Monday the weather will start turning for us, this cold weather started when bogydave returned ..... just sayin!
Blizzard conditions today. I got out of Vail this morning before they shut down I-70. Then they closed it E. from Silverthorne. Shut down about 5 hours, really poor driving conditions. But that's what happens in the spring. Luckily house was still warm enough when I got home. I figure to burn until June again.
We had 3" of snow last week and woke up to 6" this morning. Past few days have been highs near freezing and lows in the teens. This followed a week of dry weather, no snow on the ground at all, no ice on any ponds/lakes, and highs reaching into the 60' and lows in the 30's. April's taking a last shot at us after this mild winter. Cheers!
You would have thought he could have brought some of that warm sun back and shared with all his pals....Guess not.
I might have been the one that mentioned I was done burning. It's hard to keep up with this weather since I have a boiler and it takes 4 hours of burning to get my water temp high enough to heat the house. Last week I was wearing shorts, but this weekend we have snow forecasted and a couple nights down in the 20°'s. Then Monday's supposed to be 65° again. I'll just let the heat pump deal with it, meanwhile I'll be outside mowing in my Carhartt's if it ever stops raining!! The grass was 8" high in a few places last Wednesday when I mowed for the first time, it's already creeping close to that again!
Wasn't me! I've been winding down the wood supply on the front porch, but I was kind of expecting one last early April cold snap. Seems like we get one last snow in early April every year before things start warming up here. This is the last of it though, I think. We'll get a couple weeks of spring, and then it'll be on to summer. I'm planning a trip to Michigan in a couple weeks and I expect to be all done with burning season by the time I return.
With all these fronts coming through, we're still burning almost every day. House cools off pretty quickly if it gets down around freezing with wind. Fine with me, I'm getting a chance to run the Keystone again now that I've got that left front vertical seam leak patched. Lorin sent me some of their new cement made with soapstone dust. It's really tacky and stringy so I think it will hold up well.
We had low 30s last night. House temp still holding high 60s. Last fire about a month ago. I designed the house with lots of insulation and lots of thermal mass. I figured it might be 3 years before it finally settled in and it looks like that was about right and it is performing close to what I hoped for. The cooler the mass is when it gets warm, the longer I can wait before firing up the A/C. I used 3 cords last year and only a cord this year. Part of that is the mild winter, part is house equilibration, part is higher BTU wood. The good news is that the three cords that I put on the porch for this winter just went from a year's worth to 3 years worth! I've got a fair bit of room in my pole barn and my goal was to fill the available covered space with firewood and I'm now only about 4 cords short of capacity. When it's full, it's full. From that point, I'll just replace what I use each winter and call it good enough. I figured that would get me on a 3 maybe 4 year plan, but at this rate, I may well be on a 10 year plan!
Same here, last night record lows up north of single digits, and in the low to mid teens here in the south. once in it gets in the 50's & 60's for good burning is done. Time to open the windows and air the house. Probably another week or two.