Well, not quite. But up and until this summer, when he died, we had a pet chinchilla. Chinchillas are moutaintop-dwellers and they need cool/cold air – a temperature of 80 degrees F can cause them to have strokes.
We live in a middle-floor condo, people above and below. Our heating is our own but the AC is centrally-provided, and to save money, the condo association often doesn’t turn it on until it’s super hot.
In the spring, we’d have to open a window and practice emergency cooling – such as fans across trays of ice. Eventually we bought a portable room AC unit, even though those are against condo assoc rules.
The reason they are against the rules is we share the utilities co-op style as part of our condo fee. So we don’t actually (directly) pay for heating/cooling.
In winter, our neighbors run plenty of heat, and being the middle part of the condo sandwich, heat builds up in our unit. Often the chinchilla’s room would soar up toward 76–77–78 degrees even with our thermostat shut off. With 80 being the unreachable redline, this was a constant source of concern.
So rather than let him die, we’d open a window in winter.
Yes, it was wasteful, but various attempts to get out neighbors to insulate fell flat, and we had no other way to control the temp.
Get one of those poles used for hanging Christmas lights in high places. Attach a camera with a flash and a delay shutter setting to the top of the pole. Since you have cookie cutter houses practice at your own house to get the height of the pole just right. Click. Lift. Flash. Run like hell. Report back.
I would seriously do this for you if I lived nearby.
If it was meth, you’d smell it. Is there a lingering acrid smell in the neighborhood? Isn’t cat piss one description too? Yeah, here, read the signs of a meth lab below.
Scissorjack, I am minding my own damn business. I haven’t set foot on their property. I haven’t looked in their windows, other than to see that their curtains are blowing in the ice-cold Lake Erie winds. I don’t care if they’re odd. I do care if they’re bringing down the already plunging home values in my neighborhood.
In looking at Zabali_Clawbane’s list, I am satisfied that meth is not an issue. If they’re growing dope, I care little and will laugh like hell when they’re busted, because that will not leave the premises a toxic waste dump only a few feet from where I live and where my dogs walk in the backyard. There was a meth lab down the street a few years ago and it is an absolute epidemic around here.
If they’re so stupid they’ve left their window open for weeks and haven’t thought to close it even after we’ve called their attention to it, let them pay the gas bill.
In all likelihood, they like the fresh air and are willing to pay extra heating bills. My parents do this sometimes. It doesn’t cost a thousand bucks a month.
Maybe they are used to wearing their jackets in the house and spending lots of time under blankets. Or maybe they have one room sealed off that they keep warm and the rest of the house doesn’t affect them much. Not everyone heats the whole house, you know.
I’ve used both techniques in my uninsulated and unheated falling-down shack in Santa Cruz (where nights got down into the 20s and my house had windows that didn’t close) and in China (where my house is colder than the outside.) Personally I think it is a miserable way to live, but there are some freaks out there who like being cold.
That sounds like the first few places that I lived in Santa Cruz. I remember stuffing rags into open cracks in the walls and covering the windows with blankets but it was all part of the charm of living here when I was in my twenties, and back then shacks were cheap.
Hell, our bedroom window is open all winter, WITH the fan in it and running half the time. I can’t sleep in a stuffy room. My thinking is, you can always put another blanket on, but once you’re down to skin you’re pretty much screwed as far as taking more off goes.
Yeah, but other people’s “mystery threads” are more mysterious. Someone is speculating “Oh, noes, that suspicious!” because a window is open and it’s cold outside? Big deal.
I live in Canada and have been known to leave a window wide open in winter for all sorts of benign reasons. Keep the door to the one room closed and the impact on your overall heating bill is nominal. The OP is being silly.
You need to call Ethel, and have her dig through her old vaudeville trunks for a high-wire pole and costumes. Then it’s simple. The two of you string a wire across to your neighbors’ house, right at the open window. Head on over and get a peek in. What could go wrong?
Other than that, I got nothing. Don’t mind the curmudgeons. I like a good mundane neighbor mystery.
Where do you live in Canada? Because I did that once or twice in my bedroom, here in Toronto, and I couldn’t set foot in that room for a good hour afterwards until I’d shut the window and cranked up the thermostat.
That condensation might be a clue to the whole thing, unless they’re just nuts.
They may be trying to purge moisture from the house by letting the warmer air pressure force it out from a high point. If you were inside that upper room you might find more air flowing out the window than in.
Related searches online show many variations of that. No need for conspiracies about venting nasty smells without actual evidence.
