I could spend 15 minutes wiring (which needed gloves off for dexterity) before my hands would hurt too much. To thaw my hands would take the next 30 minutes in my bedroom with the Jøtul stove. I achieved that fortnight what I could have done in a day in Summer. It was a learning experience.

Once when I came up from England, I was discussing matters with my builder of  the time called Andy. After 5 minutes of standing still, not only was I shivering with the cold but I was violently spasming with the cold. "You've turned into a southern softie, David". I could only reply "Yes.". 

Three weeks later when I had acclimatised as much as you can to cold, it was another freezing cold day. Andy must have been feeling the cold himself, as he announced "I don't know how you can live here, David.". Result! 

My current builder Gregor recently confessed that he has frequently turned up in the morning, not expecting me to have made it through a particularly cold night.

It is useful to have a thermometer to measure the temperature for safety.

Sometimes, you find are just being a wuss and it is not actually as cold as you  feel it is. At other times, your instincts are spot on and the temperature is indeed so low that things could quickly become dangerous without action.

My experience suggests that 13C is the safe temperature - you may feel cold but you are OK. Below this wear a coat indoors. 5C is where things start to get unpleasant, and in high humidity 5C can feel as cold as when it is sub-zero.

Below zero temperatures need not be as bad as you may think. Snow can blanket the castle and of course bright sunshine and below zero temperatures is a mood lifter. You need one space you can heat up as a refuge from the cold. I did not have this for quite some time at the castle, and the alternative of retreating to bed felt like a defeat.

I had grand plans of installing a Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) at the castle and powering this by the castle's old hydroelectric station. The magic about a GSHP is that you put one unit of electrical pumping energy in, and you get 5 units of heat energy out, so it works out to be the cheapest form of heating to run. However, the capital cost is high. I was looking at 40k for Balintore, so I demurred to a good old oil boiler. The oil heating works well and keeps three zones of the castle, on three heating circuits, nice and toasty.

In the film "Gone WIth the Wind" the character Scarlett O'Hara declares "I'll never be hungry again", and I have often pondered a similar declaration at Balintore "I'll never be cold again". 

To this end, while open fires look lovely and I will keep a number operational at the castle, I now have no qualms about putting a wood-burner in front of a fireplace as with these 80% of the heat goes into the room and only 20% up the chimney.

I am still staying in an unrestored heating-free part of the castle over this winter, but watch this space.

So, fingers crossed, it is unlikely that I will ever return to the early castle days of "Jack London" levels of cold at Balintore, but I thought I had better record them for posterity as few would believe them otherwise, and looking back I can scarcely believe them myself.