a rumor going round ```

[valley ranch]

Total of about 7' ~ just a dusting on the range ~ quite a contrast ```

 

[Collector]

Whoa, you got some snow there now. You must be giving that snowblower a work out.
Stay close to the fire.

 

[flowerbug]

yup those electricians are expensive..like you said well worth it.... it does suck when the power goes out and your on a well... being thinking about getting a small gen to just run the well and fridge....

first thing i do when the power goes out is turn off the hot water heater and then run the water into buckets to get any residual pressure out of the system since it will gradually fade anyways. that way we have extra water for flushing the toilets if needed for several days.

so far our worst outage was almost a week without power in the winter. propane fireplace will keep us warm enough that we won't freeze, but it will not heat the whole house. the crawlspace is very warm most of the time with the heater being down there and that residual heat has lasted well enough through any power outages, at least so far.

if i stay here longer term what i would like to do is put in a solar hot water collector and just enough solar electric panels to run pumps and charge just a little bit of battery backup. the LED lights don't draw much of anything any more so you can go several evenings off just a single battery. the main cost of electricity being hot water, especially in the winter and if we get a few sunny days in a row i could set it up to take some of that extra heat and store it in tanks under the house. much more cost efficient too if you can grab the heat directly from the sun instead of converting sun to electricity and then back to heat... just use sun electricity to run pumps to move hot water as it only needs to run when the sun is out then you don't need much battery either (just enough of a buffer to get over the resistance of starting the motors which can be sized for the system and they can be pretty efficient too because it can be a relatively closed system)...

 

[valley ranch]

Whoa, you got some snow there now. You must be giving that snowblower a work out.
Stay close to the fire.

My snow blower went foof ~ so I had planned to get a used Snapper and rebuild it ~ wife brought home a new on from work ~ it's not built as well as ~ the ones I'm use to ~ it has no zurk joints ~ so when the bearing go dry ~ they go poof ~ but it threw the snow I blew that drive area and the street ~ must have been 8 or 10 times ~ and it kept working ~ next time I'm up ~ I'll spray the auger area with WD 40 or Silicone ~ snow did begin to pack inside ~ I had to clean it out ~ a time or four ```

 

[valley ranch]

flowerbugDeeply Rooted

first thing i do when the power goes out is turn off the hot water heater and then run the water into buckets to get any residual pressure out of the system since it will gradually fade anyways. that way we have extra water for flushing the toilets if needed for several days.

so far our worst outage was almost a week without power in the winter. propane fireplace will keep us warm enough that we won't freeze, but it will not heat the whole house. the crawlspace is very warm most of the time with the heater being down there and that residual heat has lasted well enough through any power outages, at least so far.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Use to lose power for many days ~ now there are others living in this valley and it's seldom longer than 3 days ```