Winter At Our House

[Edwin]

Along the front of the house

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This is a picture of the front of the house close to the front door. You can see how the wind cut the snow away right close to the house. It is actually quite artistic what happens to the snow when the wind blows it. I guess it could be called wind sculpure!k It is actually quite beautiful. There are even better pictures that could be taken out there, but it is too miserable today to even go out there when it is not completely necessary. I will try to get more pictures after the wind dies down and it is not so punishing to go out. The snow driven by the wind feels really cold!

[Chas]

Hi Edwin. What fuel do you use to heat your house? Gas or oil?

[Edwin]

Chas, seeing these pictures makes you think about fuel doesn't it! Here we heat our house with wood pellets. They are approximately the size of a 22 caliper bullet/shell. They come in sacks of 40 pounds each. The ones we burn are premium wood pellets produced in Canada. They are guaranteed to have the best stuff in them, with no varnish, or anything that would make them less effective. When we moved here 4 years ago I bought a pellet stove and payed less for it that most sell for around her. It measures about 32 inches tall from the floor, and is 24 inches square. The hopper holds 3 forty pound bags of pellets. It has 5 settings. On number one setting there is what is called the trim, and you can set it below one, lowest setting, barely putting out heat, but keeping it burning, setting number one, which is a good setting if it is not too cold outside and the wind is not blowing. On step above 2 which is one half setting below the actual number 2 setting. Then there is 2, 3, 4, and 5. Setting number 5 is so hot it will ruin the stove if left there more than about 10 minutes. I keep it on the one above number one a lot, and number one if it is not too cold, and the very bottom setting if it is just cold for part of the day. If our house feels really cold we use number 2, but we might use 3 for short periods of time, but seldom, almost never number 4, and never ever number 5.

We used to burn wood where we lived for 10 years before moving here, and there it was plentiful, but here it is scarce. We have used propane, but the furnace we have in one of the houses is not very efficient, and it is very expensive. We try to burn wood in that house, our daughter's house now. The other house has a central electric furnace, and it is good, but expensive both to maintain and to pay the monthly heating bill, and renters take care of that, except that maintaining it is my responsibility.

The house we live in now had a central electric furnance, but it looked trashed when we got it, so I pulled it out, and closed off all the duct work. We have a kithcen wood cook stovef that we use both for cooking, heating water, and heating the kitchen when it is very cold. We are now pretty well out of wood, except that I have some junk wood that I could burn, but it is buried with snow now, so I will try to cut it and burn it when it is cold but before the snow has come, or after it has gone off.

[Smiley]

It has been fairly warm for this time of year.Yesterday it rained quite a bit but today the rain has turned to snow . I really don`t care much for winter anymore,regardless of how mild they are around here.

[Edwin]

It is interesting, Smiley, that your attitude about the snow is affected by the way if affects you. My Dad had to work in it, work with it, work inspite of it, and he was a rancher and farmer most of his life, so he had to work out in it. He was glad for the moisture that it brought, and that it provided water in the mountians for the streams and rivers, but he was not happy that he had to shovel it, lay in it while putting chains on the tire, remove it from buildings to reduce the weight load on the roofs, and get his hands frozen in it while trying to do things. As a kid I loved the snow as it provided something else to play in; sledding and tobogganing. For 10 years it was our living, because we worked with tourist, and if we had lots of snow we also had lots of people coming, bringing their money to spend, part of which we got. If we had the snow we had people back country skiing and going snow shoeing. So during those years we were praying that it would snow a lot, but before we moved there I was beginning to feel like my Dad; I had to shovel it, drive in it, get my hands in it, and it just seemed unpleasant! Now of course I have to shovel it after a blizzard, we can't go when we want to/need to, and when Scooby's fence gets covered with snow so that he can walk out of his yard over the now, I have to shovel a 4 foot path, trench all around his fence which is probably close to 100 feet, counting the sides and the length. But I am retired, so if I can't go, it is not the end of the world. I don't even mind driving in it, as long as the hills are not so slick that it is dangerous, risking sliding back down the hill uncontroled, and that is my greatest fear, which has happened a few times, but it has never turned out disasterous. If I have to shovel a little, well, I am retired, so I have the time, and what I kept telling myself yesterday while shoveling along Scooby's yard fence is that what I was doing was no more than my 6.5 mile walk which I do every chance I get, and I love it. So, I can understand both sides of the snow issue. Where we lived for 10 years we had low snow years and heavy snow years. Some years we got only a few feet. One year while we lived there we got 26 feet of accumulated snow fall, and at Holden Village just a few miles from there, because of the higher elevation, they got 42 feet of accumulated snow fall. They boarded up all lower windows on buildings to protect the glass from getting pushed in from the weight of the snow. Before moving there I couldn't even imagine that much snow!

[Chas]

Chas, seeing these pictures makes you think about fuel doesn't it! Here we heat our house with wood pellets. They are approximately the size of a 22 caliper bullet/shell. They come in sacks of 40 pounds each. The ones we burn are premium wood pellets produced in Canada. They are guaranteed to have the best stuff in them, with no varnish, or anything that would make them less effective. When we moved here 4 years ago I bought a pellet stove and payed less for it that most sell for around her. It measures about 32 inches tall from the floor, and is 24 inches square. The hopper holds 3 forty pound bags of pellets. It has 5 settings. On number one setting there is what is called the trim, and you can set it below one, lowest setting, barely putting out heat, but keeping it burning, setting number one, which is a good setting if it is not too cold outside and the wind is not blowing. On step above 2 which is one half setting below the actual number 2 setting. Then there is 2, 3, 4, and 5. Setting number 5 is so hot it will ruin the stove if left there more than about 10 minutes. I keep it on the one above number one a lot, and number one if it is not too cold, and the very bottom setting if it is just cold for part of the day. If our house feels really cold we use number 2, but we might use 3 for short periods of time, but seldom, almost never number 4, and never ever number 5.

