The Big Chill

[DailyDi]

How's everyone doing with the colder weather?

It's snuggly blanket weather for me, and thick diapers are comfortably warm.

[Babygeebee]

Yup. Snuggle up with a warm blanket. If you have to go outside you might as well have some fun like this guy. 

 

 

[Crinklz Kat]

I've been working all week.   It's working from home, but still working.  Not really time to go outside.  I was out on Tuesday for a short time to clear the front walk and part of the driveway... but that's about it.   And we get more snow tomorrow.

[ValentinesStuff]

Wait, it's 30 degrees warmer than it was Sunday. This is a balmy (30 degrees) day out. I would go sunbathing, but it's cloudy.

[Dubious]

Has been down to -20 C (4 F)here last days, but now its heating up to -15C, and on Saturday they say its gonna be -1C, just below freezing. 

[barnburner]

A few days ago, it was colder here than it was cold in most of Alaska 🥶

 

 

[dondd]

Been rough for us snowbirds in the Arizona desert.  Highs have only been in the upper 50's and low 60's (°F) the last couple of weeks.  Low 70's now...  

[Babypants]

Still doing a six mile power walk every day here in Minnesota.  Takes about ninety minutes.  Was a balmy 1 F this morning, with the wind chill at -18.  Bracing, but well removed from the -42 temp and -75 wind chill that we experienced in January of '97 (a fairly ordinary January date up in parts of Manitoba).

[Cute_Kitten]

It's been cold here. We hit with a windchill of 14F today and it felt warm compared to the single digits and the minus digits we had earlier this week. We're supposed to get more snow too. 

[LittleFenny]

4 hours ago, DailyDi said:

How's everyone doing with the colder weather?

It's snuggly blanket weather for me, and thick diapers are comfortably warm.

I was lucky last winter I was able to get hold of a case of Seni Quatros locally and together with the little stash I'd put together of other padding was warmly diapered every night for three months. As hot and sweaty as they can get in summer in winter it's a nice soft warm layer to keep the chill away.

1 hour ago, dondd said:

Been rough for us snowbirds in the Arizona desert.  Highs have only been in the upper 50's and low 60's (°F) the last couple of weeks.  Low 70's now...  

It's rough for us non snowbirds too. I didn't feel the cold near as much when I was younger. But the last few years I've felt it much more. It's not supposed to feel this cold. If I wanted to feel chilly I could move to Denver or even further north.

[FretaBWet]

It's been down to 14 below zero  F out here on the prairie over the last week. Yesterday and today it got above freezing but it's dropping back below zero tonight.

Our house has no basement, just a dirt crawl space below the floors where the water pipes are so we have to leave faucets in the bathroom and kitchen dripping to keep the pipes from freezing. Our washing machine and dryer are in the utility room off the kitchen and we can't leave that dripping so that line freezes up. We started to do laundry yesterday, it hit 35F and the water worked. We had to go out and left the washer running and when we got home the washer had flooded the floor. The washer drain is just a PVC pipe that runs through the floor underground to the backyard where it exits to a low spot and drains. It had a frozen spot somewhere in the yard so the water just spilled onto the floor. I haven't been using cloth diapers at night during this cold spell because I knew the washer would probably be unusable. Just an inconvenience we are used to.

Hugs,

Freta

[foreverdl]

We have to leave our kitchen water drip a lot of nights , We do have a cement slab but even though they put the water pipes in the middle of our home , some of it is in the garage and in the attic , with old pipes , copper and I have replaced a few for leaks, I don't want to have a flood ..In Ca it's not legal to drain the washer into the yard. I did appliance repair for many years and there were a lot of problems with people doing it,. With the whirlpool top load washer, if you look in the washer when it is filling up for rinse cycle, it will suck the muddy water back in that was just pumped out, If there is not a suction break in the pipe where the washer drain goes in. I have seen it a lot of times. and you want to make sure the drain pipe outside is above the puddle . You do have to push down on the lid switch to see what I am saying. It's sick to see muddy water being pumped back in...

