Sixty to sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, roughly 16 to 18 Celsius. A cool house. The kind where you put on a second layer, decide the heating can wait another week, and think nothing more about it.

According to the National Institute on Aging, it is also cool enough to bring on hypothermia in an older adult. At home, indoors, in a house that feels a bit chilly. The same page notes that about one in five injuries from cold exposure happens inside the home.

So winter preparation is smaller and closer to home than it sounds. A handful of ordinary jobs, simple on a mild afternoon in late September and considerably harder once the weather has turned. Some of them become dangerous.

The same job, done in January

This article started in my own house. For the past few days we have had problems with the hot water, and a few…

Preparing for the Winter: Everything on This…

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