apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

One way to keep the heat in is to put up clear plastic on the window. If you go to any hardware store they should have kits with all you need to install.

Shrink wrapping the window should work, as mentioned. Be careful with putting up window treatments like insulated curtains on single-pane windows, however; they can cause condensation on the windows, which damage paint and induce mold. On top of shrink wrapped windows (cheap) or interior storm windows you can build with plexiglass (less cheap), however, they should work very well. If your heater is inefficient you can also buy pretty effective oil-filled space heaters that look like little radiators. And wearing a hat helps.

The recommendations from Chicago to increase humidity seem pretty weird to me. More humidity is going to dramatically increase your mold risk. I'd rather be cold.

The difference between Chicago and Berkeley is the difference between a DRY winter (where your pets generate sparks and your skin peels off) and a bone-chillingly damp one (where you can feel moisture dripping off the tip of your poor, cold nose).

If what you have is a wall heater, it's not a space heater. Wall heater = ugly thing attached to the wall, its front all vents, and then it's piped or electrified off to somewhere in the walls or under the house. This is the central heating of the 1950s, and it WORKS. It dries the air, plus it is an important Bay Area ritual to have your morning coffee while huddled in front of it for warmth. Turn it on ASAP, and you will be sooooo much happier. (Don't be surprised if it smells like hot dust -- that's normal.)

Hey, guy. I think you could hang insulated drapes to cover the whole window. If you are not going to open the window at all, use some weather stripping all around the door. Furniture pads will make great insulators. The material is very heavy. You may have to purchase them at either a furniture store or possibly a "Home Depot", "LNT", "Amazon". They're not decorative, but for the time being, they would do the trick and keep your warm. Hope this helps.

Thanks for your comments so far. I finally got my landlord and the PG&E guy together to fix the wall heater (PG&E couldn't legally install the replacement for the broken piece, the landlord didn't know how...), so that's been helping. It doesn't really heat anything but the few feet or so around it, but on a cold night, it's better than nothing!

The ideas about taping things to the windows is interesting...I would still like light to be able to show through though (I don't want to live in a warm state of total darkness!).

Oh, I forgot to say -- making a wall heater work is very different from using radiators or the kind of vented AC that runs to each room. To get the rest of the place warm, the area around the wall heater needs to be HOT. Do not be shy about turning up the heat; these heaters are meant to be run that way. (I grew up around them in Northern California. Be glad you don't have the floor kind, where you can trip and put a foot on a piping hot metal vent!)

Don't put furniture anywhere that will block the flow of air from the heater (no tall, solid room dividers!), and keep all your internal doors open. You may also want to run a portable fan to push the warm air to where you are.

Condensation is part of life in Berkeley. Buy properly insulated curtains and just make a habit of wiping up the moisture daily.

If you have an ancient stove with lousy insulation, taking up baking as a hobby will warm the kitchen nicely, but with newer model stoves, this doesn't work.

I fought tooth and nail against putting clear plastic over our windows, but I have to admit: 1. It made an ENORMOUS difference in the temperature, and 2. Instead of making our place a lightless cocoon.... it actually diffused the harsh winter sunlight and made it really pretty! In our sunroom, we put up plastic and then hung matchstick blinds - you'd never even know there was plastic over the windows.

buy some double sided tape and some window covering plastic... you shouldn't run into any moisture problems as it is essentially adding another pane to your window. most of the plastic coverings today can be heated up with a blow dryer to slightly shrink them and make them tight so you barely notice they are even in front of your window.

While living in Santa Cruz, my friends ran a dehumidifier to their apt for the winter. It warmed the place up, but was a total energy hog.

Lillacy, I'd love to see pictures of how you did this! You can email to kimskitchensink@gmail.com; if you have any, I'd really appreciate it!

And yep, Wende in Phoenix, I have definitely "resorted" to baking/cooking to heat up the place :-)

I did the shrinkwrap thing on some of my windows last year, and it was a pain in the ***. Worse, removing the tape at the end of the season ripped a bunch of paint off the window frames. Never again.

Might work alright if you have one or two windows, but I have 8 in my apartment.

I think a better idea is to get Plexiglas cut to fit your window frames, and attach that in front of your window, maybe using those clear plastic mirror clips. You can use thin weatherstripping on the Plexi to get an airtight seal. Would cost a bit more, but should be much easier to setup and easier to remove at the end of the season. If you plan on staying in the same place for a few years, might even be cheaper (or you could always cut the Plexi to fit the windows in your new place).

We just did this and it helped a lot initially...until our cat pawed at it and loosened the plastic sheeting around the bottom of the frame. Cat proofing treatments are a much harder endevour in our household :)