The temperatures have dropped low enough and stayed that way the the electric heater cannot stave off the cold any longer. Yesterday, I gave in and got the fireplace lit for the first time this season.

( Burn, baby, burn )

After several days where the temperatures never fell below freezing and I was able to let the fire die out, we've had some high winds and weather cold enough to suck all of the heat out of the house. This morning, after some difficulty, I managed to restart the fireplace and by the end of the day had things warmed back up again. According to the ( Read more... )

Yesterday it got sufficiently warm that I let the fire go out overnight, and this morning, I dug ashes and cleaned the glass. However, by this afternoon, it was cold enough that it was time to restart the fire.

( Coaxing the Stove Back to Life )

After several days of overnight lows going down to around -5°C, it's warmed up a fair, but, with the lowas around +5°C and highs close to 20. That 10°C swing is significant. When the temperatures go below freezing, the heat gets sucked right out of the house. Above freezing, it's a lot more manageable ( Read more... )

Lisa and I went to Reno for grocery shopping last night shortly after midnight, as we do when we can manage it because it's less crowded. The temperature outside was around 4°C, and maybe colder, as Lisa found when she tried to clean the window of the Astro while I refueled. The liquid was freezing on the windshield. My hands got so cold that after ( Read more... )

Lisa and I continued to work on reducing the pile of pallets over the weekend. By the time we finished, there were only about 1 1/4 pallets left, and the wood box was nearly completely full of both Pres-to-Logs and pieces of pallet. The weather got warmer and more spring-like, so I let the fire go out so that I could dig out ash, and also nails, as ( Read more... )

We have several tasks here (some related to mounting the studio lights, some not) for which we needed small bits of hardware like nuts, bolts, a face plate for that outlet in the ceiling, and so forth. So it was off to Big R (which is a hardware store as well as a ranch and home supply store) to look through the bins of nuts and bolts. It's a good ( Read more... )

The weather forecast shows temperatures will stay above freezing with highs up to around +15°C for the next several days. I therefore will take a small risk and let the fire go out. This will be the first time we've let the fire die completely since I think early November, other than when we did the two-night trip to Sacramento. We'll see if we can ( Read more... )

The fireplace in Fernley House includes a system that draws air through two ports on the sides of the rocks in which the fireplace insert sits. The air is drawn through the warm rocks around and behind the fireplace insert, and then through a vent that pushes the warm air back into the room. I noticed that there was a humming noise (not a fan-like ( Read more... )

Yesterday morning, I was up early enough for the Day Jobbe that was able to catch the lunar eclipse on the back end.

( Wrong Tool for the Job )