This past January was extremely cold and snowy in my home town of Chicago, making even simple outdoor tasks difficult and actually dangerous, with wind chills below -15 deg. The Engebretson “Bunker in Bucktown” suffers from a fundamental design flaw: whoever rehabbed our house in the 1990s installed the HVAC ductwork in the ceiling of the first floor; the forced air heat pumps away, and it’s 80 degrees on the ceiling and 50 degrees on the floor.
While I can handle the cold pretty well, my wife is not comfortable with a cold house and because she works from her home office, climate issues are very important to her. When we moved into the house we installed a gas fireplace/stove in the living room, and we have used it extensively during our numerous polar vortex attacks this past winter.