Good morning!!!!

[rswyan]

They aren’t

Plant some grapes vines ...

 

[RoyJackson]

I had a Hearthstone.

They're manufactured about 50-60 miles north of where I live...nice stoves!
I have an old Vermont Castings stove...not a bad stove, but too small for the house

 

[rswyan]

Good evening all. 24F for the start, overcast, light wind. Clouds cleared out light to moderate wind, and high temp was 54F. No fire insert today, went to change back to heat pump mode and forgot to check blades on fan. Heat exchange tower started shacking like unbalanced washing machine. One fan blade had shed most of it's ice. Propane torch to cold to light, but hair dryer worked just fine, much smoother second go around. got fridge ready for new board tomorrow.

Glad to hear you were to get the heat exchanger handled without too much difficulty ... :thumbsup:

RS is the new TV/entertainment installed now?

Except for the two rear speakers it's been functional since shortly after it arrived. Still don't have a complete handle on all the sound settings ... but it works.

Pretty suprised at the amount of free content available with the streaming.

 

[txdon]

I have a Ring doorbell and last night it went off to notify us of a power outage 3 miles from us. I checked the utilities co. outage map and the alert was correct. 12000 houses without electricity. A transfer station part went bad. All the other outages we had last week we had no alerts. Has anyone received power outage alerts on their Ring doorbell?

 

[txdon]

Buckeye, mom’s hay and lease just paid for the new fence. Hoping with the leasing and selling hay she will continue to break even with the agg tax and insurance and fence Replace/repair. However hay is very variable and dependent on the amount of rainfall each year.

 

[lostcreekranch]

Good morning. It was 44° here this morning, already up to 57° on the way to 71° this afternoon.

I parked the 55 HP tractor, with straight water loaded rear tires, to get maximum sun on the tires. They should easily be completely thawed today. In hindsight .. I should have parked it inside the shop. It never got below freezing inside, even with 8° last Tuesday. But .. hindsight is 20/20.

The 100 HP is loaded with "old school" calcium chloride.

No big plans for today .. probably some shop cleanup .. now I can have to O/H doors open.

I need to go into town and fill some gasoline cans for the Polaris Ranger but ..may wait another day for stations to get restocked. I did notice, on Gas Buddy app, that road diesel went from $2.19 before storm to $2.38 now. Gasoline had similar increases for all grades.

Hoping everyone stays warm and safe today.

Prayers to all.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Kyle by March 01 supposedly the north gates will open again reality is that is what models show. If this release is similar to last one then the month of March will be cold and stormy. Because of the strength of the SE Ridge my guess would be a similar path of last arctic blast effecting you all in Texas again

Hope that answers your questions

Thanks for the heads up, I'll need to cut more firewood. Restock on food, water.

Good morning! 49˚F heading to the mid 60s.

Drew we will let you know of any super high energy bills during this freeze, can't trust the sensational click bait headlines. There is at least one electric company (Giddy) that lets you pay the cheapest going rate for electricity which is a speculative type of investment. Giddy actually told it's customers days before the freeze to opt out of their company but some did not listen. Like the stock market giving you an opportunity to sell before the bottom falls. If the electric customers stay where they are, in time they will recoup their losses - it may take 10 years. But for the last 10 years they have been getting the best electric rates available.

The all electric house with heat pumps or a gas/electric house that used additional space heaters will see their highest electric bill. Strip heaters on heat pumps use more electricity at these temps than air conditioners during August. I had a space heater in the garage where my water softener and hot water heater plumbing is and expect an "August" electric bill or higher. At below 35˚F electricity is probably the most expensive form of heating. But in Texas those frigid days are so few in a normal year which makes electricity cheapest source. I was having trouble figuring out how rolling blackouts were saving electricity, whenever they come back on the electric use was double trying to warm the house after it got cold.

When I built the house on the farm I had an unlimited supply of hard woods for the most efficient wood burning stove, in a foam insulated house, I could go a whole week without turning on the electric heater in freezing weather. But I would use the wood burning stove probably less than 20 days a year.

Don, in my case, it almost didn't matter where you set the thermostat. The power would come on for 15 minutes, and the heater would try, but we don't have enough heating capacity in 15 minutes on/ 45 minutes off. So while I set the thermostat low at 64F, the house got down into the mid 50's anyway. ERCOT told people at first to TURN OFF THERMOSTATS. Single digit cold, and we are supposed to turn off thermostats.....

I pray the next cold snap to not be as severe. Maybe some are learning that Green energy is not the best solution. If only our cattle down here tooted enough to raise the temperatures like they claim....

Ken, the most important thing I've found out about being in the doghouse is, to have a good dog who will stay with you in it.

Supercross was pretty good last night. The Martin brothers both got hurt on the first lap. Hope they are OK.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Thanks for all the prayers and thoughts. My wife and I were discussing how blessed we are to only have what seems "light" cases of this so far.

Our town has this old wonderful BBQ City Meat market, that has been on the corner of Hwy 290 and Hwy77 for 40 years or so. Well, the proprietor passed away unexpectedly 2 mornings ago. A very popular man in the area. The town is sad. His wife had a bad case of Covid and needed hospitalization just a couple of weeks ago. Don, did you know him?

I am still experiencing light symptoms of sinus/crud/headache. I have had a backache, but I believe some of it has to do with almost slipping on ice about 5 or 6 times....not falling, but stretching stuff further than I'd normally stretch it. I am still coughing somewhat.

Wifey is better, but having same symptoms as me.

I'm taking oldest daughter to get tested here in an hour.

Prayers for our team, for this whole Covid mess, and for our country.

 

[rswyan]

... I pray the next cold snap to not be as severe. Maybe some are learning that Green energy is not the best solution. ...

Hopefully some are learning that if you get severe cold weather - even if relatively infrequently - it might be a wise idea to cold-proof all energy generation sources that people have to rely on.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Good Morning!!!! 49F @ 8:00AM. Sunny. High 68F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.

Cleared up nicely yesterday afternoon and I got the shims and U-bolts installed on the Pat's QuickHitch. Works a lot easier now, so I think I'll keep it.

Tried to install a fan in the garage propane heater, but they sent the wrong one. Not sure cost wise it's worth returning, as it was an ebay purchase and I had to pay shipping.

Neighbor says his friend still wants the old tractor, but is stuck in Texas for another week due to the weather. Now I'm really wishing for Texans to get a climate recovery, and soon!:laughing:

Thought I had PG&E questionnaire done, but I put the supporting information files in the wrong place, and now have to redo that. Their website is really, really slow, and it's gonna take a while.

Nice camp fire last night, but still have a lot of pine in the pile to get rid of, and really don't like the way it pops and shoots sparks all over the place. Might end up just moving it over to the burn pile to get rid of it that way.

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend!