Just watched a nationwide news report and although I worry about my chickies in the upcoming minus temps (no electricity), I saw Florida is going to get hit with freezing temps, as south as the center of the state, for Christmas eve. I was there once in similar conditions and we were the only people on the beach because we had Wisconsin coats on. I fret more about the weather because I am older and I still need to be out in it a bit. I think I have all the equipment I need.
Here is a short video about a place north of Fairbanks that supplies all its own power from hot springs on the property:
Don't emit too much CO2 while breathing, @Mary Stetler. We don't want to warm the atmosphere too much.
i 'm tha same...reason to fret...dangerous cold...my husband just put the light in the little feral cat shelter...if no electricity...
we're going to get blizzard conditions...starting Christmas eve...granddaughter with mom..dad...traveling to Florida tomorrow...granddaughter has surgery next week on her foot...born with club feet...extreme...she's 17 now...only Dr that can do it.... they'll be there a month...my husband will be feeding and checking animals on their place... Includes some pigs too!
-25 F. this morning and we are under some kind of wind warning, but down in the valley, we are somewhat protected form the wind. It will knock the snow off the trees and perhaps drift a bit though. I have to get out to check on the chickens soon. They have a little heat, but still.... The little cabin near the house that I use for my shop and emergency shelter is only down to 0F. with insulation and thermal mass, but if I try to heat it back up with the woodstove in there, it will take hours. Little greenhouse is sitting at -5 at the moment, but the sun will bring that up some. We only have about 4 hours of sunlight at the moment.
spent a good part of the day plotting the coordinates of my next igloo build. it's a complicated construction comprised of a minimum of four catenary domes... possibly a fifth for a taller entryway. three 7' domes will form the base of the structure, on top of which an 11' dome will rest. i'm hoping to connect the smaller domes by hollowing out the lower sections. if it turns out it will be a tiered catenary structure of snow. this may take a week to build if i pace myself right. the whole idea seems daunting. gotta take one step at a time.
When I was a kid, my cousins and I built an igloo in our front yard. Over the winter, we kept adding water to the outside of it, letting it freeze, then adding more snow, and so on. There was still an ice ring in the yard in August of the following summer.
One thing that I appreciated about my parents is that they would let us do stuff like that, or building forts in the hay mow, while my uncles would have put us to work doing something more useful or complained that whatever we were doing was too dangerous or in the way of something. Consequently, my friends usually congregated at my house. If my dad was going to put us to work when my friends were over, he'd pay us and, even then, it would be an option... unless, of course, it was something that he had already told me to do.
We used to have workshops teaching kids (Scouts) to build them as survival shelters should they need them. We had at least two campouts where they were used as shelter, but we never built any 11 feet high as @Alan Sidlo mentioned, as they would be too hard to keep warm and all the heat would move to the top. We would build them to specs and put one or two candles inside and seal the door to warm the interior to just above freezing. The door was then opened and the inside allowed to freeze. A comfy shelter that would stay just below freezing if done properly, even if the temp outside was -40 or lower.
there's a tool called the IceBox igloo tool, which lets you coil a ribbon of snow to make an egg like shape that's taller at the top than the radius which makes it a stable structure. pictured is a build i scrapped to research the assembly... it shows the blocks from different angles. this shows one that is finished with a solid pile of snow for a base which was hollowed out for a passage.
We have lived through it before, but I do still worry. I was chinking the double doors a bit today because they are expecting huge winds from the north on thursday. Daughter will help me batten down the hatches on Monday. My little silkie rooster is in the chicken tractor but he doesn't like me to close the door. Even hubby said I could bring him home for Christmas. Will see. Jeffry, the silkie, really likes being with the chickens better than with me. I even bought him diapers just in case!