Bogieblog

Merry Christmas 2021

My wish for everyone is that you be blessed with an abundance of peace and serenity for Christmas (or whatever your favorite holiday at this time of year is).

Christmas Presents to Myself 2021

Christmas gift to myself, decorations for the openings in the wall between the living room and stairway. Not overly impressed with the positioning of the eyes for the chains but otherwise I like them.

Well, this is a new issue - regardless how the pictures are saved/uploaded (natural or turned), they showed up sideways in the post. I actually got the application's turn buttons to appear, so was able to correct them, but that doesn't happen very often.

First Plowable Snow of the Season

Left the house 7:15 yesterday morning for some errands. Made a stop at the Bedford L*we's for some N.A. made products, made a stop in Manchester to pick up a beautiful calendar that a friend makes from her photographs in support of charities, stopped at Target where everything I was looking for was made in China, so left empty handed. Then stopped at Hooksette Home Dep*t, where I bought N.A. made products. Went to the Concord BB&B, where again I left empty handed, because China.

Came home and unloaded, then to the dump and grocery store. Made it home just as the snow started. Even though it was still 34*, the snow was falling so heavily that after 25 minutes, it was sticking.

Overnight we got some mixed precipitation, so everything settled into about 3" of the white stuff. Will be out snow blowing later this morning.

Snow, Sleet and Freezing Rain

On 12/9/21, my place received about 2" of snow and it sure made things pretty out there. During my lunch, I went out and cleared off the truck and shoveled the driveway and around the gates to the cat pen.

Friday night and most of Saturday morning, we got sleet/freezing rain. The local station had promised that about 11 am, it would start warming up and hit the mid 40's. Their estimated timing was a bit off as the temp stubbornly stayed 33-34*. The ground was cold enough that no melting occurred. This picture was taken at 1pm.

Then about 6:20 pm, I noticed the temp starting to rise as it was 39 outside. Forty minutes later it was 56* and the ice started melting quickly. Overnight the winds ramped up and this morning everything is gone. Right now, 6am, it has only gotten down to 38*.

December 1st I started using the mini-split to heat the main floor during the day and using the P43 at night (the P61a still heating basement since that is the only heat down there). This has not been set in stone; Cold, windy days I've run the P43, and several nights I've let the mini-split keep doing its thing. This is an experiment to understand the energy usage during milder winter temps (the outside unit is rated at working to 5*F) as well as seeing how well the office's temp is regulated during working hours.

I used 378 kWh for November 2021 (which perversely, the electric company calls December usage - even though the bill is for 10/29 thru 12/01). I used 358 last year but I was also running power tools, which accounts for the difference. If the weather tracks along what it did last year for December,  as it did in November, that will give me a good idea of usage. I would expect my electric bill to be higher than last December (407), but I would also need to subtract the savings in pellets (I track pellet usage monthly). The only difficulty in the comparison is I get so many of my pellets off CL/FBM, that I don't really have a set price per bag, and it is certainly less than market value. 

Just something else for me to be a geek over :)

 

Update at 7AM - I don't know how these two little patches of snow have held their ground to this point