The other day I posted about the upcoming overnight deep freeze and how it was going to force me to stay up all night scraping frazil ice off the intake. So what did I do? I threw a piece of plywood over the Coanda screen to stop the water from getting into the penstock, and went to bed. I fired up my little Honda EU1000 in the morning and charged up the batteries, then I went to town to work.
Sometimes you have to pick your battles.
Our false spring deceived me and I opened the valve to my plumbing in the house, so now I’m praying that it doesn’t get cold enough in the house to freeze my pipes when I’m not there.
I tried to automate a lot of my systems, but I couldn’t find a robot that would keep the wood stove loaded and keeping the house warm. So, short of spending a lot more money, which thanks to our government is worth less and less, I either shut the entire house down every winter, or I have to stay there all winter and feed the stove.
I looked into getting a pellet stove. Bloody expensive and still needs electricity, not to mention it needs to be fed wood pellets regularly. I did buy a little diesel heater, and it works ok, but it needs electricity too. So it will run off the batteries for a couple of days before it drains them to the cut off point. I have a little propane heater, but even on the lowest setting it drinks propane like an alcoholic drinks beer, a lot, quickly.
So, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make the place as winter proof as possible while I’m not there.
No matter how I look at it, it’s going to cost money, and time.