Preparing For Cold Weather

We should be very well set this year. Several years ago, we replaced all but a couple of our windows with double-pane vinyl windows, which don't require plastic covering in the winter. Two of them weren't replaced because they were new, and also double-paned, although not vinyl. A few years ago, we had a metal roof installed, which keeps the snow from accumulating on the roof. A couple of years ago, we had a heat pump installed upstairs, which reduces the amount of oil we use. Our house has been newly insulated, with a couple of thick layers of insulation between the second floor and the attic, as well as the walls being re-insulated.

 

Oh, I don't know the size of the living space. I had those numbers once but don't remember them. It was a three-unit wood-frame apartment building when we bought it but we have since converted two bedrooms into a library that extends the width of the house, but have quit heating that during the winter. It had been an addition to the building that was originally a porch, I think, before it was converted into bedrooms. Consequently, it wasn't well insulated and with ten windows, it was expensive to heat. Eventually, I'll add a small wood stove so that we can use it when we feel like heating it in the winter. Since we own a woodlands, I can cut our own wood. No, the heat pump is not our only source of heat but it greatly cuts down on our oil costs during the winter. We have a substantial attic but use that only for storage in the winter.

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is nearly always colder than here. We are near the center of Maine. We have a camp in northern Maine, and the temperatures there are usually about ten degrees colder than here. Millinocket is at the base of the Appalachian Mountain range and Mount Katahdin, Maine's largest mountain, so that shields us from the worst of the weather. Although temperatures can fall to well below zero, we don't get as much snow as places well south of us, such as southern Maine and New York. Many of the storms pass over us and we're well inland, so we don't get the ocean storms. Last winter was long, but we didn't have a lot of days with temperatures below zero, although it would frequently dip below at night.

 

I shared this short weather forecast video in the Good Morning thread; but I think that this thread is also a good place to share it.
There is supposed to be one of those arctic blasts that will come down through Alaska and Canada and then into the western United States, and work its way across the US and out into the Atlantic ocean.
The map does not show whether it will continue on into Europe and the UK, but that might happen, too. In any case, those of us living here in the US need to start preparing for this in case the weather prediction is even close to being correct.
It is showing temperatures that are well below zero in some areas, and it looks like it will be close to that, even here in the South. Time to make sure no pipes will freeze, and put gas with no ethanol in the tank of the old stationwagon.
I added some of that yesterday, but I will be sure and add more this weekend, and Bobby will check the antifreeze level.

 

I just bought a new snowblower. I have never had a new one before, but I haven't done well with the couple of used ones that I have had. I'm not the kind of guy who wants to have to tinker with a snowblower for a half hour, in the cold, just to get it to start, or to have to stop and tinker with it halfway through the job. In fact, I don't want to tinker with it at all beyond keeping it in gas and oil, and having it serviced every year. They recommend having a snowblower serviced each spring, after the snow season is over, so that it can be put up ready to go the following winter. Now, I don't keep my snowblower outdoors, I have a shed for it, yet the first time we get a snow, I am rarely able to get my snowblower to start.

My last used snowblower worked fine the first winter that I had it, and I had it serviced in the spring. It started right up when I tried it in late August. Then when the first snow came sometime in December, I couldn't get it to start. My neighbor, who is much better at that sort of thing, got it started for me but it stalled about halfway through the job, and I couldn't get it to start again, so I finished the driveway off with a shovel. The next snow, I was able to get it to start, but only after more than an hour of struggling with it, and then it wouldn't keep running. Since it was taking me almost as long to get it to start as it would have taken me to shovel the driveway, I didn't bother with it again. It sat there, taking up space in my shed for a couple of years until I gave it away a month or so ago. Mechanical ability is not my strong point, although I'm not a total idiot. Still, I want something that will start when I turn the key, and blow snow when I am ready to blow snow. In other words, I don't want my snowblower to be a project.

Today, I bought a new Cub Cadet snowblower, which most people say is a pretty good snowblower. It's not the top of the line model, but neither is it at the bottom. I was considering one that was a couple of hundred dollars cheaper, with the same size engine but with a name that I've never heard of, and decided on the Club Cadet instead. It looked a lot more durable. My neighbor, who knows far more about things than I do, told me that it was a good snowblower too, when he picked it up for me, since I can't fit a snowblower in my Tracker.