[rusty pins]

As an essential hospital worker, it has not been fun but at least I have 4 wheel drive and only a 3 mile drive to get to work.  Been down to 7 below zero in the mornings, lucky to get to 5 degrees above zero in the day.  Power went out for about an hour and a half Sunday, furnace kept going out because the fresh air intake outside kept getting blocked with snow.  Once unblocked and the furnace started back up, it was so cold outside that it took forever just to get to 65 degrees.  By that time the intake would be blocked again and we would have to start over.  Once the furnace goes out, even for half an hour the house gets cold really fast.  Thankfully it warmed up into the low 20's the past 2 days and it's supposed to get above freezing this next week.

[oznl]

Well, it's 11pm down here, it's 29C/84F with a dew point around 25C/77F.  The evening thunderstorms missed us completely so it's just dead still now, the only noise is the AC furiously trying to cool our bedroom.

Still, it's not all doom and gloom.  We may have a cyclone by next weekend.

Send snow!!

[FretaBWet]

@foreverdlthere's a long run of pipe to the end and it exits the ground above a ditch which runs downhill so there's no water build up where it exits. We've never had a problem with the washer sucking dirty water back in.

This area is about as far from California as you can get, not in mileage mind you but in how people think. When I first started coming out to this area I noticed a lot of homes had a spot in their yard surrounded by a waist high chain link fence with no gate to enter. I was very baffled by this as I grew up on the east coast. They always seemed to have a small pond inside the fence. I have seen this many times in Florida but the purpose is to geek alligators from making themselves at home and putting children and pets at risk. There's no alligators in Kansas. I finally asked my wife why people would waste money fencing in a small pond in the yard like that and found out that was the homes septic system. It's called a septic lagoon. The fence is to protect children and animals from contamination. They have sewage systems in every city but once you're out on the country they don't have that.

We live in the Flint Hills of Kansas. When I went to put in our clothesline for my cloth diapers soon after moving in I used the backhoe to dig out for the posts. The post closest to the house I hit solid bedrock at about two and a half feet and maybe three feet on the other post which is twenty feet away. That's why we don't have a basement. That's why they have septic lagoons. That's why big trees out here fall over in really windy conditions, the roots can't get down below the bedrock so they grow outward and it's not a string enough anchor for the tree.

Hugs,

Freta

[Little Sherri]

12 minutes ago, FretaBWet said:

It's called a septic lagoon.

Do you have to have it pumped out occasionally? This is interesting - I've never heard of this. I've heard of "straight-piping", which is where homes, mostly rural mobile homes, run a grey-water (drains other than toilets) or sometimes even black-water (toilets) pipe out into a low area, and then basically hope that drainage separate the solids from the liquids, and decomposition gradually breaks down the solids. It's illegal in most places now because of ground and surface water contamination issues, and the fact that flies and other pests infest it, and then go walk all over everyone's food at the picnic table. But illegal or not, if people don't have the money to put in septic or holding tanks, and there's no sewers, there aren't many options. 

I took the dog for a walk in -21 the other night and he decided, possibly for the first time in his young life, that he wanted to curtail the adventure even before I did. "Er, if I just do my business, can we go back inside? I don't need to sniff 47 trees tonight. We can do that when it's warmer." 

[subhubby1968]

Florida cold is much different than the rest of the world.  For me it just means more long sleeve shirts, and actually wearing socks around the house.  🙂  

[FretaBWet]

@Little Sherri we have a straight pipe for the washer Grey water from the washer out to the yard but we also have some type of septic system for everything else. I don't know anyone with a lagoon so I'm not familiar with them other than being a common sight. I was speaking with a woman in a waiting room at a doctors appointment and she said her pipe to the lagoon had frozen and they couldn't use anything otherwise it just backed into the house. She said her straight pipe faced due north as does our grey water pipe. She told me her son had the same issue but he put a right angle elbow at the end and it prevented the wind directly blowing into the pipe and kept it from freezing up. She plans the same fix for hers. Our town population is 120 not counting us outside the town limits. We don't have building codes or building permits we just do whatever we need to.

Hugs,

Freta

[foreverdl]

14 hours ago, FretaBWet said:

@foreverdlthere's a long run of pipe to the end and it exits the ground above a ditch which runs downhill so there's no water build up where it exits. We've never had a problem with the washer sucking dirty water back in.

