I certainly can't say last night and today were fun by any stretch. Mostly it remained reasonably comfortable inside the house but that has taken quite a bit of effort to keep it that way. Once again I would say I have burned through about a week's worth of firewood in only a few days but now that I see what I am dealing with it's much easier overall.
After a bit of trial and error I finally figured out it was better to nap in two hour stretches than three. Trying to push my slivers of sleep to three hours put me on the downside of the curve and made it that much harder to fight back the encroaching cold. Normally I load the wood stove in four hour amounts and then let it go a full six hours over night so you can easily see how going to two hour rotations really increases the wood use. However choosing to split up that freshly felled Locust and mix it in with the Oak has paid off and hits just about the perfect burn temp for dealing with these super low temperatures.
My inside grates though are taking a beating. When this is all over I am going to pull the back grate out and show you how much iron has been melted off it. At least one of my grates is going to need to be replaced after this Winter is finished.
I wonder if my biggest fan Beetle Baily will try and insinuate I should have foreseen melting my furnace grate? C'mon Beetle where ya been Buddy? No more anonymous words?
Anyway putting the remote thermometer in the basement has been my best idea this Winter. I can sit here at the cold weather command center and get accurate temperature readings from all over the house and farm and act accordingly. I have found that almost without fail the unheated basement is spot on 28 degrees warmer than the outside temperature. If the winds are high you can simply calculate half of the windchill effect and subtract that from the actual temperature then add the 28 and come out to the basement temperature as well.
I have tested this method all the way down to 29 degrees in the Basement once before turning on the emergency heater. It was 4 degrees outside with a windchill feel like temp of negative 2 at the time. So far so good except I have been violating my goal of surviving Winter with no external energy use. Of course in a grid down situation I wouldn't be worried about water pipes in the basement either which would mean we would just have to live with cold feet.
Last night during the peak wind blast and bottom end low of zero it was all I could do to keep the house at a constant 65 degrees. That was with 30+ MPH winds though after the wind dropped off to under 15 MPH earlier today it now sits at a balmy 10 degrees outside and 76.3 inside.
The wife is happy and that's the important part. That and since I was up and down all day I made dinner and did all the dishes and cleaned up her mess she left in the kitchen besides.
Tonight we are predicted to get a low of zero once again but with tapering winds and a high of 30-something tomorrow. Just got to get through one more night and then we will have another reprieve for a few days.
Right now I am most worried about my bees. Those girls gotta be going through some serious food resources right now. The long term forecast is saying maybe up into the 50's by Sunday so hopefully I will be able to top off the girl's emergency stores again.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
Who's Beetle? I didn't realize your grates were close enough to the heat exchange area, to melt. In my mind there was a stretch of duct work in there. It is certainly not something I would have thought of.
ReplyDeleteBeetle is a poster who showed up after the first polar vortex and insinuated my double wood use somehow reflected on my ability to prepare. Another words another Butt-hurt heckler. Which is alright I like smacking his kind down :)
DeleteAnd by grate I mean the grates inside the wood furnace that the wood burns on. The ashes then fall through it to the pan in the bottom. They get burned away when you burn the fire inside too hot.
This will be our fourth night dipping into the 20's. Not for a long period though. I feel I shouldn't complain after reading my buddies blogs who are having such severe weather but dang it....We are not equipped for this much cold!
ReplyDeleteMB - I can only imagine. We haven't had weather like this since I was a kid but at least I knew it was a possibility even if I remembered it a bit better than the reality of it. To be somewhere where it shouldn't be happening at all though takes extra perseverance...
DeleteI am going through some wood and finally figured that there is a maximum amount that I can burn, I just can't get any more in the furnace any faster. I think that in this weather, I approach that limit. The supervisors are sleeping on separate blankets in the cellar. It is 64 in here now so I need to check it again. We are supposed to get hit by another blast on Monday I think. The plan is to have a wood stove going on the first floor for extra heat and I need it now not next season but I can't install a flue liner in this weather so it will wait. Hang in there!
ReplyDeleteSF - I actually have another smaller wood stove. It used to be my emergency backup in case the power went out and I used to burn it twice a year to make sure it worked. So far it hasn;t gotten so bad that I have to start it up though. I will admit in a true collapse situation the small wood stove would more than likely become my primary one.
DeleteC'mon, when you write and do stupid stuff, WHAT do you expect? Do you really want nothing but toady yes men writing all kinds of fawning compliments?
DeletePlease explain having to use a wood stove to make sure it still works???
Don't worry about "taking it easy on me". You will just not publish my comments rather than endure objective commentary.
You Know Who
What stupidity but I am glad you came back for more abuse. Oh and for your own knowledge I have never deleted a comment except for spam or double posts but I am sure with an intellect such as yours the only way you can win an argument is by censorship.