So now I have a new snowblower, and a set of instructions to read. Although I know enough about snowblowers to know how to start the thing without an instruction book, there may be some fine points that I can learn in order to have it last me a bit longer, like hopefully the rest of my life. For one thing, I wouldn't have known that I am supposed to change the oil after the first five hours of use. Nobody told me that at the Tractor Store, but apparently the oil that it ships with is a different kind of oil than the oil that it is supposed to be operated on after the first few hours of use. There it is in the manual, in red print.

By the way, I hate the thing that so many companies do now, where instead of publishing a manual for the specific product that a customer purchased, they have one manual that covers every model of snowblower that they make. It makes it so much hard for me to know what applies to my snowblower, versus those that apply to another model.

At the moment, the snowblower is not doing me any good because it rained here at about one or two o'clock in the morning, which was immediately followed by a hard freeze so we have several inches of hard ice over the top of the snow that I might otherwise want to blow, and a snowblower isn't supposed to be used as an icebreaker. We are supposed to get a deep snow tonight or Friday, that is going to be followed by a thaw, so I am hoping that I'll be able to break through the ice then.

We have been paying someone, younger than myself, to shovel our driveway but either he doesn't know a lot about shoveling driveways or driving in snow, or he's just not the most ambitious person in the world, because I haven't been able to get him to shovel the driveway wide enough to get through it without scraping the sides or to shovel enough of it that we can turn a car around in our driveway. I can back a car in or out of my driveway, but my wife can't, so without a place to turn around, I have to back her car in for her. So I am hoping for enough of a thaw to allow me to clear our driveway properly.

I can't even get my snowblower in the shed right now because the bottom of the door is encased in several inches of ice, so it's covered with a tarp.



After unloading the snowblower from my neighbor's truck, I moved it to the back, which meant moving my wife's car out of the way temporarily. Then I moved her car further up on the driveway so that she can drive straight out without having to bother with maneuvering it. On the way to the back of the house, I slipped on ice in our driveway. I guess I was unconscious for a while because I don't remember slipping on ice. I was aware that it was awfully slippery, despite the fact that I had put down salt, but I don't remember slipping.

Nevertheless, I found myself kind of cold, lying on my back in the driveway, with the back of my head hurting; not unbearably so, but hurting. And Ella, who had been outdoors, was curled up by my head. This couldn't have been comfortable for her because she was lying on the ice, so I can only believe that she was concerned about me lying on my back in the driveway. Not being Lassie, the only thing she could think of to do was to curl up by my head. Or maybe she just thought that was where we were going to be sleeping now, and she was making the best of it.

I thought about going to the hospital to be sure that I was okay, but I am tired of doctors and hospitals, and my head doesn't hurt too badly, so I'll take a chance. If I start sllllurrrrng myy wordddsss as I typpe themmmm...

 

Sounds like you really hit the back of your head pretty hard if you do not even remember falling. At least now you will be inside and @Michelle Anderson can call an ambulance if you do get groggy or something. I can't remember if they gave you blood-thinners; but if you are on those, you should worry because the fall can cause internal bleeding where it wouldn't do that normally.
Take care of yourself, and we will say a prayer for you as well, @Ken Anderson .

 

I got to use my new snowblower today. We had quite a lot of snow, and perfect for a snowblower. Heavy, but not so heavy that it would stick in the chute. I couldn't clear as much of a space as I want because it wouldn't cut through the iced part of the yard or driveway, but if we have a day or two of above-freezing weather, I should be able to pick away at it. I still haven't figured it all out yet but I figured out enough of it to clear the driveway and sidewalks. It's supposed to have power steering but I must have been doing something wrong there because I had to bring it around manually.

My head still hurts, by the way. I must have hit it pretty hard. When I found myself lying on my back in the driveway, with Ella trying her best to do what she could, my glasses were still on and I didn't hurt anywhere else, so I must have come down fully on the back of my head. Today, both the front and back of my head hurt.