This area is about as far from California as you can get, not in mileage mind you but in how people think. When I first started coming out to this area I noticed a lot of homes had a spot in their yard surrounded by a waist high chain link fence with no gate to enter. I was very baffled by this as I grew up on the east coast. They always seemed to have a small pond inside the fence. I have seen this many times in Florida but the purpose is to geek alligators from making themselves at home and putting children and pets at risk. There's no alligators in Kansas. I finally asked my wife why people would waste money fencing in a small pond in the yard like that and found out that was the homes septic system. It's called a septic lagoon. The fence is to protect children and animals from contamination. They have sewage systems in every city but once you're out on the country they don't have that.

We live in the Flint Hills of Kansas. When I went to put in our clothesline for my cloth diapers soon after moving in I used the backhoe to dig out for the posts. The post closest to the house I hit solid bedrock at about two and a half feet and maybe three feet on the other post which is twenty feet away. That's why we don't have a basement. That's why they have septic lagoons. That's why big trees out here fall over in really windy conditions, the roots can't get down below the bedrock so they grow outward and it's not a string enough anchor for the tree.

Hugs,

Freta

I lived in Ohio till I was about 21. We had a few homes with septic tanks. My dad opened one of them up and since we didn't have the money to do it correctly , he let it over flow into a home made leach bed, it smelled bad wen the wind was the wrong direction . But it was all of the home waste black water etc. I just learned a lot about what was not allowed out here by being in the Service and repair business . We live in the mountains now so about 4000 ft, and we are in city, so on all of the underground stuff . Our water supply pipes are are worse worry, even though most of that is inside of the inner walls, we have chances of that freezing . But back when I worked on appliances etc, I saw a lot of Mickey Mouse washer drain hookups. And got to show soo many people why you don't duct tape the drain hose to the drain pipe, and I had one that ran a garden hose from the washer drain out to the back yard. And the hose had fallen down so it was lower than the washer tub and they called us because the water wouldn't fill up ?? like what kind of idiot would do that. Well I saw a lot of stuff .

Hugs Back

 

[Little Sherri]

11 hours ago, FretaBWet said:

She told me her son had the same issue but he put a right angle elbow at the end and it prevented the wind directly blowing into the pipe and kept it from freezing up.

There's also electrical heat tracing, which is basically an extension cord-like wire that you wrap around the pipe, and plug in, and it doesn't use much power - just enough to keep the line a couple of degrees above zero (or above 32 F), and then you don't need to worry about it freezing up. Or make sure the whole run has a downward slope - which can be difficult, depending on your lot's grading - but if you can, you create an air break between the inside and outside lines, right outside the house, and you go up a size on the outside line, and slope it towards the lagoon. Then, water travels fairly quickly down the line and never sits, so it has scant opportunity to freeze, because when it leaves the house it's at 40 or 45 F and it hits the lagoon before it gets below 32. 

[oznl]

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

There's also electrical heat tracing, which is basically an extension cord-like wire that you wrap around the pipe, and plug in, and it doesn't use much power - just enough to keep the line a couple of degrees above zero (or above 32 F), and then you don't need to worry about it freezing up. Or make sure the whole run has a downward slope - which can be difficult, depending on your lot's grading - but if you can, you create an air break between the inside and outside lines, right outside the house, and you go up a size on the outside line, and slope it towards the lagoon. Then, water travels fairly quickly down the line and never sits, so it has scant opportunity to freeze, because when it leaves the house it's at 40 or 45 F and it hits the lagoon before it gets below 32. 

It's nearly 11pm.  I'm going to bed soon.  It's dropped back to 28C (humidity 80%).  We currently have:

1. An active monsoon trough to the north promising biblical rainfall/heat/humidity

2. Cyclone "Kirriliy" meant to be declared some time Sunday night or Monday morning

3. Formal "heat wave" conditions declared due to the inability of the dew point to fall below 23C

ENOUGH of the "frozen" stories 🤣🤣🤣

[rusty pins]

Yes, but in July when we are all sweating in the sun here in the USA, you will be freezing and shoveling the snow like we are right now.

[oznl]

2 hours ago, rusty pins said:

Yes, but in July when we are all sweating in the sun here in the USA, you will be freezing and shoveling the snow like we are right now.

Average July daytime temperature in my part of the world is 21C/70F.  The nights can be nippy though: down to an average of around 9C/50F.  And also, winter is our "dry" season so it's usually sunny 🤣