Whoa dude.

[POPTOP]

You'll sure get spoiled with the new heat and air!

First summer after we bought our house, no air, great heating, no air. It was a record breaking hot summer, I lived in the basement. Before the next summer we had central air added. Just this last two years we replaced both.

[smartrock]

My grandmother's house (farmhouse in Virginia) had grates on the second floor for air from the first floor to rise up to heat particular rooms. I used to spend a bit of time by them, too.

That's so interesting. When I was a kid I noticed one of my uncle's homes had those floor grates and you could see down to the floor below. Gosh, that had to be when I was <10 years old but now that you mention it, I got a memory of something that sounds like what you describe. My memory of their house is that it always smelled like boiled cabbage or something along those lines. No wonder the whole house smelled like that.