DeleteNow on to your glaring lack of knowledge. There are many things that can go wrong with a woodstove. The pipe may stop drawing correctly, the blower may seize up if it has one or the firebricks can begin to crumble.
Now there is your lesson on woodstoves for the day Beetle. Try and keep up for the future.
-18 here overnight with windchill of -35. Way too cold. Rural schools ran 2 hrs late and the city schools closed. Whipped puppy's. Warm tomorrow near 30, and snow. Bitter cold again early next week. I thought it was going to be a cold winter, I guessed right.
ReplyDeleteRob - It sure has been although I just got back from being out in it helping my dad thaw out his pipes and the wind is almost gone. Makes it much easier to to take. I was holding a metal lock in my hand though and it started to physically hurt after just a few seconds.
DeleteStay warm my friend and tell Beetle to well I won't curse up your comments.You get my drift.
ReplyDeleteSTVR - I am hoping Beetle comes back to visit I like hecklers. I try and be a little gentle with em in hopes they won't run off but it never seems to work.
DeleteAs the sun set tonight the temperature here was right at 19 above. Wear and tear on your equipment and high fuel usage in this kind of weather are unavoidable. I have started to lose chickens now and even two outdoors cats though I am bewildered as to what killed them. They had plenty of food and adequate shelter. But the cumulative effects of three weeks of this extreme weather are beginning to tell here on the mountain and in the rest of our county.
ReplyDeleteHarry - We had one cat that almost died the really old barn cat that I cannot stand. Never have liked that cat but she got so bad off that she was dragging her hind leg so I relented and the wife is now caring for her like a baby. So far no sheep death and the feral cat family appears to be quite healthy.
DeleteIt's 4 degrees here now.
Mama is on the other side of the state from me. and like she said..it has been in the 20s here. Tomorrow AM the wind chills are expected to be in the teens. brrrrrrr
ReplyDeleteBut you would stll be amazed at the folks at the gas station thinking that once they cross the state line that magically it will be 80. cracks me up.
JuGM - People are just so stupid. On the bright side maybe this cold will stop the spread of those big assed snakes coming North from the Glades. I really feel for you guys down there. Like I said at least I know it can get like this in Winter up here and it happens enough it pays to prepare for it for you guys it's rare and not as economical.
Delete"Cold Weather Command Center" - best phrase I have read all night.
ReplyDeleteWe are in the high 20's tonight but ice and snow predicted for tonight. Hoping against hope I will get up, check my e-mail, find out work has been canceled, and go back to bed.
Preppy, could you address the sleep pattern a little bit more - feeling particularly tired or not? Do you think you will need a big catch-up after this?
Hope the bees are doing well.
TB - It's 4 degrees here now the low was only suppose to be 5 tonight so we have went passed that.
DeleteIf I get tired I make sure the furnace is fully stocked then run the heater in the basement until my thermometer says 55 degrees or so. At which point I have about 2 hours before things begin falling down into the danger level so I set my alarm and catch some zzzz's.
Honestly 20 years ago this would have been pure hell. I hated this kind of thing when I was in the Army. Now I find out it really doesn;t effect me as bad but there are limits. I was going to work on my fiction some today and I found the lack of sleep made that almost impossible.
Ya know I should do a post on this phenomena.
I see that you did. Good on you.
DeleteI wonder (says the guy with know technical ability) if there is a way to set a temperature alarm so that it would notify you when the temperature is getting close to the area requiring action?
Yes I can set an alarm on the read out and have but I figure I have a bit more play with the basement heat over the wood stove reduction so I been adjusting more to when I have to put more wood in.
DeleteIf that made any sense.
Stay warm...do you hay bails to protect the girls? Warm here, 36 and dropping. 'Course we're snug with a turf fire.
ReplyDeleteStephen - I used to put hay bales around my hives when I had less than four or five but I started with 11 this Winter. I did cut up some of that pink foam board insulation and wrap the hives in that and that is suppose to be better than hay bales. I should have put up wind breaks and I have some stuff to do it. If the hives are still alive come Sunday I may just put some wind breaks up.
DeleteThe Casa de Chaos is still up and running. I'm going without water for about 5 days as the water main has seemed to have aged to the failure point. Not sure why since the house is only 70 + years old! LOL
ReplyDeleteThe wood stove is doing great and I'm getting about a 7+ hour burn time using the apple wood at night. I want to thank you for all of the info about firewood the BTU's and what to watch out for as a wood stove owner. I help stock up the wood stoves as a kid but it's sort of different as an adult and you have to plan/responsible for everything.
I haven't had to use any electricity for heat this winter and that is saving me a bundle. The house was built with cold weather in mind and the government was kind enough to top off my insulation so the house is super toasty warm this winter.