Snow flurries or is it a blizzard?

12:16 AM Edit This 0 Comments »
We went out today for the first time since Tuesday and it started snowing while we were in town. The drive back at night in the dark was really cool. It was the closest thing to an actual blizzard I have ever seen. Large snow drifts sailing over the road in places, little snow tornadoes here and there, it looked like dark grey smoke dancing on the road in most places. A picture couldn't' have captured it and I doubt video would have gotten it right either, it was really an experience. We have been home since about 9 and Doug had to run back out to the car for something and said the path he made through the 20 something inches we ended with is almost gone from new snow and wind.

 I'm a little worried about the wind since the trees are already so weighed down, but I guess the wind is blowing most the snow out. We do have a generator but it's pretty far from the house and lots of shoveling would be involved to get it here. We heat with propane and electric so we won't absolutely freeze without power and at least the freezers on the porch would stay frozen with the temp under 20 here.

I wish our house was a little more breeze proof though. We have one metal chimney pipe into no where. We did cap that off with 4 layers of Aluminum foil and a large rubber band to hold it in place. We have tried to take it apart and remove it from the inside but it doesn't work that way. It needs to be pulled out from the roof but the pitch is a little too steep and the roof is really too high for that to be safe for one person to do and I'm not getting up there to help so, there it sits. 

There are gaps in the way the roof was made too. I'm not really sure how but if you spray a hose up onto the metal roofing over the bathroom, water will rain down onto the floor. I know they build this house themselves with little help so when we do build an addition, and we will likely do a lot of the work ourselves, I will be in charge of QC. I'm a real stickler and I wouldn't have let gaps in the roof boards just go as good enough. Their solution was to insulate the house off from the bathroom. The consequence of this is the toilet seat gets so cold, you don't really want to sit on it for fear of getting stuck to it. The claw foot bath tub is heavenly, except in the winter when it's a huge ice cube. It's solid cast iron and it's soooo cold. You need to run the hot water for a while before even taking a shower for fear you might brush up against it and go into arctic shock! Really I love how deep it is though.

There is this door built onto the little closet we keep the dust old neglected mop in. It was for passing wood through and they didn't insulate it. We did seal it up with a chunk of insulation but I bet it could have been done better. I considered it a theft danger and we sealed it up for safety not heating reasons so I really can't say how well that was done.

The original owners used older parts when building our house and we have a couple antique single pane windows and every window seems to let in a little breeze. We usually seal the house up with that plastic that you vacuum seal on with double sided tape and a hair dryer. I know, it a little ghetto but it's smart for the gas bill. We didn't get to doing it in time this year. The windows are sweating too much and the wood frames will be too wet for the tape to stick now so it's just too late.

I did make these nifty draft dodgers that are made from a wool blanket rolled up and I used my snap press to put industrial plastic snaps on the roll then nailed some to the door so it snaps in place and can be taken off and unrolled to be washed, not that I have ever done that in my memory, but it's an option. They work great with the exception that they seem to be irresistible to kids and kittens. They love to unsnap them and I am forever putting them back on. On the bright side the older cats and kid don't bother them anymore so it's just a phase we have to get past.

I need to get to making some heavy curtains for the windows. Actually I already made them I need to now figure out how to hang them. I also didn't get the pull mechanism correct. I was planning something like Roman shades but they don't lay how I would like them to. I might just let them hang down at this point, just to save on heat. I really do need to get back to them.

The wind is howling out there and the lights keep flickering. I have unplugged the most surge sensitive items in the house, the UV mercury vapor reptile heating lamps and the front loading washing machine. I have a few buckets of water sitting in the bathtub to manually flush the toilet as needed. All the pets waters have been topped off too. The well pump doesn't work without electricity and our generator isn't wired for 220. I have charged up all I could think to charge laptops, cameras, phones.  I have a flash light handy just in case. I better do the dishes before we lose power and running water. If an outage were to last a few days and they have before, dirty dishes laying around would really irritate me.

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