Static electricity
 

(1) My house is very dry this winter. My laptop keeps shutting down when I give it a shock of static electricity. If I touch something metal before I touch the laptop, will that discharge the static electricity from my body and cure this problem?

(2) Why do I get a static electric shock when I touch the top of my glasstop stove? Glass in an insulator, so I'm surprised at this.

I think the cause of the laptop problem is a combination of dry air, synthetic clothing, a plastic chair, and Crocs---a perfect electric storm aggravated each time I get up and move around.

The stovetop may have a conductive coating on top of the glass, perhaps for abrasion resistance.

Spray around your work area with static guard.

One of the offices I worked in, had a room that was so bad it drove dust into lady's hands. She showed it to a co-worker who said it was 'computer mites.' Not realizing it was slang, she got a cream from her doctor.

We almost laughed when we figurred it out!

Humidity
 

Since you have a boiler, I assume radiators. Many times, a pot of water on top of the radiator will improve the humidity situation. Or a kettle on top of the wood stove. Come spring, caulking around windows and doors and otherwise tightening things up will help the dryness.

Yeah, I have containers of water all over the place plus a humidifier and a kettle. I've never seen a winter this dry before. I wonder if it's because I had roof vents installed last summer? Maybe the vents are allowing the humidity to escape? Usually the basement gets quite humid in the winter, but not this year.

Camper suggested static guard. In our office, we had static and eventually just sprayed water from a spray bottle on the rug and it worked perfectly!!

I thought we had gone over this in prior threads. Excessive dryness in a dwelling in winter almost always is due to too much air leakage into/out of the outer shell. That leakage, worst in extremely cold weather, comes in down low (below the "neutral pressure plane") and out up high, such as into the attic space. This uncontrollable flow flushes out the moisture produce by human occupancy; the exterior air replacing what's inside is extremely dry in winter, in terms of absolute humidity. An uncomfortably dry house needs tightening up.

If adding roof vents did indeed result in increased interior dryness, that's a very strong indication of excessive leakage from interior into the attic. Then the first place to address in your tightening up program is the attic floor. Go up there, uncover all places where there are wiring penetrations and light fixtures, and seal those places with can foam (the orange stuff, for wiring contact). Install an attic hatchway insulation/air sealing kit.

A useful effort likely would be to have someone come in with a blower door and IR camera, to measure relative leakiness and locate places where cold air is coming in.

Ayuh. I just want to know how to discharge static electricity from my body.

For that,what I've done over the years is to touch something conductive (generally metal), using a knuckle, not a fingertip. Fingertips have a way of hastening the learning.

Thank you, Dick. That's what I wanted to confirm. Good idea about the knuckle. I moved my laptop back into my home office and the problem disappeared. I think there were too many materials in the kitchen that contributed to the problem. I was quite worried about damaging my work laptop with 10 years of work on it.

I do the same thing...when I get jolted, my wife can hear the snap ( followed by the profanity coming out of my mouth ) even if she's in a different room...she laughs! I can also see the flashes of light from my fingertip to whatever metal I touch. I have learned to make a fist and touch whatever is gonna zap me with my knuckles to discharge....works every time, as long as I remember to do it!