We used to burn wood where we lived for 10 years before moving here, and there it was plentiful, but here it is scarce. We have used propane, but the furnace we have in one of the houses is not very efficient, and it is very expensive. We try to burn wood in that house, our daughter's house now. The other house has a central electric furnace, and it is good, but expensive both to maintain and to pay the monthly heating bill, and renters take care of that, except that maintaining it is my responsibility.

The house we live in now had a central electric furnance, but it looked trashed when we got it, so I pulled it out, and closed off all the duct work. We have a kithcen wood cook stovef that we use both for cooking, heating water, and heating the kitchen when it is very cold. We are now pretty well out of wood, except that I have some junk wood that I could burn, but it is buried with snow now, so I will try to cut it and burn it when it is cold but before the snow has come, or after it has gone off.

Thanks. I could see from your photos that you did not have many (any?) trees around you so I guessed that you would not be burning wood. I got that wrong

I have gas piped to the house and enjoy central heating. In the lounge I have a coal effect gas fire that is quite realistic, but I am thinking of maybe changing it to a wood burner or dual fuel stove. I am not sure, I have had coal fires in houses in the past and whilst lovely whilst going they do create dust and you don't get the instant heat you get from just turning on the gas. Because of the central heating I rarely use the fire in the lounge.

On the roof I have solar panels and even in this cloudy wet country I generate enough electricity (mainly in the summer) that with the generous Government subsidy for the generated electricity I break even on my power bills. If I lived in the Philippines I would be tempted to have solar panels on the roof to reduce the cost of running air conditioning. Though I guess roof damage in a storm could be expensive!!

[Edwin]

Years ago around here people used to burn wood briquets, sp? We even burned them years ago. They were a little larger than the grated potato balls they sell in bags in the grocery store. It has been so many years since we have eaten them, that I can't remember what they are called. They are a little smaller than horse bisuits/poop. That has gone out I think. They used to have feeders that would continually load them in the firebox according to what ever speed you would set them on. They would haul them in the bulk, in large trucks, and then people would handle them with shovels. I had a great uncle who lived just 2 miles from here who burned coal. It is nice to be able to turn or push the thermostat and get heat immediately. Yes, to get wood here a person has to go a quite a few miles, and there is a lot of competition for what wood is available. Like anything esle some people have an in, and can get it easily, but for us here it is not easy. Where we lived before it was so plentiful that I got wood just because it was fun, and I didn't even need all the wood that I got. I probably left about 20 chords of wood because the only way out of the place was with an airplane or a boat, and so the wood stayed, and I wished we could have had just a little of it where we moved, here. My brother-in-law who lived on Guimaras Island set up solar panels and also a windmill, and he had a battery set up, and produced all the electricity he needed. Yes, if there was wind damage it would be disasterous!

[Edwin]

Internet Dish Buried in Snow

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Scooby is almost as tall as the fence that keeps him in, but he will not cross it unless he can put his feet on the snow bank and hop over. It was cute, but it was not fun to watch him do that because we are supposed to keep him in that yard! I had already dug the inside of the fence out, and after seeing him do that I had to dig the outside of the fence out. In this picture you can see Scooby standing where I dug earlier, and you can see where I just recently dug on the outside. The outside was much harder because that is where I shoveled the snow from the inside, and the snow was hard and packed from drifting, so I had to chop it with a shovel first, and then use another shovel to move it. I missed my mid day meal because of that, but it was important to shovel it. I worked on it from 2:00 p.m. until 9:30 p.m., and I was tired, fatigued, and hungry. I was so tired that I had trouble digesting my food when I did eat, and I was too tired to even rest! My back muscles were sore as well as my leg muscles! That was a job! Notice the mountains of snow. That internet dish is much taller than I am so you can get the idea of how much snow there is there, and Scooby just loves to walk on those mountains of now, as well as in the walkway that I created with my shoveling!

[Edwin]

Carol and Rand are getting ready to take care of/feed and water the banti chickens. In this picture you can see our little wood pile. Our youngest daughter gave us a little of her wood. It helps when the wind is blowing hard, and it is extremely cold, and especially when the electricity is off, then we can burn wood, but the pellet stove will not work without electricity as it has electrical motors that make it work correctly, and a computer board that keeps it functioning and feeding pellets! I have a gasoline driven power generator, but I have never set it up. It is still new in the box! If I move to the Philippines I may take it with me! Dreaming again!

Carol taking care of her banti chickens

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[Edwin]

Scooby and Carol taking care of her banti Chickens

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Both our doggies are really interested in banti chickens. Scooby gets as close as he can, and puts his feet up on the fence, but doesn't hop over. He was putting his front paws on the chicken house, but I moved things making it more difficult for him to do that. I don't want him to think he can hop onto the chicken house, and then over the fence. That is what I thought he was doing, so I worked on that, but then I learned what he really was doing, and that required much more work from me to remedy that situation! Rand sticks his head inside the chickenk house door and watches them. They both just love chickens!