Surviving New England Winters

One of the major insights missing from most people's eyes is why New Englanders complain about weather all-year round. New England is one of the few regions in the United States that fully experiences all four seasons with such style. Spring brings months of rain and mud, summer dumps humidity and sweltering heat, the fall brings 'leafers' and the winters as of late have been beyond brutal with unrelenting cold and snowfall.


This current winter (2014-2015) has been one of the toughest I've seen in my entire life. Going back further - people are saying this compares to the Blizzard of 1978. Towards the end of 2014 the winter was quick to start at first, hitting many with snow right before Thanksgiving causing countless families to lose power for Thanksgiving Day. After that it slowed down. The temperatures weren't terrible and snowfall was minimal till the end of 2014. Once 2015 started though it dumped on huge portions of New England. Many lost power or were trapped in areas of heavy snowfall. Also enough nights of negative or least single and double digit temperatures to remind people of the film: The Thing.

For many this has proved to be one of the most challenging and expensive winters to date and it certainly has been for us. Oil, electric and wood pellet usage have all skyrocketed and the risk for injury has been high throughout. Commuting to work in poor conditions is always dangerous, but even ice dams on the edges of roofs can be dangerous. While breaking up ice around the foundation of my house a 50 lb. icicle broke free from the edge of my roof and smashed my hand - bruising it and leaving it sore for about 3 days.

News reports of feet of snow and ice built on house roofs causing them to cave-in ran rampart causing panic among most. Products used to melt ice for roofs sold out within a hundred mile radius of us and prices for them doubled and almost tripled online by early February 2015.

All we could was hunker down and maintain our house as best as we could.  For the majority of January and February my backyard was inaccessible with thigh-height snow. 

Now that we're close to mid-March the main issue everyone is going to run into is basement flooding from all the melting snow once Spring rolls around.

All you can do is keep working at it, homeowners.

Let's just make it till the end, shall we?

Cold Days at the Range

 Freezing rain in New Hampshire? Eh, doesn't bother me.

A Quiet New Years Eve

A good night to Bug-In.

Happy New Years, everyone! Let us wish for at least a tolerable 2015!

Alternate Heat - Winter Months Part III\Endless Projects - Part III

[Dual Post]

Since August of 2014 I've been see-sawing back and forth between wood stoves and pellet stoves for alternative heating. At first, going back even to the summer I thought of going to the wood stove route - even to the point of picking up one used. On top of that I picked up a new wood stove fireplace insert in August from a local vendor, but found out it was too big to properly be installed.

So I backtracked and changed plans... brought the wood stove back for store credit and got a high quality pellet stove in its place. The fireplace is still just a fireplace and the installed pellet stove sits at the opposite end of our house. Our used wood stove we got this past summer is sitting dormant for now until we find a proper place to utilize it.

Newly setup LOPI AGP Pellet Stove

Upon cutting into our living room's wall to port the pellet stove's exhaust vent out we discovered a rather depressing fact: no insulation in the walls. There is literally nothing, it's actually hollow between the exterior and drywall. Looking back on last year's winter it now makes sense as to why that room was so cold and why we used so much oil. So that brings up another project that we'll have to tackle next year - blown-in insulation and\or insulate underneath the exterior siding. Both are expensive and time-consuming.

Hard to say what we'll do next in terms of projects as this year has been especially tough and expensive for the number of things we're trying to accomplish in our 150+ year old house.

Alternate Heat - Winter Months Part III

[Last minute changes]

So I've run into an issue with converting my less than efficient fireplace with an exterior-wall chimney into a super-heating machine. My new wood stove with included blower, being as small as it is... is still too big. Just small enough to be inserted, but after that you'd never get your hands in there to attach a lined chimney to it. So... back to plan B!

Back a couple months I got myself a barely used wood stove and now I think I'll be using it this season and in the room I originally wanted to utilize one in. Instead of heating my den at the far end of the house I'll be heating my living room, which is more central to where we spend most of our time in the homestead. Not only that, the floor above it is where our bedrooms are located so with enough heat it should transfer upstairs a bit as well - especially if we cut registers into the floors for the heat to travel up.

Luckily a local vendor is going to assist with the process and make sure the outside double-walled chimney will be up to code when being run up the side of our house. More on this soon...

Alternate Heat - Winter Months Part II

[Options]
[Part I]

With a heavy reliance of heating oil in large areas of New England many are looking elsewhere for heat sources. Wood and pellet stoves are often the first to come to mind or even the ability to switch to natural gas and be hooked up to the grid. Originally when we bought our house in southern New Hampshire we thought that may be a choice, but soon found out that natural gas lines didn't even run under our street. Scratch that idea. I grew up in a small, coastal town a couple states away that was almost entirely heated by natural gas lines and I didn't have much experience with oil heating. The only exception to that was visiting relatives far out in the boonies in Cape Cod, MA.

You have to get deliveries of fuel? 

It isn't just in your house from a gas line? 

Preposterous!

Original 50-year old boiler in our home

Well I soon learned how that worked. Last winter we had filled our old tank three times and once before that after we initially bought the house. After moving in I had a brand new boiler installed and mid winter at the beginning of 2014 we also replaced our oil tank with a brand new one. So at least going into this winter everything is new and as efficient as it can be - for oil, that is. I believe the oil boiler is in the high 80's for percentage of efficiency - whatever that really means in the grand scheme of things. The new tank is a Roth double-walled 275 gallon unit that has a proper line running along the basement ceiling to the new boiler as well.

But with the house being over 150 years old it isn't like we can keep all that heat in. Sure we can tear apart the walls of the original horsehair plaster and try re-insulating the entire house, but I'm no masochist. Instead we are looking towards alternatives to heating. Granted we are doing insulation bits here and there to help keep heat in, but mostly we're shying away from a reliance on that deliverable fuel everybody requires to survive in the winter and keep their pipes from freezing.

New oil boiler and water heater system

In August I talked about picking up the wood stove to heat the main living room, but I know considering all the projects I'm trying to complete I will not be able to utilize it until next year at the earliest. As it will require cutting a hole through an exterior wall and installing a rather expensive chimney system up the side of the house. But what I can do is install a wood stove insert in our den's fireplace and re-line the existing brick chimney for it. With an included electric blower I can heat at least two (maybe even three) rooms quite well with just wood.

On top of the addition of a wood stove fireplace insert I have bought an efficient electric infrared stove for the bedroom as well. For my attached home office, which is just shy of 200 sq. feet, I will be utilizing a portable kerosene heater.

Not only do I have alternatives, but I have different types of options. If we lose power at any point this winter we can still use the wood stove insert and take the kerosene heater to whatever room we need it in.






Review of the above KeroHeat Kerosene Heater by TacticalIntelligence

Alternate Heat - Winter Months Part I

After purchasing an old New England house from 1858 I'm of course finding the biggest challenge in the Winter months is efficiently heating the house. After some research I've narrowed down my options to two rather basic, but seemingly cheap and efficient alternatives to cranking up the thermostats on my oil boiler.

First I believe I will try the tea-candle method in a room in my home and then test the oil lamp one.