Originally posted on 2018-11-16
And is it ever pretty!
This past week we have experienced the first snowfall that has left some snow on the ground. We will be expecting a lot more in the months to come, but winter has arrived. Most of this week has been at about freezing with the wind chill making it feel like subzero Celsius temperatures, but it hasn’t been that bad working outside as the snow sure does make everything pretty and working keeps one fairly warm.
We started the week by burying the majority of the trenches we had dug out over the last couple of weeks. We still need to switch the water line at the well from the current one just below the surface to the one we buried and insulated, which we plan to do today. We’ve been keeping a careful eye on our water to be sure that it didn’t freeze on us this week.
We also got the electrical line going into the crawlspace of the eastern room, which is not anywhere near as nice as the crawlspace in the western room now. Remaining to do here, is to rip up the floor in the eastern room and bring that line up to the breaker panel, and then getting the other end into the western garage (workshop), giving us enough power out there to run all the tools we wish.
With the focus this week on staying warm over the winter, we built a shelter for our wood right by the main door, off of the deck. A simple structure made of two skids, some 4x4s, a tarp, and some Christmas lights. Not having to trek all the way out to the sheds or garages to get wood after dark has already been great as we are still mainly using the wood fireplace to heat our house, using the new boiler system only overnight once the fire has died out.
Of course this means we have also chopped a lot of wood this week. (By “we” I mean “he”). Sorted through a bunch of the wood that came with the house when we bought, finding the stuff that we are willing to burn inside the house, and burning the rest in our burn barrel to give us a place to warm our hands this week.
This week also saw the installation of spray foam insulation (done by contractors) around the crawlspaces. Well, we planned to have them do all the crawlspaces, and place down vapor barrier for us, but unfortunately (as you can see from the pictures) that wasn’t practical. Some of the crawlspaces still needed to be cleaned up in order to get the insulation and vapor barrier to work properly, and that isn’t get done right now.
But they did do the western room, as well as the crawlspace under the bathroom, which should help keep the heat in there. We also discovered why the floor in our daughter’s room is always so much colder than the rest of the floors. Her room has its own crawlspace, and a nice big vent that’s been sucking the heat out of her floor and blowing cold air in.
The last main thing we’ve been doing this week is getting rigid foam insulation installed on the north wall of the house. This has including removing the windows on the wall and putting the insulation over them for now until our delivery of new windows arrives.
This includes the windows in the laundry room and the main hall. The bathroom window had already been removed during the partial bathroom window and was covered with vapor barrier from the inside. This has already made a huge improvement in keeping the rest of the house warm with the fire in the east room.
The noticeable difference in temperature between the east room and the hall isn’t as noticeable anymore and we no longer need to run a fan to try to get the warmer air out into the rest of the house. Probably also helps that we sealed the two windows on either side of the fireplace which will eventually be removed completely. All of this means hopefully it’s not going to cost us a fortune just to stay warm this winter.
Huron The Lake 