24F out, snow and a little freezing rain coming down. Just spent an hour outside in the tub with my wife. Came back in to 72F and a stove full of white oak almost completely choked out slowly cruising along.
It is 15 degrees outside; 84 inside and burning good ole Pennsylvania anthracite coal (stove coal size for those who care about such things). I am also burning some propane so that the radiant heated floors can take over when we go to the outlaws (also known as the inlaws) in another state for Christmas. It takes a few days to bring the floors up to temperature...
Alaska could supply the U.S. with coal for many decades . We have Litterly Mountains of the stuff up here. Too many greenies for anyone to invest in a coal mine tho. Really is a shame. That will change tho if there's some hitch in the git along of oil though. My neighbor would top off his boiler with a few scoops of coal. I'm thinking I might go get a few ton of it just to have on hand. Would be nice to round out a load of wood in the stove.
Thanks. The thing that allowed it to work was the floor and frame was shot when I moved here. So as I had to rebuild the frame anyway, I just added a couple of bearing girders to the floor structure, in-between the floor joists. There are six interleaved 2 X 10's that run the length of the porch (20'), supported in four places, placed in the center at a distance apart that seemed to catch all the tires on all the vehicles I measured. So no matter what is driven onto the porch, the tires are riding on those girders, not the floor itself. The test was driving a Ford Expedition I had at the time onto the porch; nothing moved that I could measure, nothing creaked and so I figured it was up to the task. I normally load right around a cord of wood on that trailer, so there is a fair amount of weight on those bearers but it has worked well for a lot of years now. Now if I can just get a porch built around that floor and frame, I would be in business..... Brian
Warmed up to 20°F with sleet and up to 3 tenths of an inch freezing rain expected. Another foot of snow expected Christmas Eve through Christmas. The oakleaf is choochin!
When I worked for the Railroad I worked primarily in the Powder River Basin where there is a ton of coal mines. I had the chance to visit Black Thunder Mine, the largest coal mine in North America at the time, and I asked how long the coal would last, and the guy said, "This seam stretches from Wyoming up into Canada, so at the rate we are mining, about 500 years." Then a new administration came along and thought wind and solar were the answer. So our coal is being shipped to China, burned and we get the resulting smog...no benefits from burning cheap coal, just the smog! At that mine, in 2002 they charged $10 a ton. I watched a 300 ton truck roll by and it spilled some coal. I was like, "so at the end of the day you scrape that coal up and run it through the crusher?" and the guy was like, "Nope, that is waste." I was like, "That would heat my house for the rest of my life", to which he said, "You know, I never thought of it like that before."
72 on the up stairs living room thermostat this morning upon slumbering out to get the coffee going. 13 outside headed for 18. Then single digits tonight. The IS has yet to disappoint me. Been choochin nice and warm all night after finally learning how to set it for a long even burn (4 months of use) and a BDF ash door mod. The coals keep crankin heat rather than sitting stagnant after the off gassing is done. Will see if the tank can keep up with the single digit highs and lows in the teens below zero that are coming! I have faith, but fully expect the NG furnace to be kicking in for some assistance.
ICE!!!!!!!!!!!!! God at 68 yrs I hate,hate ICE. It aint nice out there this AM. I really mean I HATE ICE, got that HATE IT!!!!!!!!!!!! Scared tihsless about fallin!!!!!!!!!!HATE IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sitting at 11; feels like -8 right now. We already hit our high for the day. The colder stuff starts Sunday night, just in time for Christmas!