Fall Fell Fast on the Healthy Hook

When fall fell this year it fell fast and fully. Our weather has changed quickly from warm and humid, to chilly without any mild weather in between. At home we went from air conditioning to the furnace in the space of about a week. It would be nice to have had (maybe we still WILL have) a period with the windows open.

The mighty Hook organ has now begun to show the ravages of the up-and-down heating. All the reeds, three on the Swell, and one each on the Great and Pedal, have begun to drift out of tune. The Great Trumpet and Swell Hautbois are the most stable, and they are now drifting quite a bit as well. I am not inclined to tune much at this time as the temperature is so variable and the tuning will drift more before it settles in to the winter state.

We have a new boiler yoked to the old radiators which is not only more efficient, it seems to start up more quickly. Perhaps because of the expected lower operating cost the thermostat has been set at a higher temperature this year than I have ever seen it. It has also been set to raise the temperature way too quickly for the health of the organ. Already we have been sweating in the choir loft after just finishing sweating in the summer season. A number of people, not up in the choir loft where it is warmer but on the floor, volunteered that it has been TOO warm. I would willingly trade this extra heat for later in the winter when I suspect that we will be cold! Heating the building so quickly (or TRYING to heat the building too quickly) is highly detrimental to all wood because the humidity is changed too drastically in too short a space of time. All the wood in the church will suffer from this, and the organ will be negatively affected even more. I hope that I will be able to get the heat started earlier and more gently; we did this for awhile a last year for a time and it worked well. We surely saved money, avoiding "jack-rabbit-starts" as happens when the heat goes (or tries to go) from 55 degrees to 69 degrees in too short a time.

I have seen people walk into the cold church, supposedly heated, but still struggling to make it into the 60's, immediately walk back out the door. The idea seems to be that if the air temperature is at a certain level, then people are comfortable. Specialists in heating and cooling know that the "comfort" of a building is not based on air temperature, but the temperature of SURFACES; pews, walls, floor, etc. If the air is rapidly heated in two hours, none of the surfaces can possibly warm-up. It is no wonder people are cold and leaving. The fact that this rapid change in temperature is very bad for the organ as well as the comfort of the people leads me to hope that we can design a better way to do this. The fact that a multi-stepped, longer heat-up period would also probably save money ought to help, but I have been pressing for this approach for quite a while and am not sure that I am heard. I'll continue this effort.

I am waiting patiently to see how our heating strategy develops as the cold season advances. I feel responsible for keeping the Hook healthy and the closest thing to a threat to it at this time would be our wonderful new boiler coupled with poor thermostat management. In fact, bad thermostat management is probably also a big threat to attendance (and income?) in the next few months. STAY TUNED.