Fox-Smith problem children
During high summer our three dogs—faithful companions of whom I am usually, but not currently, very fond—would rather be under the house. A raised dogtrot cottage built around 1890, our house rests on brick piers about three feet tall. These piers raise it high enough to let breezes circulate beneath, a clever innovation which, like high ceilings and double-hung windows that open at the top to let warm air escape, are among the hot climate design adaptations you can read about in Adam Ortego’s terrific article “In Louisiana, Innovation is Our Tradition,” which appears HERE in this month's Deep South Design issue. A dark, dusty, three-foot-high space makes an irresistible lair if one is, say, a sixty-pound labrador-chow-pit mix, an overfed, red-heeler-dachshund mashup suffering from chronic Short Dog Syndrome, or a catahoula/border collie mix with a vendetta against mail carriers. From the moment the weather warms in spring until the first October chill, these crossbred co-conspirators retire to their subterranean kingdom, where they lurk in dust wallows, luxuriate in relative cool as the refrigerated air we pay to pump into the house sinks through the floorboards, and wait for the next mailman or Amazon delivery driver to happen by. This sensible behavior confirms the wisdom of the old song about only mad dogs and Englishmen going out in the midday sun, and also explains why their general status as “outside dogs” is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Unlike the dogs, I detest going under the house. As a fifty-something man with a dodgy back and a tendency towards claustrophobia, I avoid it under all but dire circumstances. But during the hottest part of July we began hearing ominous thumping, dragging noises that suggested something large (and clumsy) making itself at home inside the balloon-framed walls, which, being open from floor to ceiling (another cooling innovation), are attractive to any creature brave or stupid enough to run the canine gauntlet to gain access. The noises waxed and waned for a while until, one hot afternoon, they escalated into what sounded like full-scale battle. From beneath the house came volleys of thumps, clangs, and frenzied outbursts of growling, scrabbling, and eventually, yelps and squealing that suggested that the dogs had gone to war against something larger and better armed than your garden-variety house mouse. The noises subsided after a while, so I still wouldn’t have gone to investigate had it not dawned on us afterwards that the air conditioning was working even less well than usual. When I reluctantly poked my head under the porch, a gust of deliciously chilled air suggested that my trip into the underworld was only just getting started. After an interminable period of commando-crawling around accompanied by creative swearing, I learned the dismal truth. Like me, the dogs had noticed evidence of an intruder—in this case a possum, which had unwisely chosen to take up residence inside a bedroom wall. Unlike me, the dogs had decided to do something about it. In their frenzy to drag the panicked creature from its hiding place, one or more of them had apparently wedged itself up inside the wall, utilizing the conveniently located air-conditioning ductwork for purchase. Since air-conditioning ductwork isn’t really designed to serve as climbing equipment for a berserk, sixty-pound labrador, it had understandably collapsed. The dogs, having succeeded in evicting the possum, (bits of which were now scattered messily around the backyard), while also centrally air-conditioning their hideout, were looking pleased with their handiwork. I was less so, since the resulting repairs were to rob me of what remained of my weekend.
Besides figuring out how to replace damaged ductwork, the other, more distressing fact I learned during my trip into the underworld was that air conditioning a raised house built entirely of wood is a great way of rotting century-old, heart pine floorboards. Certainly, my wife’s forebears who built this house knew a lot about building for a hot climate, but they couldn’t have anticipated how far our expectations for comfort might have come a century down the road. If anyone knows of solutions or resources for limiting or preventing floor damage resulting from air conditioning condensation, please let me know. If not, perhaps that’s an article for a future “Deep South Design” issue of Country Roads.
—James Fox-Smith, publisher
