Thursday, January 27, 2011

Brass Monkey Cold



Today was the second day of warmer temperatures here on the urban homestead - it was 33 degrees and drab today. Tonight the real cold comes back to torment us.  
NP I'll take it sure beats our all time record setting low of -9 last week.
Snapped this pic of our freak'n Winter wonderland  while I was listening to my Christmas gift from Woodsrunner. It's an eton brand solar/hand cranked/battery powered radio/flash light/cell phone charger. Also will charge ipods. Great to get a quick weather update from NOAA.
Lite weight and very compact. Good since my car is a bicycle with baskets.



All that's left of our wood pile is 2 to 2 1/3 cords of wood. The 1/3 being hard Maple which gives more heat than what we have been calling Bass wood. Don't ask me what Bass wood is. It's a term that husband uses. All I know is that it is wood best burned in early Autumn or late Spring or during warm January days such as today when I'm wearing thermal underwear under my thick sweatpants.
It was free so that has to count for something. And we were by no means freezing.
When it was bitterly sub zero cold we also burned Oak pallets along with the Maple. Still it was diffacult to keep the house any warmer than 56 even with the stove blazing at those low temps. No wonder that this ballon framed built house orginally had 3 coal stoves.
So far to date the furnace has only been on for about 40 hours this heating season. The majority of that was durning those below zero nights to keep the cellar warm enough so the water pipes didn't freeze. As of now our natural gas bill has been $92 but that's without a proper meter read.
Electric bill was impressive in that we only used a bit over $12 worth of current for last month. However we paid out over $34 in service charges, taxes, tariffs, line charges, blah blah blah ...
Having the furnace running for those few nights reminded me that I so much prefer wood heat to forced air. It's true what they say, the flame warms you to the bones.

~~ pelenaka ~~