With this long and cold winter my basement workroom is colder as it has ever been before... it does not make much sense in heating it for me, I'm mostly waiting when making soap, except I did not realize how much it was influencing my soap process as well! The first batches I made this year would not gel at all even though milk soap normally creates enough internal heat to gel without external heat or even wrapping - so I added external heat... and overheated the heck out of it!
Normally the soap brick gels from the center, creating an oval of dark semi transparent soap which creeps to the outsides, and just before it does that (and then overheats) I stop the process by cooling down, either by unwrapping or placing on concrete floor. Gelled soap creates a better quality soap so I think it's worth the trouble. Except because of the extreme low temps the center would overheat before the edges of the soap brick would gel...
A bit of thinking made me realize it was the cold air of the basement keeping the outside from gelling, so I devised this foam edge to cut on draft and keep the heat in. I first used heavy blankets but that did not work anymore (as it did in previous years). Rescued pieces of heavy insulation foam (from a construction site, also used to insulate my chicken coop west wall and two top bar hive lids) were used for the bottom, top and sides. It's very easy to cut to size with a band saw (our new tool) and with a piece of butcher paper on top to protect moisture beading from leaking chemicals it makes for a perfect heat box. Tho I am sure a styrofoam cooler would work just as well :)
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