Timing

As they say about many things in life, timing is everything.

With winter setting in here in the Allegheny Highlands, I’ve been trying to time the winter shutdown of the hydroelectric system in order to avoid the carnage of last winter, as lengthy sections of the pipeline to the turbine froze and shattered.  I planned for the shutdown to occur at dusk today.  The system has been performing brilliantly, even with several consecutive nights with lows about 10F.

Today we took a trip across the mountains to get some lumber and groceries, returning just before dusk so that I could walk the line and shut the system down.  The day was cold but sunny, between 15 and 20F as we headed out, and the turbine could be heard doing its little turbine work.  As we pulled up on our return five hours later, parked, and got out, a sickening silence cut through the air.  The gentle whine of the turbine was missing.

After quickly unloading the groceries (the lumber can stay in the back of the truck) I headed up the hill to see what the situation was.  The situation?  I waited one day too long.  The water in the pipeline has frozen in place, and all I can do now is wait for the pipeline to thaw to determine the level of damage and make the repairs.  Surely some will have to be replaced, but that might have to wait until spring.  Had I closed the system down yesterday, I could have resumed it on the warmer days here.  Now?  Probably not until late March at the earliest.  Good thing we added the extra solar panels last September.  In the morning I will brush off the snow and get back to work on the various projects around here.

I also need to re-examine every part of the pipeline system, to get it perfect.  Clearly, it is not so now.

It is now just past dusk here, and even though they are predicting a low of 2F tonight, it was already 1F a half hour ago.  I suspect the air temperature will get to minus-5F or maybe even minus-8, and with winds gusting to almost forty miles an hour, that will yield a wind chill of around -40F.

If you come across any anthropogenic global warming crackpots (but I am being redundant) whack them with a snow shovel.

Readying For Winter

One of the front-burner activities over the past couple of months was getting ready for our first full winter in the Allegheny Highlands, where winters are essentially identical to those of upstate New York or central Michigan.  Having spent my formative years in Minnesota, admittedly in southern Minnesota, the more tropical part, the upcoming winter in the mountains is something about which I am fairly sanguine despite three decades in the Mid-Atlantic. However, since my bride of 34 years is from Southern California the angst is running high; my task of keeping the cabin warm and toasty is priority #1.

The assembly of gigantic firewood piles has continued apace.  Virtually all of the available spaces around the cabin are filled to the brim with cut, split, and mostly well-seasoned wood (I especially have sought out dead trees on the hoof).  This picture is of the cabin front as of last weekend.

We’ve even loaded up the side deck with firewood.

On top of this stash, my pal Mike told me he had a bunch of dead and risky trees he wanted removed from his farm, so for the past several days I’ve been working with him to accomplish that.  The result for me has been five heaping trucks-full of mostly already-seasoned firewood, now awaiting splitting and stacking into giant piles out the the lower barn.  The local tradition is to always have two full years of firewood on hand.  We literally see firewood piles the size of garages here.

Add that to Mrs. Donsbarn’s efforts to get the gardens prepared for spring, including the nurturing of greens in the front raised bed with a plastic hoop house (her goal is to have fresh greens for Thanksgiving) and things are shaping up here at the homestead.