My mom grew up on a farm without indoor plumbing, with wood heat, no tractors, and she learned to drive work horses out of necessity. When people today "need" at least two bathrooms, my parents were more than happy with one indoor toilet. Somehow, the five of us suffered through it. Although I don't recall my mom talking about it, I've often wondered how miserable it would be to run to an outhouse in the middle of the night with the temp below zero. And instead of soft "Charmin," their choices were pages from a Sears' catalog or corn cobs. Our generation is so spoiled. And the generations below us? -- ha, they have no clue. My grandpa, who died before I was born, on the farm where my mom grew up in Little Valley, NY:
I haven't had the experience, but I did have dysentery once or twice in a warm climate and it wasn't pleasant then either.
When I first got up early this morning, it was 23/feels like 13. It has now warmed up to 24/feels like 14. Bobby said the wind is still coming out of the north, so even though it is dry and we are not getting snow, we are still feeling the arctic weather . It is supposed to warm up a little by tomorrow, but it looks to me like at least the rest of January is going to be cold weather.
What weight oil do you use in your vehicles? I put STP in a car that leaked oil many years ago and the motor refused to turn on a cold day. I got it towed to a garage and had it drained and replaced with 30W and all was well. I learned the hard way.
I use whatever the manufacturer recommends for cold temperatures. It differs among the vehicles. I keep the tractor and the truck plugged into heaters and the car is in the garage all winter. Lawn mowers and such have the batteries removed and kept in heated space. The diesel tractor also has a battery heater that keeps the cranking amps up, as it is the only thing that really has trouble starting in the cold; it starts fine if everything is plugged in. I also use the cold weather hydraulic fluid all year, as it doesn't often get above 80 F. here.
I have a lawnmower that I bought new but cheap, about six years ago, that I keep beneath a tarp on my land up north, where the temperatures are usually from ten to twenty degrees colder than here. Yet, whenever I go up there in the spring or summer, it starts right up.
That exactly what happened to me last spring with my old Craftsman garden tractor. It has started reliably every spring since 1993, but refused to do so in 2021. I replaced all I knew, but it wasn't used all last year for the first time in decades. I wish you better luck. Is yours electric start and do you remove the battery if so?
No, it's a pull-start. Since I knew it was going to be buried in snow all winter, I bought practically the cheapest one they had. That's close to what happened with the one I use here. My old lawnmower sounded bad, so bad that my neighbor crossed the street to see if he could fix it, but he couldn't. Still, it started and it cut the yard so I decided that I'd buy a new one only when the old one no longer worked. This last spring, I couldn't get it to start, but I didn't try very hard or very long. I wanted a new one. The other one was about 11 years old, and I had paid under a hundred dollars for it.