Posted on 12/24/2022 7:45:31 AM PST by Lazamataz
I live in an early-60's-build house. For the most part, it's wonderful, but it has very little insulation. I've been meaning to rectify that, but didn't yet.
So, after spending a warm night buried under blankets, I wake up to a shivering-cold set of rooms, all under 60 degrees F.... even though me and the missus set all the baseboard heating to max and left both space heaters going.
So, I decide to go to Walmart. I find two pallets of space heaters, one of them Infra-red, and one of them Oil-radiant. Both are electric.
I go ahead and put one of each in my cart, get a few food items, then decide to pick up one more Infra-red heater.... maybe 5 minutes later.
BOTH PALLETS ARE CLEANED OUT... when I get to the register, everyone had a pair of those heaters in their cart.
You know, I think I saw one of those next to a big barn on the way to my BIL’s lake house for Thanksgiving. I thought it was a big smoker doing up a turkey for Thanksgiving, but now that I see some of these, I think it was one.
It’s funny you say that, I’m about to work on the same in 2023. I already have some storage items and a place, just need some time to do the buying and then sealing up the Mylar bags with the O2 absorbers, etc.
I figure with both of us working together on this, we can end food inflation in late 2023 after we’ve bought at the inflationary high!
Youโre right about February! Iโve seen a week of 80 degree weather, followed by a Blue Norther taking the temperatures into single digits.
Our blackouts are in the summer. When itโs 118 in the shade here is when we are threatened by the govt shutting us off to prevent fires.
I feel for all of you today but we spend a lot in money and soul here in SoCal and today is one of the very few days itโs worth it. Was in a t shirt all day as it was 75 F. You need a light jacket now that the sun is down. Merry Christmas and stay warm, Laz โค๏ธ and Freepers
Greatly. And the cold. It gets close to 120 some days in aug / sep. With heat you can only take off so much. Scary that they have that power.
. . . and the best sausage you'll ever have. Arancini. . .calzone. . . delicious homemade wine that packs a punch for ~$3.75 for half a gallon. . . local vegetables. . . local, extra virgin olive oil for $~6 a quart or store bought for $4, wild asparagus, wild greens and mushrooms. . . free ranging grass fed local beef, local chicken, pork and lamb, all for around 1/2 what it costs in the US. Then there are the wonderful local butcher, vegetable and bread shops. And let's not forget the desserts, which are the best I've had in the world.
Hey Rocco. I think your recommendation for a wood stove is a good one.
Another option is a wood pellet stove which we had when we lived in the Poconos a colder than average winter being in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Let me share the advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages:
1. Big savings if you buy a truckload of 40-lbs bags of pellets before the winter. If the season’s cost of electricity is $6,000, the cost of propane gas is $3,000. And a pellet stove is $1,500 in pellets.
2. Lugging the bags into your living room or wherever is your central heating point is good exercise and you can pre-stack a few bags in the room.
3. The stoves very hot — very satisfying heat on a very cold day.
Disadvantages:
1. Once a day you need to cool the unit down and clean out the inside of ashes. This keeps the combustion cleaner and more efficient.
2. Twice a year, do a deep cleaning, taking a bristle brush into the air chambers that tend to collect ash.
3. Figure $500 for a technician to come out once a year and fix something that broke in the stove.
4. The stove works on electricity — so you are out of luck if the electric power goes out. The fan unit will consume a fair amount of power in season, too.
5. You may not have a large basement to store the bags for the season. Typically we burned one bag a day and three bags on a super cold day.
6. Remember that the fan that supplies the air to burn the pellets is strong and will be pretty noisy.
7. Finally, the Mrs. may not like the idea of a stove because no matter how careful you are, some dust will spread around the room.
* * *
So there you go.
Laz,
From my time in Georgia, we had good success having a fan gently blow the heated oil electric stove at night-time. When you do this, you are forcing the stove to work harder. It will obviously cost you more in electricity, but your room will be warm!
Recommend finding a “silent” fan for this job — a bit hard to find.
How do I cancel my monthly donations? There seems to be no GUI to do so from my end. pleasse see to timely attention on this matter please.
County road commission does a good job keeping the highways salted.
Friday afternoon I talked with a good friend who lives in northern Michigan and he was in the second day of getting hammered with snow. At time we talked, he said it was near white out conditions, he couldn't see the forest line beyond the field behind his house.
This morning it's warmed up considerably, a balmy 15 degrees.....
Everyone have a Merry Christmas
Rom 13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
We have 24 more hours of cold in CT. THEN 2 Weeks of mild temps
No snow on ground
Merry Christmas, Laz!
East Tennessee: 5 degrees yesterday (24th); but SIXTY-FIVE forecast for New Year’s Day! Can’t wait!
86 the space heaters invest in a pot bellied stove you can’t go wrong no power needed better heat.
The good news is that I busted my ass this summer installing a partial solar electric system with batteries and two wood stoves. We still use the pellet stove but are now burning crushed olive pits in it which are less than half the cost of pellets. The downside for most folks here is that to modify and tweak a pellet stove to run right with crushed olive pits costs between $100-150 to have a tech do.
Being a hardcore DIY guy with serious tools I figured out how to do it myself. The stove runs great with the pits but I have to say that modifying the brazier (I bought a second one to modify just for pits) and then adjusting the software parameters until the stove ran well was time consuming - involved a lot of tweaking.
Yep - you do get exercise lugging those bags around. The bags of crushed olive pits are a lot heavier than the wood pellets are. They're 25kg, around 60 lbs a pop and I have to lug them up three flights of stairs. . .
As far as fan noise goes I've tweaked the software to get a good balance between heat distribution and noise so it's not very noticeable except on high.
The sliding doors to our deck froze shut. There was considerable rain on friday, so the track was wet. Now add to that single digit temp overnight, and voila! frozen doors! LOL
Thank you.
It was so cold this morning I had to wear socks!.....................
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