This Sucks. I have the wood stove and the Furnace going full tilt. I am shoving wood into the furnace like a fireman on a steam locomotive back in the 1800's. The main room of the house is actually a bit too warm but the temps are falling in the basement. I guess the vent I have down there is just not sufficient for this cold. Nice to find that out now after 30 some odd years of not having an issue before.
As of right now my outside thermometer says it is -10 and the internet tells me it is -9. Wind chill is reported as being around -30 +/- my basement remote temp tells me it is 30.5 degrees. It officially went below 32 degrees about an hour ago and I got nothing left to throw at it. I have all the water lines shut off and drained except for the one that comes into the house and then runs under the floor into the the water heater and the downstairs bathroom. I have heat tape on part of it and four spots with heat lamps on that one line plus a space heater hanging down there and still 30 degrees is best I can do.
My biggest complaint about older houses around here the plumbing is just not installed in such a manner to hold up to these arctic blasts we never seemed to have them this bad before the 2000's. Doesn't seem to matter how much you try there is always the next storm to tests the limits right around the corner.
I check the dripping faucets every few minutes and if one stops dripping (not that you can call it dripping now more like a slight flow as I turned them up some) I will just need to go down and shut the main off for the house I guess.
Exactly why I hate F%cking Winter the MFking water lines.
The other problem with this storm is I have not experienced one with winds that have lasted this long at this velocity. I have seen a day at close to these temps and wind speeds but not all day, plus night and they are saying all day tomorrow. It ain't even midnight yet.
I finally found the chickens. The first hen showed up looking miserable perched on one of my Bean planters about 2:30 so I went out and put her in the coop. Two other hens came up from the barn about 4pm when I was giving the Sheep and Goats another ration of grain and these two went into the coop on their own and were soon followed by the last hen I watched go in a few minutes later. I don't know what happened to the rooster but I think he was off looking for all his hens and did not realize the three were already inside. I found him right about sundown standing next to the goat house. I assume he was looking for his hens as they sometimes go in there. He looked frozen stiff.
Mrs. PP picked him up and he looked like a plastic statue he was so stiff. He didn't flap or squawk either. By the time we got him to the coop though he moved back into the hay bedding on his own and was snuggling up to his four hens deep in a pile of hay when we left them.
The goats were inside their mobile home packed with hay and complained loudly until I actually brought their grain over to them at the entrance to eat it. They refused to come out but complained loudly from their top sleeping shelf until I went in. Nugget is content to sleep in her carrier and much hay until this is over after I took her out for a bit before dark.
The Sheep, well I am assuming I got their problem figured out. Turns out my two oldest Ewe's cannot negotiate the smaller entrance to the stall I wanted them to over night in. SO I had to go open the much larger stall for them. They still did not seem too flustered by the cold as it got dark and a few of them were still out eating hay last I could see em. The more BFL types are more weather sensitive than the Romneys so you can guess which ones were still out. I have not ever had a sheep freeze to death so I am assuming they know enough to go in when they need to. Guess I will see how bad it is in the morning.
Well almost 11 PM now and the temps seemed to have warmed up to -6 now according to the internet.
Hot damn a regular heat wave!!!
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
That winter front is ferociously blasting through here as I write. I agree with you about winter.
ReplyDeleteYou may already know this, but ruminants can produce a lot of their own body heat if they have plenty of long-stemmed hay to eat. I learned about this when I was researching for writing Critter Tales. What happens is roughage digests slowly in their many stomachs and produces volatile fatty acids. VFAs provide something like 70% of their needed energy supply, which really, really helps them to stay warm.
Leigh - I did not know they do that anymore than any other critter produces heat from food. Good thing I always keep plenty of hay out all the time I guess. The Sheep were all over the hay bales yesterday and today. Guess that's why.
DeleteOur chickens would not leave the henhouse this morning. We do have some sun right now, but it is still below zero here in TN!
ReplyDeletesbrgirl - Ours have stayed inside too and I expected them too yesterday but for some reason they decided to go out. I suspect it is since we lost so many of our old experienced hens that the new ones think they know better lol. They learned a lesson yesterday that obviously stuck cause they stayed in today :)
DeleteGet a fan going, either blowing warm air into the basement or blowing cold air up from it.That might heat the air enough to get it above freezing. You've had this issue before. You might want to consider a kerosene heater for future use down there. They're indoor rated and will go all day on a little bit of kero. A few degrees of warmth is all you need to keep the pipes from freezing.
ReplyDeleteThe citrus grovers out here in the Wild West have wind machines that they turn on when the temperatures drop below freezing. Believe it or not, this isn't to keep frost from landing on the citrus. The moving air actually causes friction between the air molecules, which heats the air just the couple of degrees needed to keep the fruit from freezing!
God be with you, PP.
Pete - That is interesting it actually heats the air up? Hmmm. When it finally got up to -3 today the basement began heating up again slowly. Like I said I add better protection and the storms just up the stakes... damn them.
DeleteYup. The wind machines heat the air just a degree or two, and most times that's all that's needed. The grovers used to use something called a smudge pot to heat the air.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smudge_pot
These burned diesel, and of course, the "global warming" crowd yelled and screamed at the loons in Sacramento, so those went away. You get one of those going and tweaked and it's like standing next to a vertically oriented jet engine! You could tell it was a cold day (20's or lower) even before you got out of bed. You could smell the smudge pots cooking all over the valley!
They've come a ways in breeding citrus that can handle colder temps, but thanks to the loony Left, all the grovers can do when it gets really cold here now is pray...
PP, is it a weird question to ask if there is any remediation you can make to the plumbing to reduce the risk? We have been corresponding for some years now, and this always seems to be the biggest angst for you at this time of year - or is it just that it would be cost ineffective?
ReplyDeletePete's suggestion on kerosene heater would seem - to my inexperienced eye - to be a workable one.
TB - the real problem is that the county water line will not shut off. When I turn it off at the road it still seeps in slowly and will fill my pipes. If I turn off the line in the basement too it just stops at the foundation and freezes there. If I could just turn the line off I would never have an issue as I would just prepare accordingly but I can't it's either deal with it on repair pipes somewhere and repairing a busted pipe inside the foundation wall is the worst. That is how I found out the line did not seal off.
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